SOMERS POINT - Gateway Playhouse will kick off its 2025 Mainstage Season with the George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart comedy classic, “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” The play will run one weekend only, April 4-6.
Originally set in the 1930s in a small town in Ohio in the weeks leading up to Christmas, the play relays the story of a famously outlandish New York City radio wit, Sheridan Whiteside, who is invited to the house of a well-to-do factory owner, Ernest W. Stanley, and his family. Prior to entering the house, Whiteside slips on ice outside, injuring his hip and thus confining him to the Stanleys' home for an indeterminate amount of time.
Directed and selected by Ryan Daly of Egg Harbor Township, Daly was introduced to the play when he portrayed Whiteside in a production while at Atlantic County Community College.
“It’s just a hilarious show, it’s so much fun,” Daly said. “It has great writing and great characters that are actually based on real people. It’s a fantastic show – I love it.”
Daly, who is set the show in the 1940s, said regardless of when it takes place, the story is still relevant to today’s audiences and is considered one of the funniest American comedies.
Many in the large cast performed in the Gateway’s sold-out production of “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Gateway last spring, including Alissa Dirato (Maggie Cutler), Elizabeth Volpe (Mrs. Stanley), Jim Maher (Mr. Stanley), Dave Somers (Dr. Bradley), Allison Parlin (Lorraine Sheldon), and Lucien Hartt (Banjo, based on Harpo Marx). New to both Daly and the Gateway is Sal Sanzo, who plays the wheelchair-confined lead Whiteside. The cast also includes Daly’s daughter Audrey Daly, 9, and niece Flora Supal, 10.
Daly said the Kaufman and Hart play is the type of show that can direct itself.
“With Shakespeare, for example, you have a blank slate to do and create what you want,” he said. “This play has so many stage directions (written in). So I am allowing the actors to improv and feel their way around and try different things. I’m giving them freedom to find what works and what feels right.”
Performances are 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 4-5, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 6.
Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at GatewayByTheBay.org or the Karen S. Sutherland Box Office at Gateway Playhouse, 738 Bay Ave. in Somers Point.
Go to GatewayByTheBay.org for more.
