Gallery Players Announces 61st Season Line-Up

Gallery Players, central Ohio's oldest semi-professional community theater, has announced the line-up of plays for its 61st season, which will be presented in the JCC's Roth-Resler Theater from October 2009 through May 2010.

In early October, Gallery Players will present Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folley. The story centers on Sally Talley, a nurse's aide from a conservative, wealthy, Protestant family, and Matt Friedman, a German-Jewish accountant from St. Louis, 11 years Sally's senior. On a moonlit summer night in 1944, the two hold a clandestine rendezvous in the abandoned Talley family boathouse. There, they cautiously feel their way to love, through the thicket of Talley family disapproval and their own complicated pasts.

For the Holiday Children's Show (early December), Gallery Players will present Capture the Moon by Ernest Joselovitz and Harry Michael Bagdasian, adapted from the Jewish folktales of Chelm. Capture the Moon is based on the traditional Yiddish tales of Chelm, portrayed as a mythical Eastern European shtetl, its people being awfully poor, very devout, and thoroughly democratic. The play spotlights this poor village's humorous attempt to solve a street lighting problem by capturing the moon and harnessing moonlight.

Gallery Players' winter musical (in February/March, 2010) will be Stephen Sondheim's Company. Set in New York City, Company traces the relationships of Robert, a 35-year-old confirmed bachelor and his mostly married friends. The action takes place on his 35th birthday, and - like an episode of The Twilight Zone - it all takes place in an instant. Presented in a series of musical vignettes, Robert's trials and triumphs are revealed on the road to understanding what being alive is really about.

The final production of the season will be The Immigrant by Mark Harelik, presented as Gallery Players' spring drama (early May, 2010). The Immigrant is a heartfelt, funny, lovable play which brings a fresh slant on the age-old story of immigration and assimilation. It is a charming biographical tale of the author's grandfather, a Russian Jew, who arrived in the Port of Galveston, Tex., at the turn of the century. The play spans 30 years of the family's growth and contributions to the town of Hamilton, Tex.

The Immigrant will be held in conjunction with a seven-week exhibition at the JCC next April entitled "170 Years of Jewish Life in Columbus, 1840-2010," presented in partnership with the Columbus Jewish Historical Society.

Season tickets are on sale now, and are $40 for JCC members, $35 for JCC Senior members, $50 for non-members, and $45 for Senior non-members. Tickets for each production are $12 for JCC members, $18 for non-members, $10 for senior members, $16 for senior non-members, $8 for children or students, and $10 per ticket for groups of 10 or more. For more information, visit the Gallery Players website at www.jccgalleryplayers.org, or contact JCC Cultural Arts Director Jared Saltman at (614) 559-6248.