The lights dim as the crowd is silenced.
The play, "Brighton Beach Memoirs" by Neil Simon, had its opening night last Friday at the Telfair Peet Theatre.
Brighton Beach, the third of eight productions this year, will be running for six days.
The play is about the struggles of a Brooklyn family during the worst year of the Great Depression.
The cast has been preparing for the play since Oct. 2, said John Tourtellotte, who played Jack.
The play is set in late September 1937.
As the curtains open, Eugene Morris Jerome, a developing writer and would-be-baseball player, played by Richard Davis, is playing in the World Series.
Before the play begins and the curtains open, the actors and actresses in the play have to put on heavy make-up to get into character. Not only did the characters have to transform physically, but they had to also erase their southern accents for a Brooklyn dialect.
"We did a ton of table work and research on the play," said Heather Rule, who played Nora. "We read pamphlets on Brooklyn, watched the movie 'Radio Days' and had a dialect coach."
In the women's dressing room were 1937 styled wigs, old robes and aprons, rollers, sweaters, outdated scuffed shoes, plenty of make-up remover and photos of the cast.
A voice sounded off over the intercom in the dressing rooms, "four minutes to places" as the characters added their final touches.
Onstage the wooden frame of the Jerome family house was built with a kitchen, two bedrooms, a living room, stairs and a wooden fence. The set was designed by Pip Gordon and was organized by the technical director, Chris Winnemann.
"As soon as the last set went down, this set went up, so we could get the feel of rehearsing on it," Davis said. "The set feels like home to us now, we have even joked about sleeping over on it."
As the voice sounded off over the intercom again, "Places," the cast got into position and the curtains opened.
Ben Young, who played Stanley, described the play in one word: realism.
"These are real characters that everyone can relate to," Young said.
A couple of minutes into the play, the crowd's laughter was heard echoing throughout the theater.
"It was very interesting and the most humorous play yet at Auburn University," said Tiffanie Thompson, senior in aerospace engineering. "The cast portrayed their characters very well using the Brooklyn accents, and me being a dancer, it was interesting to me that the character Nora was asked to be on Broadway."
The cast consisted of seven main characters: Eugene, played by Richard Davis; Blanche, played by Laura Walter; Kate, played by Bridget Knapik; Laurie, played by Becky Sheehan; Nora, played by Heather Rule; Stanley, played by Ben Young; Jack, played by John Tourtellotte. The understudy for Jack was Shannon Hennessy.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
