Remove Images‘Look Homeward, Angel’: ’Hooch’s Little Theater tackles Thomas Wolfe novel
November 07, 2012
Alex Crump, left, and Alex Thomas rehearse a scene from The Little Theater’s performance of "Look Homeward, Angel."
Based on Wolfe's semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, the show will be performed Nov. 29, Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 and Dec. 8. All performances are at 7 p.m.
"Look Homeward, Angel" is the World War I-era coming-of-age story of Eugene Gant (Alex Thomas), who has grown up in Dixieland, a seedy boardinghouse run by his domineering and penny-pinching mother, Eliza Gant (Alex Crump).
Eliza generally treats her boarders better than her family, which includes her alcoholic husband, W.O. Gant (Bobby Singleton), a stonecutter who has a great passion for art but mediocre skills to achieve it.
Other characters include the married daughter Helen Gant Barton (Amy Neal) and her husband Hugh Barton (Brian Samuels); and an older son Ben Gant (Sam Vernik), a newspaperman with dreams that the onset of tuberculosis won't allow him to achieve.
Eugene dreams of going away to college and leaving his hometown behind — but his mother stands in the way. His yearning for escape grows when he falls in love with a new boarder, Laura James (Claire Peterson).
Things come to a head as Ben, who Eugene idolizes, succumbs to his illness and prefers as his deathbed companion, a drinking mate and maternal stand-in, Mrs. Marie "Fatty" Pert (Lynette Garcia), over his own mother Eliza.
Portraying the Dixieland boarders and townsfolk are: Neema Tavakolian, A.J. Hatcher, Kayla Redic, Evelyn Martin, Derek Henderson, Chloe Louis, Christie Barker, Brian Wittenberg, Jake McCracken and Ross Manning.
You can also look forward to "Ruthless!," a musical spoof on "All About Eve" and "The Bad Seed" coming in January.