The Performances
Born Yesterday FOUR PERFORMANCES ONLY! Sound Familiar? Consider Born Yesterday, written in 1946, by the amazingly prophetic Garson Kanin. Consider Harry Brock, the junkyard king in Born Yesterday. Harry has come to Washington to secure a contract with the Federal Government whereby he may profit from the aftermath of a war, a plot line that could almost be culled from today's editorial pages. Ethics is not a word in Harry's vocabulary and sadly, neither is it for the Senator depicted in the play. The relevance of that plot point to our present time takes our breath away. To our detriment, this conduct touches us all and the question, as it was fifty years ago, remains -what do we do about it? A great many playwrights and screenwriters of Kanin's day would champion that individual who would stand up, usually alone, and speak the truth. The beauty of Born Yesterday is that the playwright makes it clear that to have such champions in our midst requires an enlightened electorate, and Mr. Kanin goes on to place the responsibility for that awakened state on the shoulders of each individual in our democracy. He also manages to pull off this civic's lesson with uproarious laughter. Robert Maynard Hughes once said, "The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment." Or as Billie, the heroine of Born Yesterday, puts it, "Look, Harry, the idea is you can only get away with your kind of shenanigans if nobody cares about it." MMSC’s version of Born Yesterday will be unlike any you’ve ever heard before, including a Readers Theatre version of gin rummy. We are delighted to feature MMSC favorites Bruce Pileggi as Harry Brock, William Connors as that has-been lawyer Ed Devery and Doug Wooley as the corrupt Senator Hedges. We welcome newcomers Rosalind Ashford as Billie, Bill Peckham as Paul Verrall, Julie Wooley as Mrs. Hedges and Amos Newcombe as Eddie. RoseMarie Navarra makes a special appearance as Helen.
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