A new Christmas-themed work from an award-winning playwright is set to make its world premiere on a western Kentucky community theatre stage Friday night.
Mayfield’s Purchase Players Community Performing Arts Center is staging “The Four Old Broads Christmas Extravaganza” during the first two weekends of December. The play is the fourth in a series by the lauded Georgia playwright Leslie Kimbell that follows the comedic adventures of four women who live together in an assisted living facility.
The first “Four Old Broads” show won two theatre festivals in South Carolina and Texas in 2016.
The Graves County community theatre has produced two other shows in the “Four Old Broads” series, including “The Miss Magnolia Senior Citizen Beauty Pageant” last year. Kimbell said one of the actors sent“persistent” emails inviting her to attend the Purchase Players’ performance.
The playwright, who lives in Athens, Georgia, said she doesn’t normally travel far to watch productions of her plays, but ultimately decided to take a girls’ weekend trip up to Mayfield – in part because she had only seen “The Miss Magnolia Senior Citizen Beauty Pageant” on stage once at its world premiere.
“I was so impressed by the [Purchase Players] theatre, the way they did the show and everything they had put into it, from the acting to the direction of the show, the costuming, the lighting, the sound,” Kimbell said. “But I was also really touched by the story of [Mayfield] and what happened with the [2021] tornado and how the theatre had survived when everything around it was destroyed.”
Kimbell finished a draft of “The Four Old Broads Christmas Extravaganza” earlier this year.
“I started trying to think of, you know, what theatre I wanted to reach out to for the premiere. And [Purchase Players was] the first theatre that came to my mind,” she said.
In this new show, the four main characters are tasked with putting together a last-minute community Christmas pageant at their assisted living facility – and chaos ensues as they try to round up all of the acts for the show.
Director Kyler Danowski said several actors in “The Four Old Broads Christmas Extravaganza” are reprising roles they previously played when Purchase Players produced two of Kimbell’s other works. While there is a sense of familiarity among most of the cast with these characters, Danowski said being the first theatre to produce a new show brings some challenges.
“You can't look back at what other people have done to compare it to. You're kind of setting the standard yourself of what other theatres can look at and do,” Danowski said.
Both the playwright and the local cast are using the production as a learning opportunity. Kimbell watched some of the cast’s rehearsals over Zoom, and gave them small notes about what she envisioned when writing the script. At the same time, Danowski said Kimbell has taken feedback from the cast and crew about what aspects of the show work – and which ones can be improved.
“I think it's neat to realize [the cast members] are kind of her guinea pigs, like they're telling her, ‘Okay, at this scene, I really don't have time to change into this so you might want to alter that and give that character more time,’ and things like that. I think that's really nice,” Danowski said.
Kimbell is in Mayfield to watch the world premiere performance of “The Four Old Broads Christmas Extravaganza” – not only to support the cast, but also to take notes for future productions at other theatres.
“Part of the process is me being here to see the show in front of an audience and see how the audience reacts to different bits in the script, and also to talk to the cast [and ask], ‘what's working for you, what's not working for you? Is there any part where you're struggling to get ready for your next scene,’ that sort of thing,” Kimbell said.
“The Four Old Broads Christmas Extravaganza” will run for the first two weekends of December. Ticket information is available on the Purchase Players’ website.
