Brother George Heard, Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina - Asheville, and former faculty advisor for the now inactive Theta Zeta Chapter, became an honorary brother of Theta Zeta Chapter in 2002. Brother Heard was recently featured in an article about a play he had been performing in at the Haywood Arts Regional Theatre (HART). Kelly Jones, Assistant Editor of The Rattle, spoke with Brother Heard about his “roles” in “The 39 Steps.”
How long have you been involved in local theater?
“I've been performing for a long time - about 25 years of stand-up and improv, and for 10 years I have been lead writer for a sketch comedy group, the Feral Chihuahuas (coincidentally, another member of The Feral Chihuahuas, Adam Meier, is a Theta Chi). My involvement at Haywood Arts Regional Theatre began two years ago,” said Heard.
Why were you drawn to audition for this particular play?
“HART does group auditions - most of their summer shows audition on the same day, so I actually came to audition for another show (which I was not cast in), but I read through the descriptions of the other plays, and the nature of "The 39 Steps" really grabbed me. The director had seen me in a few improv shows and knew a bit of what I can do,” Heard said.
I understand that this play has 150 characters and only four actors. How many of those characters do you play? Do the parts require costume changes? Doesn’t playing multiple parts get confusing?
“The big gimmick of the show is recreating a movie with a cast of 150 using four actors,” said Heard. Not all of these characters appear on stage, some are voiceovers, or mimed from offstage. My onstage characters include a compere, a milkman, a professor, a detective, a fighter pilot, the chairman of an election campaign and Mrs McGarrigle, a scottish landlady. In a few scenes I change characters onstage - it's pretty chaotic. Thus far the worst I've done is put on a smoking jacket when I was meant to have a police coat on,” he said.
Read on to find out more about this exciting performance!
The following article was posted with written permission from Vicki Hyatt, Editor of Mountineer Publishing.
Enjoy thrilling twists and turns at ‘39 Steps
By Mary Ann Enloe/Mountineer Publishing
Alfred Hitchcock meets Abbott & Costello. That’s the laugh-out-loud whodunit playing at HART through the weekend.
The 1935 Alfred Hitchcock British thriller “The 39 Steps” is familiar to devotees of old black-and-white movies shown on TV today. The British Film Institute ranked the spy melodrama the fourth best British film of the 20th century.
The French term film noire was not coined until almost a decade after “The 39 Steps” was released, but the dark drama would have fit the genre.
Not so the Tony Award-winning play adapted by Patrick Barlow. Played strictly for laughs, its puns and one-liners are lifted from such Hitchcock pleasers as “Vertigo” and “The Birds.”
The complicated spy plot of the original is full of its own twists and turns, and takes on a lot more in this hilarious farce. The minimal set has windows that move from one room to the other and doors that go anywhere and everywhere and back again, making a merry magical home for HART’s cast of four talented actors. This rollicking romp has 150 roles. Hunter Henrickson, Clara Burruss, Will Vickers and George Heard play all of them.
You’ll see men playing women, men playing women playing men, men playing multiple men, sometimes all in the same scene. HART favorite Clara Burrus plays three women—Annabella, Margaret and Pamela.
Henrickson, currently pursuing a bachelor’s of fine arts degree in Acting from Northern Kentucky University, is making his HART debut this summer and what a debut it is. The only one in the cast of four to play the same role from beginning to end, Henrickson’s Richard Hannay pops up where you least expect him, perhaps on your toes if you don’t keep them out of his way. After intermission, the second act sneaks a slight respite from the constant chaos but it’s best not to get too settled in. All of a sudden the craziness crashes around you as Henrickson’s character stumbles across knees and toes in the audience.
All four of these exceptional actors are show-stoppers. It’s hard to imagine Broadway and off-Broadway having better casts than our own HART. Clowns 1 and 2—Will Vickers appearing in his first HART role, and George Heard—are a little bit Laurel & Hardy and a little bit Monty Python, delighting the audience with every smirk and pratfall.
Saturday night’s audience enjoyed itself with laughs tumbling upon laughs. Some seats were empty, though.
“We’re staying in Maggie Valley, and the only reason we knew about this is that someone who saw it earlier told us about it,” said Martha Cole of Virginia. “The hotels and motels tell us about places to eat and things like that, but they should tell us about this theatre, too. It’s wonderful.”
She attended Saturday night’s performance with her sister-in-law Jackie of Swannanoa, who said she didn’t know about HART either. “When my children were small, we were involved with Tanglewood and Asheville Community Theatre. And of course I’m familiar with S.A.R.T. and Flat Rock,” she said. “This is lovely and we’ll be back.”
Martha Cole and Jackie Cole are married to twin brothers who stayed at vacation central to watch the golf tournament, “...but they would have loved this,” said Martha with a laugh. “I wish we had seen it last night so we could have come back tonight to see it again.”
The Cole couples will return to the area in early Fall and they plan another visit to HART.
HART veteran Julie Kinter directs this fast-moving melodrama played for laughs. Equally as talented behind the scenes as onstage in leading roles, Kinter assembled the perfect cast and put it through its paces.
If you’re in the mood to laugh just for the sake of laughing, do yourself a favor and find out all about “The 39 Steps” in this sophisticated slapstick confection.