Bell, Book and Candle
A Bewitching Comedy
by John Van Druten
directed by John Feltch
October 19 – November 9, 2008
Love is a magical thing.
It’s the 1950s and Gillian Holroyd is living the life of a restless witch in the hip Murray Hill district of New York City. When she casts a spell on her handsome upstairs neighbor, Shep Henderson, to keep him from marrying her old college rival, it works a little too well. Now Shep’s absolutely mad for Gill and Gill finds she’s starting to feel the same about him. Will she give into the one thing that will take away her magical powers forever – falling in love?
Running time: 2 hours and 10 minutes, including one 15 minute intermission
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"Be as thou wast wont to be
See as thou wast wont to see..."Those of us who are old enough can remember the charms of TV's Bewitched, which was certainly conjured with this 1950 play in mind. That television show had its genesis, though, in trying to find a way to tell the story of an interracial marriage. Before that substitution, our play was being written by a gay man, and one can imagine the fun he had disguising his own minority community as an eccentric but benign coven hidden in plain sight! The commercial writers of that era had to be clever in the way they addressed issues of "otherness," but when plays like Bell, Book and Candle result we are so happy for that cleverness.
Tales involving magic and the supernatural, meanwhile, have occupied our stages since the theatre began. What better place than the theatre to engage and revivify that young lover and dreamer in each of us that once longed, or still does, to enchant someone utterly --- or to be so enchanted? Mr. Van Druten borrows the words above from Mr. Shakespeare in reference to the breaking of a spell, but those very words can be used in the current context to cast a spell: an invocation of our memories of simpler, more hopeful times when "magical thinking" had nothing to do with sub-prime mortgages and blinking your eyes was better than CGI!
Sometimes we do plays to explore larger social issues. Sometimes we depict the non-, sub- or superhuman in human form to find relief and even joy in how simply human we are. And sometimes, thank heaven, we do a play just because it's so much fun to do and, we hope, to see...
Cheers and Happy Halloween,
John Feltch
