Cast rehearsing The Gingerbread Lady, Michele Broussard, Jack Strickland, Vanessa Morales-Knight, and Briana Moloney
June 2 through 4, Katy Visual and Performing Arts Center (KVPAC), Encore Players, Katy’s Award-Winning Community Theatre, will present The Gingerbread Lady, by Neil Simon, directed by Joshua Shorejs. Show times are June 2 and 3 at 8:00pm and June 4 at 2:00pm. Tickets are $18 for Adults, $15 for Seniors (55+) and Students, and $12 for groups of 10 or more.
The Gingerbread Lady is a dark drama with comic overtones centering on Evy Meara (Vanessa Morales-Knight), a cabaret singer whose career, marriage, and health all have been destroyed by alcohol. We meet her at the end of a ten-week drying out period at a sanitarium when her best friend age-defying Toby (Michele Broussard), her daughter Polly (Briana Moloney), and Jimmy Perry (Jack Strickland), a gay actor try to help her adjust to sobriety with a jolly birthday party. Enter Lou Tanner, a former lover, who ends up giving her a black eye. The party is a wash out, the “gingerbread lady” falls off the wagon and hits the ropes once again.
Maureen Stapleton won Broadway’s Tony Award as Best Actress for the role of Evy Meara. Later, the play was rewritten by Neil Simon as the film Only When I Laugh starring Marsha Mason.
Director, Joshua Shorejs said, “in the The Gingerbread Lady, Neil Simon exhibits profound skill in playing for laughs, while drawing out the emptiness and sadness in the lives of the misfits he is adept at creating.”
Tickets are available online until noon on Friday, June 2 and then at the door one hour prior to show time. For more information, please visit the KVPAC website at www.shop.kvpac.org or call 281.829.2787. KVPAC is a 501c3 non-profit arts education organization serving the Katy community since 2001. We are located at 2501 S Mason Rd, # 290, Katy, TX 77450 in the Great Southwest Equestrian Center Complex.