Thursday, May 31, through Sunday, June 10
Richmond Hill Barn Theatre, 600 Robinson Drive, Geneseo IL
A Southern-fried slapstick comedy by the popular playwriting team of Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten, the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's Dearly Beloved, from May 31 through June 10, will serve as the second title in the venue's 50th-anniversary season of audience-favorite revivals, the show's 2008 presentation praised by the River Cities' Reader as “charming and funny and unfailingly likable,” as well as “a terrific amount of fun.”
In Dearly Beloved, the Futrelle sisters of Fayro, Texas – Frankie, Honey Raye, and Twink – are throwing a wedding for Frankie's daughter Tina Jo. The mother of the bride has almost made herself sick with elaborate preparations and the rumor mill in their small town is working overtime, but Frankie steadfastly insists that she can pull off one “final Futrelle occasion” with elegance and style. Despite the “help” of a cantankerous wedding coordinator, however, the proceedings go hysterically off-course, particularly with the stunning revelation that the bride-to-be and her intended have fled town. The sisters must ultimately find ways of keeping the unsuspecting guests in the their pews while a highway patrolman tracks down the runaway bride and groom, resulting in a delightful Jones/Hope/Wooten concoction that BroadwayWorld.com deemed a “wonderfully funny, shockingly true-to-life, and on-target skewing of a Texas family” in which “it's hard to imagine any audiences not finding a whole lot to love.”
Directing Richmond Hill's Dearly Beloved is venue favorite John VanDeWoestyne, a familiar on-stage presence who has also directed such comedies as Doublewide, Texas, Laughing Stock, and Christmas Belles, plus the theatre's previous Dearly Beloved from 2008. The harried Futrelle sisters are portrayed by Lorrie Lord, Diane Greenwood, and Valeree Pieper, and nine additional performers fill the show's ensemble: Nolan Fassett, Jan Golz, Larry Lord, Heidi Pedersen, Dana Skiles, Mike Skiles, Zoey Sloane, Stan Weimer, and Archie Williams.
Dearly Beloved runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m., and admission is $12. For more information and to reserve tickets, call (309)944-2244 or visit RHPlayers.com.
