Is this Adieu?!? Oh, Mon Cour!

Emily Trask and Emily Townley do a closing night dance.

No! Say it ain’t so! On behalf of the whole cast, I think I can safely say that a marvelous time was had by all during this lovely production of The Gaming Table.

It was certainly not without its hiccups! A terrible stomach flu swept through the gang during our final weekend and took out three actors. Their wonderful understudies stood in valiantly, but all of the fallen were sorely missed (Here’s hoping Tonya, Marcus, and Ashley are fully recovered!).

Things I’ve learned:

• 

  Emily Trask in character as Valeria with her frog.

  Basset is a very complicated game (I still don’t understand it at all and I watched it being played in front of me every night).

• Michael Glenn should forever have long, red, flowing locks.
• One must ALWAYS look down when descending a highly polished, rail-less staircase strewn with playing cards and rose petals whilst wearing high heels and a floor-length gown (I don’t know how Julie Jesneck did it every night while looking straight out at the audience!).
• Eleanor Holdridge is a kind and wonderful director.
• Maintaining the wigs for this show required a full-time staff.
• More plays should be done with an all female design team helmed by a female director—look at the beauty they created!
• Robbie Gay in a blonde wig looks like Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall.
• Restoration comedy and the energy it requires is HARD WORK.
• The Folger is an amazing place to have taken on the risk of such a large-scale undertaking, a little known script by an unsung female playwright and a very big cast—gladly, it paid off in spades! (See what I did there? Card jokes abound)
  

  (L-R) Michael Milligan, Katie deBuys, Emily Townley, and Eleanor Holdridge on closing night.

Truly, we as theatre artists are lucky enough to work in a field where the human experience and emotion are our subject and our medium. But all emotions and experiences are fleeting and finite… that is the magic of a shared moment between audience and artist; it only lasts a moment.

With a heavy heart, I bid you all adieu and thank you for your patronage and support of the Folger and this beautiful play.

—Emily “Alpiew” Townley

Closing night cake baked by production stage manager Che Wernsman.