Eastcheap Theatre Company to present comedy and drama

Eastcheap Theatre Company, Orange City, will open its summer season in Northwestern College’s DeWitt Theatre with two showings each of two dramatically different productions.

The comedy Fuddy Meers, by David Lindsay-Abaire, will be presented Thursday, June 4, and Saturday, June 6, at 7:30 p.m.

Frozen, a dark drama by Bryony Lavery, will be on stage Friday, June 5, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, June 6, at 2 p.m.

Fuddy Meers is a hilarious house-of-mirrors play about a day in the life of Claire, who suffers from psychogenic amnesia. Claire wakes up every morning with no memory of the previous day, which makes sorting through the cast of questionable characters she encounters both confusing and comical.

Eastcheap company member Karen Barker, who teaches theatre at Northwestern College, calls Fuddy Meers typical summer fare for a professional theatre company. “It’s just fun,” she says, “purely entertaining.”

The show is being directed by Northwestern College alumna Rachel Foulks. Actors include Eastcheap members Jeff Barker, an NWC theatre professor, and April Hubbard, a Dordt College theatre professor.

Other cast members are NWC theatre alumna Lois Estell and students Brady Huffman and Jon Manchester, Dordt theatre professor Teresa Ter Haar, and MOC-Floyd Valley High School sophomore Dan Barker.

 Frozen explores the icy emotions of a serial pedophiliac killer, the cold analysis of the clinical psychologist studying his case, and the suspended life of the mother of one of his victims. Karen Barker says she and Eastcheap company members chose Frozen because “it will stretch us.”

Barker warns that the drama’s subject, scenes and language are for mature and serious theatre-goers only. “It’s ugly,” she explains. “But a mentor of mine used to chide: ‘You Christians want to see stories of forgiveness without facing the brokenness that necessitates the forgiveness.’ Frozen shows all the brokenness, which makes it, we believe, a story rich in forgiveness and redemption.”

Karen Barker, April Hubbard and Huffman will act in Frozen; Eastcheap member and NWC theatre professor Bob Hubbard will direct.

General admission tickets for Fuddy Meers and Frozen are $7; student tickets are $3. Tickets can be purchased at the Northwestern College Theatre Box Office, which opens one hour before each performance.