‘Auntie Mame’ opens at ABQ Little Theatre
Hurricane Mame is sweeping into the Albuquerque Little Theatre. Patrick Dennis’ 1955 novel “Auntie Mame” boasts multiple incarnations: runaway best-seller, stage play, film, stage musical and a film musical.
The ALT will launch its production of the Broadway classic on Friday, Aug. 26. The play runs weekends through Sept. 11.
“It’s probably one of the funniest shows ever written,” director Henry Avery said. “It’s a unique character that’s been immortalized.”
Flamboyant, free-spirited and rich, the perpetual party named Mame suddenly becomes a parent when her orphaned nephew Patrick appears on her Manhattan doorstep. She quickly introduces him to her eccentric lifestyle, including her friend Vera, a Broadway actress who spends many a drunken night passed out in Mame’s guest room.
Mame’s motto is “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!”
But Patrick’s inheritance includes a trustee who disapproves of Mame’s conduct. He insists she remove Patrick from his progressive school and enroll him in a prep school. Mame will get to see Patrick only during the summers and and on holidays.
“She’s never had to deal with anybody but herself,” Avery said. “She grows and changes and becomes a different person.”
Then the Depression shatters her fortune.
Mame takes a series of jobs — acting, switchboard operator, Macy’s saleswoman — all of them ending disastrously. But she meets a rich oilman from the South and they marry. She greets his family members at their Georgia plantation dressed like Scarlett O’Hara and creates a scene. Then he dies while they’re climbing the Matterhorn. Patrick persuades the ever-resilient Mame to write her autobiography.
The 26-member cast stars Albuquerque’s Lara Dale as Mame. A former New York dancer and model, she works in film sound effects, Avery said.
“She has a wonderful style, and she’s glamorous,” he said. “After I cast her, she brought in a trunkload of clothes –– authentic kimonos, Indian saris. She has a good sense of style from being a model. I’m probably going to end up using (the kimono) because I love it.”
“Mame’s” original Broadway production starred Rosalind Russell. In 1966, the musical version starred Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur. In 1974, the musical became a movie starring Lucille Ball.
In 2016, “Bridesmaids” screenwriter Annie Mumolo told Vanity Fair she was working on a modern adaptation starring Tilda Swinton.