QUILCENE — You’re encouraged to let it all out — all your booing, hissing, clapping and cheering — this Friday in a one-night-only show called “The Lamp Went Out.”
This is a melodrama, peopled by a small flock of flamboyant characters, together at 7 p.m. inside the Quilcene Community Center, 29492 U.S. Highway 101.
Tickets to “The Lamp Went Out” are $4 per person including popcorn and sarsaparilla (aka root beer).
Seating is limited, so director Sally Brown urges patrons to purchase in advance at the Olympic Art Gallery, 40 Washington St., at U.S. Highway 101 in Quilcene.
Remaining tickets will be sold at the door for $4.
Local actors and crew include Thais Svetich as the heroine, Don Svetich as the hero and Erwin Dence as the villain, all under the direction of Brown, who conceived this whole plan.
Brown, co-owner of Quilcene’s Olympic Art Gallery, has been participating in productions of “The Lamp” since she was an 8-year-old girl in Salinas, Calif., and her church put it on.
She’s been helping stage it ever since, with church groups and Girl Scout troops.
So when she heard that the Brinnon-Quilcene Garden Club needed a sound system installed for its meetings at the Quilcene Community Center, Brown thought it would be fun to stage a fundraising “Lamp.”
‘A funny play’
“It’s not a long play, but it’s a very funny play,” Brown promised.
It’s also a classic community effort, with Brown and her husband, Charlie, along with Heather Spencer, Ward Norden and Larry McKeehan orchestrating the sound effects, props and costumes.
Also in the cast are narrator John Helsper; Mary Gail Falk as the heroine’s mother, Mrs. DeVere; and Mary Carr as the Angry Patron. Franco Betucci provides piano accompaniment for the unfolding story.
“I wanted to do this for the garden club,” Brown said. “They do so much in the community.”
She would go to the club’s big plant sale Memorial Day weekend, May 28 and 29, at the Quilcene Community Center, but that’s the same date for the Olympic Art Festival at her gallery.
“I haven’t figured out how to be in two places at once,” Brown said.
For more information, phone Brown at 360-531-2015.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
