ONSTAGE in Bedford announced that Sherry Etzel and Lana K. Hoover, known across North Texas for their “Girls Gone Weird” comedy show, will headline in “The Kitchen Witches” by Caroline Smith. The play will run May 20-June 5 at ONSTAGE, located in the historic Bedford Boys Ranch park.
“Casting these ladies turned out to be an incredible choice,” said the play’s director, Mike Hathaway. “Their considerable arsenal of improvisational comedy talent never ceases to amaze me.”
Etzel, playing Isobel Lomax, and Hoover, playing Dolly Biddle, will be joined on the boards by Andrew Christian and Adam Livingston as Stephen Biddle and Rob, The Audio-Visual Co-Op Student, respectively.
“The Kitchen Witches” serves as a kind of homecoming for the comedy pair. “We first met doing a show together at ONSTAGE in 2010,” explained Hoover. “The friendship was almost instant.”
“We had a great chemistry, and at the time I was looking for a new partner to round out my comedy duo, ‘Girls Gone Weird.’ I asked Lana to join me for a booking and the fit seemed perfect. Since then, we’ve been a team and the show continues to evolve since we both love to laugh and have a flair for the ridiculous.”
“The Kitchen Witches,” winner of the the 2005 Samuel French Canadian Playwrights Contest, revolves around Isobel Lomax and Dolly Biddle, two “mature” cable-access cooking show hostesses who have hated each other for over 30 years, ever since Larry Biddle dated one and married the other. Circumstances put them together on a TV show called “The Kitchen Witches,” and the resulting insults fly fast and furious while Dolly’s long-suffering TV-producer son Stephen tries to keep them on track. As long as Dolly’s dressing room is closer to the set than Isobel’s, though, he faces a losing battle.
“In her original script, the playwright has a lot Canadian references,” says Hathaway. “Normally you don’t dare change a word of a play, but with this show, Smith actually encourages you to replace those ‘Canadianisms’ with local places and names to add additional layers to the jokes.”
“The end result is a very, very funny play that looks and sounds like it was written just for us.”
Performances are Friday and Saturday nights at 8:00 p.m. with matinees each Sunday of the run at 3:00 p.m. from May 20 – June 5. Tickets to the play range $14.99 – 19.99 and are available at the theater’s website, www.onstageinbedford.com
