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First Production for Deep River Town Theatre Company

Joyce Beauvais has made theater come alive for amateur actors, professional players and local audiences on the shoreline for the last decade, and she is at it again, with a new group, the Deep River Town Theatre Company.

The players will debut their first production, Don’t Dress for Dinner, a fast-paced comedy of misguided romantic relationships, on Friday through Sunday, Nov. 22 to 24, in the theater on the top floor of Deep River Town Hall, 174 Main Street, Deep River.

The play, which ran for six years in London in the 1990s, involves a house party where crossed signals among the six characters produce the unthinkable: wives, mistresses, and assorted lovers all together in the same place for the weekend.

“My personal style as artistic director, director, and actor is comedy, farce being my favorite,” Beauvais said.

Josh Donoghue, who plays an unfaithful husband caught in the dilemma he helped create, majored in drama in college and has appeared not only in Connecticut at the Hartford Stage, but also in television and film roles during his time living in New York City and Los Angeles. That, however, was more than two decades ago.

“It’s been 25 years since I’ve been in a play,” said Donoghue, who now works at Pratt & Whitney.

The long gap between roles does not bother him.

“It’s like riding a bike. You don’t forget,” he said.

Not Naked

Donoghue, who lives in Deep River, added that the title of the play, Don’t Dress for Dinner, has already inspired a joke for at least one local resident.

“She is spreading the word that I’m appearing naked,” he said.

For the record, he is fully and respectably clothed on stage.

At a recent rehearsal, Donoghue’s daughter Cameron Donoghue, a 5th grader at Deep River Elementary School, sat in the back watching her father.

“He told me he had acted before but I’ve never seen him; it’s very inspiring,” she said.

Unlike Josh Donoghue, Don McGregor of Madison, who plays Donoghue’s best friend and the lover of his best friend’s wife, had no acting experience. Before Beauvais, his major theater credit was ushering at the Ivoryton Playhouse. That is where he learned Beauvais was putting together a community group. McGregor, a retired regional financial manager for Southern New England Telephone decided to try acting.

“It was a little out of the box for me,” he admitted.

Now, five years later, he has appeared in Beauvais’s summer theater in Niantic as well as in the murder mystery productions she has staged. His experience doing round dancing—ballroom dancing done with a caller announcing steps like square dancing—helps him with the physical comedy that is important in Don’t Dress for Dinner.

“Joyce and I have a love hate relationship. She’s the director, but sometimes I have ideas that don’t fit what she is thinking,” he confessed.

But that doesn’t dampen his enthusiasm.

“What the heck, it’s a lot of fun and I always embrace Joyce’s direction in the end,” he said.

‘The Way to Do Theater’

Deborah Mott, who plays a confused French cook hired to make dinner at the house party and then mistakenly recruited to impersonate a girlfriend in the romantic tangle, is enthusiastic about working with Beauvais.

“She has the biggest heart and such an ability to motivate and bring people together,” she said.

Mott, who lives in East Haddam, is an artist and illustrator with a theater pedigree. She is the daughter of a Metropolitan Opera diva and herself has acted professionally, a career she would like to move back into now.

The cast is completed by Hilary Weissberg from Old Saybrook, playing a disgruntled wife eager for time with her lover; Susan Walsh of New London, the girlfriend of Weissberg’s husband; and Michael LaChance of Avon, the husband of the cook who, like his wife, is recruited to pretend he is romantically involved with someone else.

In Beauvaiss’ productions with The Ivoryton Players, community actors did not have to memorize lines but could read from scripts. For the current production, all lines are memorized.

“I come from professional theater; I have been involved in theater since I was seven years old and I demand a lot, but the actors and crew demand a lot themselves. This is the way to do theater,” she said.

Don’t Dress for Dinner will be offered by the Deep River Town Theatre Company at Deep River Town Hall, 174 Main Street, Deep River, Friday, Nov. 22 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 23 at 7 p.m.; and Sunday, Nov. 24 at 1 p.m. More information and tickets are available at shorelinedrama.com/deep-river-theatre.