Classic dramas, Orem premiere to open

Classic dramas and the premiere of a new play in Orem are among this week's theater openings.

• "FAREWELL TO EDEN," a new drama by Utah Valley State College student playwright Mahonri Stewart, will premiere Thursday through Nov. 22 in the school's Black Box Theatre. According to faculty member James Arrington, who has worked with Stewart on developing the script, it has "the same sensibility as works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or Charlotte and Emily Bronte."

Set in England in 1840, the play will be UVSC's entry in the American College Theatre Festival competition.

Arrington, who is directing, notes that Stewart's play contains historical LDS Church characters as it focuses on the proselyting effort in Great Britain at the time. The central characters are three recently orphaned, but adult, Highett siblings — Georgianna, Catherine and Thomas. According to Arrington, "This is an intelligently plotted and sometimes jaw-dropping story with lots of humor to carry it."

Stewart, a UVSC sophomore, recently won third place in the Ruth and Nathan Hale Comedy Playwriting Contest. The cast includes Margie Johnson, Brandon West and Amber Jones as the three Highetts, with Angela Youmans, Sam Schofield, Aaron Wilden, Ken Brown, Sam Davis, Russ Bennett, Tatum Langton and Fallon Hanson in other roles.

"Farewell to Eden" will play Thursday-Saturday of this week, and Nov. 19-22 the following week, all at 7:30 p.m. The Black Box is in Room 617 of the Gunther Trades Building. Tickets are $8 for general admission, $6 for students, senior citizens and children, and $4 for UVSC students. For reservations, call 801-863-8797.

• "THE WINTER'S TALE," Shakespeare's first successful achievement in writing a romantic drama, opens Wednesday and plays through Dec. 6 in Brigham Young University's Pardoe Theatre. The plot centers on the contention that surfaces between King Leontes of Sicilia and King Polixenes of Bohemia, when the former suspects the latter of having an affair with his wife, Queen Hermione.

Director Laurie Harrop-Purser is adding her own twists, such as setting the production in the period of the Klondike Gold Rush. The locales are being shifted to Sicilia in the Yukon and Bohemia in Northern California. She's also utilizing a storyteller to narrate the proceedings. Her cast of 12 will play mutiple roles.

Half-price previews are Wednesday and Thursday (Nov. 12-13). Regular tickets for remaining performances — Tuesdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. — are $12 for the general public and $9 for BYU students, faculty or staff. For reservations, call 801-378-4322.