Love list

Small cast but great fun

By JERRY BUXTON

It’s not your typical love story — but that’s a large part of its charm — and hilarity.

If you were making a list of the qualities you’d look for in a mate, what would you list? Are you sure?

“The Love List,” by Canadian Norm Foster, will be presented at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and at 2 p.m. Nov. 22, at the Crest Theater, by Great Bend Community Theatre. This adult romantic comedy explores what can happen when you get exactly what you wish for.

A great cast of veteran GBCT players will make you laugh constantly. Ken Harton is Bill, Jim McVay is Leon, and Angela Meitner is Justine. And that’s the cast, which means each has a lot of lines.

Warren Deckert, artistic director for Great Bend Community Theatre, will direct this, the season opener for GBCT, with two more shows to follow in 2010. This will be his last show as director. His wife, Denise, will direct the next show, in January. Warren will not escape “unscathed,” though. He will be the set-builder for that one, too, slated for four Great Bend performances and one in Larned.

Harton, who has also directed several GBCT shows, will play Bill, a statistician. McVay, who was most recently in “Squabbles,” in November 2007, will play Leon, a successful novelist. Meitner, who was most recently in the GBCT comedy “Ghost of a Chance” in April 2008, will play Justine, a mystery woman.

Harton, librarian and wearer of other “hats” at Great Bend Middle School, directed “Squabbles” and six other GBCT shows, including “Rabbit Hole” in November 2008. All three actors appeared in “Book of Days,” a drama, for GBCT in November 2006.

Chris Curtright is assistant director of the comedy. He appeared in last April’s funeral-home comedy, “Lying in State.”

Meitner, an occupational therapy assistant at Central Kansas Medical Center, is appearing in her sixth GBCT production.

The most recent show Harton appeared in was “Book of Days.” “Love List” involves lots of memorizing, he noted. “The Nerd” required a lot of that, but this show calls for even more. “It’s fun, it’s different, with a small group. We work together well, help each other. It’s been a really good experience.”

He added that the trio is now eager to perform the fun before a live audience.

Deckert said, “It’s a great show. It’s good, straightforward comedy, well-written. Nuances, set-ups returned to ‘an hour later.’ It’s incredibly good, and we have a great cast of veterans.”

The two men make a list of their concepts of the qualities of the ideal woman. And that’s all we’d better say. We do not wish to give anything away, and there’s plenty to surprise audiences.

GBCT’s third play, “Maggie’s Getting Married,” in April 2010, is also by Foster, showing how much the selection committee likes and values his work.

McVay, an attorney with Watkins Calcara Chtd., said his character, Leon, is 50 but “not grown-up yet. But he does grow up during the course of the play.”

McVay has been in “The Odd Couple,” “Come Blow Your Horn,” “Book of Days,” “Chapter Two,” “Remember Me,” “Squabbles” and now, “The Love List.”

The play is six years old, having been first performed in Ontario in October 2003.

Production of “The Love List” is being underwritten by donations from the Law Office of Robert L. Feldt, P.A., and Linda Sisson.