Glass Menagerie Comes Down as Fully Committed Goes Up

The Glass Menagerie closed on Sunday with a post-show party in the basement green room. The next day the set started to come down. The nature of theater is ephemeris personified: a world is created, lives for a brief time and then all vestiges of it suddenly disappear. Like love letters in the sand: written in the afternoon with a stick and by evening completely washed away by the tide.

On Monday, Casey Stangl arrived from Los Angeles to begin rehearsals with Nathan Keepers rollicking performance in Fully Committed, which opens Friday, November 5 (get your tickets NOW). It’s always so much fun to see her. We are old theater buddies, Casey and I. As many of you may remember, she was the artistic director of her own theater here, Eye of the Storm Theatre. Casey now lives in Los Angeles with her husband John, directing plays and staging operas around the country.

So, yesterday Nathan read the play for the staff (a Jungle rehearsal period always begins with a read through of the play for the staff). Nathan is truly hilarious in this piece. Truly better than ever. It is amazing how new it all seems, how fresh and delightful! Casey and Nathan are now rehearsing at Old Arizona Studios (if you have never visited Old Arizona go on over – there is a charming little restaurant on the first floor and a groovy theater next to it. Go to Old Arizona.com for directions and info, and tell them Bain sent you!)

Today the stage is completely clear and Wu Chen, our amazing lead builder, and his crew are beginning to put up the Fully Committed set – a room in a funky basement, with a circular stair to the restaurant floor above. Incidentally, the play is actually based on the real life story of a young actor in New York who worked as a reservationist (in the basement!) of a high-end NYC restaurant, which, it turned out, was the same restaurant that J.P. had worked in when he was a young chef in training (you remember the now-gone J.P. Restaurant that was across the alley from the Jungle? That J.P.! Serendipity was never so serendipitous!).

Get your tickets NOW for what will surely be the funniest holiday show in town! Laughter and Joy—that’s a Jungle holiday!