Marble Valley Players to perform ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’

Charlotte Gillam really wanted the Marble Valley Players to do “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”

“I have always loved this play,” she said. “For a couple years I’ve been trying to convince them to do it, but we could never get anyone to direct it.”

So, the actress said she decided to direct it herself, recruiting fellow performer Valerie Gravelle to co-direct. The first-time directors will open the play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart on Friday at West Rutland Town Hall Theater.

The play tells the story of 1930s radio personality Sheridan Whiteside who, immobilized by an injury, takes over a Midwestern house he had simply visited for dinner. It was first produced on Broadway in 1939, and was a film starring Bette Davis followed in 1942.

Whiteside is based on Kaufman’s fellow Algonquin Round Table member Alexander Woollcott. Woollcott owned a summer home on Neshobe Island on Lake Bomoseen, where many celebrities of the 1920s and ’30s accompanied him on weekend excursions.

“This play is like the epitome of name-dropping,” Marble Valley Players publicity chairwoman Judy Wideawake said. “We’re even including a glossary in the program because so many names are dropped.”

Woollcott was also known for his cutting wit, a master of the comedic insult. Fans of the television series “House” will find themselves on familiar ground as Whiteside terrorizes those around him.

“I just think it’s very funny,” Gillam said. “I love that era, the ’30s and the ’40s. It depicts that time and the crazy characters in it.”

During a dress rehearsal Monday, Martin Bones portrayed Whiteside, slinging barbs from a vintage wheelchair in the middle of detailed set recreating a 1930s middle-class living room.

“Who are those two harpies standing there like the kiss of death?” he inquired about a pair of admirers in the back of the room. His doctor is dismissed as a “corner druggist,” the house as a “moldy mortuary” and the library as a “drafty sewer.”

Gillam said she grappled with having a 26-member cast.

“To have everyone here on any given night seems a big challenge,” she said.

Becoming a director, Gillam said, has also required her to get over discomfort at telling people what to do.

“I’m usually listening to directors,” she said. “This has been a good cast, a lot of camaraderie and not a lot of divas.”

Showtimes are 8 p.m. March 20 and 21, with a 2 p.m. matinee March 15. Tickets are $12 and may be purchased at the door or in advance at the West Rutland Town Hall and Paramount Theatre box office. Tickets are also available online at www.paramountlive.org.

gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com