Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Auditions for The Front Page, the comedy by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, are still planned for Sunday and Monday, July 29 & 30, at 7:00 PM. Since the BLT is not safe, the location of the auditions has been changed to Missouri Street Church of Christ in Baytown, 3400 So. Highway 146-B. Come to the Annex behind the main building. Click here for a map.
The Front Page is the classic American comedy of long-standing, featuring the expert plotting and rapid-fire, streetwise dialogue that has delighted audiences for generations, influencing countless other American comic writers, especially in Hollywood, as well as spinning off no less than four film versions, including the popular 1940 version starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, titled His Girl Friday, and the 1974 Billy Wilder film with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. The play is set in the dingy Press Room of Chicago's Criminal Courts Building, overlooking the gallows behind the county jail. While reporters from most of the city's newspapers pass the time with poker and pungent wisecracks about the news of the day, they eagerly anticipate the hanging of Earl Williams, a (supposed) Communist revolutionary convicted of killing a policeman. The play, chronicling the madcap escapades of these characters, also examines the nature of media in society, a topic that is as fresh today for comedy and commentary as it was in the 1920’s.
