BTCPA announces auditions for coming production, ‘Bad Year for Tomatoes’

The Bay Tree Council for the Performing Arts in Red Bay has announced auditions for its second production of the 2022-2023 season.

Auditions for “A Bad Year For Tomatoes,” by John Patrick and directed by Mark Richardson, will be held at the Weatherford Center in Red Bay Dec. 11 at 2 p.m. and Dec. 12 at 7 p.m. Auditions will consist of cold readings from the script, with three adult men and four adult women to be cast; older teens could also be considered for parts.

The performances will take place Feb. 9-12, 2023, with dinner available for all performances. Tickets will go on sale Jan. 30, 2023.

According to the BTCPA, this is a favorite show that has been brought back. It was last performed in 2007.

Gracious, glamorous Myra Marlowe, fed up with fame after a long career as a television actress, retreats to the small town of Beaver Haven, Vermont. She’s planning to live quietly and anonymously, write her juicy autobiography and grow her own tomatoes.

The complaints of her faithful agent and less-faithful lover, Tom Lamont – that she is throwing herself away on a backwards backwater of a town – fall on deaf ears.

That is, until she gets to know her neighbors.

Reba and Cora, the Hospitality Ladies, are full of rapid-fire gossip and rapid-fire questions. Woodcutter Piney, impressively bearded and smelling of the great outdoors, terrifies his victims with the force of his sales pitch. Willa Mae Wilcox, the widow woman with the purple shutters on her house, put a voodoo curse on her husband.

With these colorful characters inviting themselves over at every hour of the day, Myra gets no time to write. In frustration, she invents a dangerous, mentally disturbed sister – based on her first, best-known TV role, Sis Sadie – to frighten away her neighbors and give her some peace and quiet.

However, the upstanding citizens of Beaver Haven react in unexpected ways to Sadie’s shrill, childlike charms and sad plight, and before her charade is over, Myra finds herself accused of murder.