Woman’s Club

Cabaret Theatre A Hit

By Nancy K. Crevier

“It was quite the night,” said Newtown Woman’s Club member Marianne Scanlon, referring to the Woman’s Club Cabaret Event, at the Alexandria Room in Edmond Town Hall on Sunday, October 26, which sold out long before the curtain went up.

The evening of fun and laughter featured special musical guest Wendy-Marie Berry, an art show with works by Betty Christensen, Ruth Newquist and Virginia Zic, and a one-act play of two scenes, How Our World Turns Topsy-Turvy Overnight, written and directed by Ms Scanlon. The play was the sequel to Ms Scanlon’s comedy Happy Holiday? produced by the Woman’s Club in 2004, which won the International Woman’s Club Play Award that year.

“At the end of the first play, I said, ‘I guess I’ll write a sequel,’ and they held me to it,” said Ms Scanlon. It took her four years, however, to get around to doing so. “But then it took only one day, sitting under a cabana in Florida, to write it,” she said.

 All of the characters, male and female roles, were played by Woman’s Club members. Original cast members Nancy Larin, Mary Obre, Marilyn Alexander, Rosemary Rau, Peg Forbell, Nancy Kennedy, Sonja Haskel, and Patty O’Byrne were joined by Lynn Buttner, Ginny Chiaramonte, Liz Arneth, and Ginger Humeston this time around.

 How Our World Turns Topsy-Turvy Overnight picks up two years after the first play left off, with main characters Edith (Nancy Larin) and Harry’s (Mary Obre) thwarted “second honeymoon” plans revised, and a houseful of relatives having moved back home. With the adult children finally each going his or her own way in this play’s first act  — some more on the straight and narrow than others — and Grandma and her boyfriend preparing to tour the country on a Harley, Edith and Harry have some big changes in store, as well. Harry, it seems, has taken up with a woman he has met in the supermarket while shopping for melons.

“Now Edith is left alone,” said Ms Scanlon, “but we see in scene two how she has grown in six months and deals with Harry when he returns, begging her forgiveness.”

Other members of the club collaborated to make the play a success, said Ms Scanlon. Costumes were created by Ginny Chiaramonte, sound effects by Janet Stockalis, and program production was the work of Rosemary Rau.

The event , one of many sponsored by the club to support various local organizations, raised over $1,500.

“We had such fun,” Ms Scanlon said. “As much fun rehearsing as we hope people had watching it.”