Newark’s Chapel Street Players celebrate their 90th season with an adaptation of the first play the company presented back in 1935.
When the Chapel Street Players were considering what to perform in their 90th season, some members suggested a reprise of the first play the company ever performed. But, said the company’s Scott Mason, there was a problem.
That play, Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh, hasn’t aged well.
“When the selection committee read it, they thought, ‘oh, this is a sticky wicket,’ because again, written in 1910, there were a lot of themes that would not be appropriate to today's audience," Mason said.
So, Mason took the original play and wrote a more accessible adaptation, called The Foxy Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh. But he didn’t take it all the way into the 21st Century.
“I updated it to 1976 for a couple of reasons," he said. "The fact that it's the bicentennial adds some humor. The second - the play is really female driven and so I wanted to highlight a time when a lot was changing in the male versus the female world.”
Mason's adaptation keeps many of the original’s plot points, presented in a more audience-friendly form. He said the update is reminiscent of classic 70’s sitcoms.
“Maude, Mary Tyler Moore. All in the Family, The Jeffersons - because it's very situational comedy and it’s almost like an expanded half hour sitcom," he said.
The Foxy Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh runs through February 22 at the Chapel Street Players’ new theatre on Creek View Road in Newark. Showtimes and tickets are at chapelstreetplayers.org.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
