Formed in rural South Dakota in 1934, this poignant comedy charts 70 years of personal and national history, from skinning skunks and julebukking when the tale begins, to restoring the native prairie in the new millennium.  Join these fascinating women as they laugh, cry, navigate the difficult changes in their relationships, and share their lives at their “friendly” monthly gathering.

Deana Barone
Mara Marini
Kate Mines
Ann Noble
Bettina Zacar

Backstage Critic's Choice

Ovation Award Nominations

“Playwright Tom Jacobson seems to challenge himself with each new project, from the ambitious interconnectivity of the two parts of "Ouroboros" to the giddy rewrite of famous literature in "Bunbury." On the surface, his latest play, "The Friendly Hour," may not seem stylistically in line with his other work, but it is — its audacity is simply more quiet. It is a moving and funny piece, and the performances by a quintet of skilled actresses makes the play sing with jubilant, complicated life.

Jacobson’s intriguing play structure, which tells the story entirely through meetings of a club, seeks to let the passage of life over seven decades provide the drama. This is more effective in the second act, in which characters grow old and die; the meetings in the first act run together without enough of a sense of progress or differentiation. Jacobson’s dialogue, however, and the cast are so good that this is essentially a quibble.

In 1934 South Dakota a group of young wives have formed a club called the Friendly Hour. It’s an opportunity to see their friends, raise money for good causes and, always, to have a tasty lunch. Book lover Dorcas (Ann Noble) nominates her friend Effie (Kate Mines) for president, a decision she’ll regret over the next 70 years as the two regularly clash. The teasingly scatological Opal (Deana Barone) becomes treasurer, the German-accented Isabelle (Bettina Zacar) concentrates largely on cooking, and Dorcas’ ever-cheerful sister Wava (Mara Marini) keeps her sorrows to herself.

Noble is delightful as Dorcas, bringing brash humor and charm to the role and doing full justice to more dramatic moments as well. Mines is strong as the controlling and conservative Effie, whose bossy nature is undercut by interludes of hiding in closets due to fear or embarrassment. Mines inhabits this character fully. When Dorcas and Effie become great friends again toward the end of their lives, after all of the bad blood between them has passed, we’re glad to see it thanks to the power of her perf.

Barone is superb as peacemaker Opal, strikingly different as the older version of the character but completely believable throughout. Marini is very good as Wava, a character underwritten compared with the other three. Zacar displays admirable versatility with multiple small roles, succeeding best as the sweet if somewhat dim Elvira.

Director Mark Bringelson keeps the pacing swift and the dense series of events clear, but his choice to have the characters regularly walk behind the audience to change costumes is unnecessarily distracting. Desma Murphy’s wooden home framework set creates a properly farm country ambiance, bolstered by Lisa D. Burke’s nicely wrought array of homespun outfits that get fancier as the years go by."
- VARIETY

“Tom Jacobson's lovely new play chronicles the rituals of a women's club in rural South Dakota from the late '30s to 2007, and we watch the women with whom we grow increasingly familiar age and engage in theological disputes that are really at the heart of the matter. God's purpose, and the purpose of community, interweave and clash through the decades as five fine actors portray many more roles. Leading the pack is Kate Mines' prickly creationist Effie and Ann Noble's proud, forward-thinking Dorcas Briggle who, had she lived somewhere else, would have joined the Unitarian Church. (Deana Barone, Mara Marine and Bettina Zacar round out the cast.) The play desperately needs pruning – its length is partly responsible for a monochromatic quality that dampens Mark Bringleson's otherwise animated and tender staging. If this were scaled down to six pointed scenes from its perpetually unrolling carpet of the club's rites and characters' domestic crises, the impact of the survivor's dotage in 2007 could be that much more gripping. Still, Jacobson has put aside the conspicuous cleverness of his past works, Bunbury and Ouroboros, for an impressionistic landscape that straddles the literary worlds of Anton Chekhov and Thornton Wilder. Desma Murphey's wood-framed set, against which a backdrop of clouds peers through, contains both elegance and allegory, and Lisa D. Burke's costumes contain similar affection and wit."
- LA WEEKLY

“CRITIC'S PICK...There's a lot of talk these days about what it means to be an American. But at the root of the issue, there is more to that distinction than political rhetoric and a newly famous hockey mom. If you'd like to get at look at the kind of strength and stoicism that made our country sturdy before those in power realized how easy a people we are to fool, there's a better outlet these days than tuning in to CNN. Tom Jacobson has paid exemplary homage to real-life American heroes from a less jaded period in our history, using transcripts of minutes from a rural South Dakotan women's club that gathered monthly from 1934 through 2004, when the last two survivors begin to fade.

As with other of Jacobson's plays (Bunbury, Sperm, Ouroboros), the playwright assigns himself intricate narrative challenges that would have sent Williams back to the loony bin, giving his characters a penchant for talking excitedly over one another — that is, when not giving someone the cold shoulder for some perceived societal faux pas. Under the direction of Mark Bringelson, who keeps his actors constantly on the move even when Jacobson's dialogue is as economical as the down-to-earth lives of these ladies, the ensemble of five is remarkable. Ann Noble is the anchor as Dorcus Briggle, a bursting freethinker who fights at every turn with the stiff-backed Effie Voss (Kate Mines), while Opal Zweifel and Wava Jamtgaard (Deana Barone and Mara Marini) struggle to keep peace. And Bettina Zacar, playing about a dozen women who weave in and out of the circle, demonstrates an uncanny ability to switch from one elaborate character to another in amazingly quick changes.

These powerful Midwestern survivors are the stoic Americans to celebrate and honor, something Jacobson has accomplished with his lyrical, sweetly bucolic text. Although the narrowed eyes of these fiercely local lifelong friends might be just as revealing as the telltale looks from any current political candidate, their resolve to get through their often exigent small-town lives despite the odds is infinitely more sincere than anyone we're asked to accept into our trust today. "
- BACKSTAGE

“Playwright Tom Jacobson finds greatness in the “small” lives of a group of South Dakota housewives in The Friendly Hour. Over the course of two acts and 73 years, and thanks to Jacobson’s incisive and affectionate writing and five exquisite performances, we come to know these women and their lives—and to love them as if they were our own family. As always, The Road has assembled a sensational cast—Deana Barone as Opal, Mara Marini as Wava, Kate Mines as Effie, Ann Noble as Dorcas, and (having the most fun of all) Bettina Zacar, who gets to play a half dozen or so characters. Director Mark Bringelson has guided his cast to memorable characterizations. Effie describes “The Friendly Hour” as “something to believe in when everything else lets you down.” If only we all could be as lucky as these women were, what more could we ask for?"
- STAGE SCENE LA

Producers:
Aaryn Kopp
Albie Selznick

Executive Producer:
Taylor Gilbert

Assistant Director:
Michael Beahm

Stage Manager:
Maurie Gonzalez

Set Design:
Desma Murphy

Lighting Design:
Derrick McDaniel

Costume Design:
Lisa Burke

Prop Design:
Sarah Moretz

Sound Design:
Chris Moscatiello

Resident Vocal Coach:
Linda de Vries

Graphic Design:
Ammar Mahmood

Understudies:
Kelly Godfrey
Shana Gagnon
Lenne Klingeman
Jamie Reichner