Mountain Community Theater is proud to present the acclaimed play The Lion in Winter by, directed by Wendy Edmonds. The production opens at Ben Lomond’s historic Park Hall on Friday, March 10, and continues on weekends through Sunday, April 2. Friday and Saturday performances are at 8:00 p.m. Sunday matinees are at 2:00 p.m. on March 19, 26 and April 2.
General Admission tickets are $20.00. Students and Seniors are $17.00. There will be a champagne reception after the show on opening night. The performance on Friday, March 17 is Community Night, with two tickets for $20.00. There will also be a special Talk Back with the Cast and Director after the Sunday matinee on March 19. Tickets are available at https://mctshows.org.
The time is Christmas, 1183, and the place is the castle at Chinon, France, late in the reign of England’s first Plantagenet King, Henry II. He is desperate to name a successor, but his three available sons are a thankless lot. Richard insists that he will become King because he is the oldest and the most capable. John is sure he will inherit the throne because he is his father’s choice. Geoffrey, the middle son, feels unappreciated, with no chance at all of the throne.
Of all his wars, the one with Henry’s Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, has been the longest and bitterest. If there were an award for the most exhilarating anachronism of the year, James Goldman would have won it with this play. Sometimes anachronisms occur in plays through carelessness, but Goldman’s are there on purpose. The essentially modern speech makes it easy to identify with these people. We have not moved back into their time. They have moved forward into ours. James Goldman won an Academy Award for his adaptation of the play for the screen.
The show is directed by MCT veteran Wendy Edmonds. The cast includes both MCT favorites and actors we are proud to present to MCT audiences for the first time: Erik Gandolfi (King Henry II); Lillian Bogovich (Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine); Nat Robinson (Richard the Lionheart); Shane Johnson (Geoffrey); Wyatt Troxell (John); Scott Hawklyn (King Philip II), and Alie Mac (Alais Capet). n
Mountain Community Theater (MCT) is the longest-running community theater in Santa Cruz County, started in 1982 by a collective of actors. MCT is a member-run non-profit organization that relies on support from its performances, season subscribers, and royalties from its own company-created script, Miracle on 34th Street, the Play.
For more about MCT’s current show, visit https://mctshows.org/current-show/.