‘The Crucible’
SRO THEATRE COMPANY, COLUMBUS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, 549 FRANKLIN AVE.
614-427-3324, www.srotheatre.org
The drama about the Salem witch trials explores the evil of mob hysteria.
8 p.m. Thursday, Saturday and Oct. 20; 10:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. Friday; 2 p.m. Sunday and Oct. 22; and 2 and 8 p.m. Oct. 21
$23, or $20 for students and senior citizens, $18 for Thursday preview
She’s feisty, lives in a battered trailer and thinks she has discovered an art masterpiece. He’s a snobbish art expert from New York and ready to say she’s wrong.
In “Bakersfield Mist,” an odd pair battles over art, authenticity and culture.
Eclipse Theatre Company will present the central Ohio premiere of Steven Sachs’ comic drama, which will open Thursday in Worthington.
“It’s a fascinating script, serious but very funny,” said Greg Smith, artistic director of Eclipse Theatre Company.
The plot, inspired by true events, seems plausible, Smith said.
“People have found classic paintings and Rembrandts or valuable antique furniture in their garage or attic,” he said.
Set at a trailer park in Bakersfield, California, the 90-minute one-act revolves around an unemployed bartender and an art expert who visits her after she finds a painting that she believes is a missing masterpiece.
“It’s a power play about two people who play mind games with each other,” director Katie Palcsak said. “There’s a big contrast in class, culture, education and personality between the two. The underlying theme is art, authenticity and what really makes something real.”
Palcsak admires Sachs’ playwriting.
“You can sense his passion for art in this play, and he does a good job speaking through two different voices,” she said. “The way it flows is very conversational and witty. People will wonder who’s right and who’s wrong.”
Joyce Leahy plays Maude Gutman, an ex-bartender who lives in a run-down trailer.
“Maude is brusque, with a rough edge and a colorful vocabulary but a heart of gold,” Leahy said. “Down on her luck, she buys a painting for $3 at a thrift store as a birthday present to cheer up her depressed neighbor, and becomes convinced it’s a genuine Jackson Pollock.”
Pollock (1912-1956), a major abstract expressionist painter, was known for works filled with seemingly random paint spatters.
“As she learns more about the artist, she realizes the value of what she might have — not only the monetary