Copious Notes

Here’s our slide show of On the Verge’s production of Another Part of the Forest. Mouse over the bottom of the slide show to get controls. Click on the little comment cloud to the left to activate captions (if you want captions on this show, it’s probably best to go to the large version of the show). If you click on a photo, it will take you to a larger version of it at Picasa, and you can click the link at the bottom left of the slide show window for a larger version of the whole show.

On the Verge opens its second site-specific production this weekend: Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest at the Hunt-Morgan House on Gratz Park. The play is the prequel to Hellman’s The Little Foxes, which was On the Verge’s debut last fall, across the park at the Bodley-Bullock House. Like that original show, the audience is extremely limited for each performance of this play, which will be acted out in various rooms of the house.

Read more about the show, directed by Ave Lawyer, later this week as we catch up with Roger Leasor, who plays Marcus Hubbard, the father of Ben Hubbard, the character he played in Foxes.

Allie Darden is Ouisa in Studio Players' production of "Six Degrees of Separation" at the Carriage House Theatre in March and April. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Lexington actor Allie Darden will get to make her New York debut after all.

Darden will be heading to the Big Apple this summer to participate in a production of Brian Hampton’s Checking In at the Midtown International Theatre Festival July 15-Aug. 1.  She will be reprising the role of Brooke, the part she originated in the world premier production of Checking In at Actors Guild of Lexington in 2005. Actors Guild artistic director Richard St. Peter will be directing the production. It will be St. Peter’s New York directing debut.

Darden traveled to New York earlier this year for a reading of the play, which is about a group of high school friends who gather years after graduation at a hotel room in Atlantic City. She was invited to join the production when the Midtown Theatre Festival picked it up, but had to wait for permission from her employer to take the time off to go participate in rehearsals and the performances.

Darden’s most recent role in Lexington was Ouisa in Studio Players’ production of Six Degrees of Separation. She is currently working in On the Verge’s production of Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest, which opens Sunday at the Hunt-Morgan House.

The poster from AGL's original "Checking In" production.

Brian Hampton’s Checking In, which had its world premier production at Actors Guild of Lexington in 2005, will be presented at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in New York City this summer. Actors Guild artistic director Richard St. Peter will direct the production, which will be performed five times between July 13 and Aug. 3 at the 99-seat June Havoc Theatre in the Abington Theatre Arts Complex.

Checking In, which centers on the reunion of a group of Virginia high school friends at an Atlantic City hotel, had a reading in New York in January featuring Hampton in the role of Ben and Lexington actor Allie Darden as Brooke, the roles they originated in Lexington.  Brian will play Ben in the New York production, and Darden has been offered her role but has not announced whether she’ll be able to take it.

• Here’s our slide show from Studio Players’ production of John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, which runs March 19-April 5 at the Carriage House Theatre, 154 W. Bell Court. Mouse over the bottom to get controls. Click on the little comment cloud to the left to activate captions. If you click on a photo, it will take you to a larger version of it at Picasa, and you can click the link at the bottom left for a larger version of the whole show.

In a 2004 photo, Tiffiney Kavanaugh, Adam Luckey, Michelle Czepyha and Rubin Thomas rehearse for Actors Guild's production of My Way, led by Peggy Taphorn. Taphorn is now director of Temple Theatre in Sanford, N.C., where Luckey is playing Hamlet.

Two Actors Guild of Lexington productions from past seasons are getting some road work.

AGL artistic director Richard St. Peter and actor Adam Luckey have been in Sanford, N.C., recently to bring St. Peter’s high-tech production of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the stage of the Temple Theatre. The production, with Luckey reprising his performance in the title role, opened Jan. 7 and runs through Jan. 25. The Temple’s producing director is Peggy Taphorn, who directed Actors Guild’s productions of My Way in 2004 and Quilters in 2005.

Allie Darden in 2007. Herald-Leader photo by Mark Cornelison.

To the north, Brian Hampton’s Checking In, which received its world premier production at Actors Guild in the Spring of 2005, will be read Monday night at the Blackbird Studio Theatre in New York. Heading to Gotham for the reading is Lexington actor Allie Darden, who will be reprising her role as Brooke and Hampton, as Ben. The play is about a group of old high school friends from Virginia who reunite for a weekend at an Atlantic City hotel. One of the friends has been harboring a secret that threatens the group’s friendship. Filling out the reading’s cast will be several Broadway and television actors.