Theater department debuts dessert theater with <em>Barefoot in the Park</em>

 

The Lipscomb University School of Fine and Performing Arts debuts dessert theater this month with a performance of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, at 7:30 p.m. in Shamblin Theatre, April 9-11.

Barefoot, an early Neil Simon hit from the 1960s, tells the story of a spanking new lawyer and his young bride who, after a six-day honeymoon, move into the new, high-rent apartment. But the difficulty is, in order to enjoy the charming character of this apartment, one has to climb six wheezing flights. And the apartment is absolutely bare of furniture, the paint job came out all wrong, the skylight leaks snow, there isn't room for a double bed, and an outlandish gourmet who lives in a loft on the roof uses it and the window ledge as the only access to his padlocked premises.

 

The situation is enough to break the heart and burst the lungs of any stylish young lawyer; and indeed it does, on the night he flatly refuses to join his wife in a barefoot walk through the snow in the park. She kicks him out, but he comes back not for reconciliation, but because he figures that since he's paying the rent she should be the one to go. Come join Lipscomb Theater as we light-heartedly explore the trials and tribulations of marriage as written by one of the comic masters of our time.

 

Barefoot is directed by theater department chair Mike Fernandez, who also directed Lipscomb’s largest production in decades, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, earlier this season.

 

Call the Lipscomb Theater Box office at 615.966.7111 for more information on this production and tickets. Reservations for the dessert reception must be made in advance.