Copious Notes

Roger Leasor plays Marcus Hubbard in On the Verge's production of Lillian Hellman's "Another Part of the Forest" at the Hunt-Morgan House. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

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Also, see our slide show from Another Part of the Forest.

Roger Leasor feels as if he’s come full circle with On the Verge’s ­production of ­Another Part of the ­Forest, and not just because he’s playing the father of a ­character he played last fall.

“When I started performing, it really was as a storyteller in high school, reading to the kids at the public library,” says Leasor, 58.

In subsequent years, he became an actor and a singer at the University of Kentucky, focusing on those crafts.

“But now it comes back full circle,” Leasor says. “What I really want to do is tell the story, and I have all these tools to do it with. I just don’t have the youthful energy to do it or the free time.”

Leasor is chatting in one of the offices of his day job, at the Harrodsburg Road Liquor Barn. As president of the expanding party and spirits business, Leasor has found he spends much of his time overseeing operations in Lexington and Louisville.

He jokes that after ­Another Part of the Forest, he will enter his 19th and last retirement from the stage. But despite his schedule, some roles are too good to pass up.

“These are opportunities that just don’t come along, Leasor says. “I’ve just been so lucky all my life to be given these amazing roles. It takes that anymore to justify the time, and it takes someone like Ave that wants you to work with them.”

Director Ave Lawyer is the most recent person to lure Leasor out of his umpteenth retirement with the opportunity to play the patriarch of the Hubbard family, playwright Lillian Hellman’s treacherous Southern clan, a group that demonstrates how much emotional terrorism can be inflicted while decked out in formal wear.

In the fall, Leasor played Ben Hubbard in Hellman’s The Little Foxes. Now, in Hellman’s prequel to Foxes, Another Part of the Forest, Leasor is playing Marcus Hubbard, Ben’s father.

In "The Little Foxes," last fall, Leasor played Ben Hubbard, Marcus' son. Bob Singleton, right, plays Ben in this show.

“With Ben Hubbard, I was consumed by the fact that he was always conniving, always planning,” Leasor says. “I got the feeling that before he took each breath he was trying to decide which side of the mouth it should come out on. … Well, this is his daddy. Who do you think he got it from?”

Indeed, Marcus is as treacherous as Ben, minus the subtlety.

Leasor says they are both roles that probably startle some who have followed his stage career, particularly recently.

His last few turns have been noble, warm characters - Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the stage manager in Our Town - roles that seem like typecasting when you talk to Leasor.

Maybe his harshest role of recent vintage is Matthew Harrison Brady in Inherit the Wind, a character whom you had to admit had good intentions, even if you disagreed with his point of view.

There is nothing good or selfless about Marcus ­Hubbard or his son.

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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.