Octette Bridge Club

By P. J. Barry

Directed by Pattye Archer
September 13-16 and September 18-22, 2012
The Playhouse on Main

Featuring – Allyn Flemmons, Madeline Golden, Lorraine Hughes, Brenda Mayo, Terry McDowell, Tracey Millsaps, Cindy Ruff and Marianne Ulmer with Matt Crane

Octette Bridge Club focuses on eight sisters of Irish descent who meet on alternate Friday evenings to play bridge and gossip. The show opens one evening in October 1934, when the sisters pose for a photograph for the Sunday rotogravure section of the local newspaper before starting their regular game. The action soon jumps ahead ten years and through the course of the play the audience realizes that life for the eight sisters is not perfect, but rather peppered with deeper troubles, petty betrayals and illnesses.

Ann Conroy, married to a man who drinks too much, is a no-nonsense schoolteacher who hosts the bridge nights. Martha McDermitt, the widowed eldest sister, is known for her sense of responsibility and stern personality. Mary Margaret Donovan is a spinster who lives with younger sister Alice Monahan and her husband Walter, who have no children. In the second act, Mary Margaret uses a wheelchair and has a slight speech impediment due to a stroke. Nora Hiller is an easy-going woman devoted to her husband Lawrence and their children. Connie Emerson is always quick with a wisecrack. Lil Carmody is a free spirit who plays piano, and Betsy Bailey is the youngest, a melancholy married woman with two children who is struggling to find her own identity.

Click here to read the program from Octette Bridge Club.

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