Friday, 29 March 2024

Archy and Mehitabel come to Lake County June 5

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An 'Archy and Mehitabel' cartoon. Courtesy of the Lower Lake Historic School Preservation Committee.

 

 

 



LOWER LAKE – The Lower Lake Historic School Preservation Committee is pleased to welcome actor Gale McNeeley for his one-man show, “Archy and Mehitabel,” on Saturday, June 5, at 7 p.m. in the Lower Lake Historic Schoolhouse Museum’s Weaver Auditorium.


Just who are Archy and Mehitabel?


First appearing in 1916 in the New York Sun newspaper as a serial, Archy is a cockroach (yes, cockroach!) and the “transmigrated” soul of a free verse poet, while Mehitabel is a toujours gai alley cat with a celebrated past, including Cleopatra and a number of cheap floozies who have trouble maintaining the dignity that was once theirs by natural right.


Writing after hours on the typewriter of Don Marquis, Archy jumps up and down on the keys (lower case only and with no punctuation as he cannot use the shift key) to painstakingly write his observations of the day concerning “life, death, love, politics, kittens and library paste.”


Writing from an insect's point of view, Archy makes sharp, incisive, not always very complimentary (but highly amusing) comments on the foibles and fallibilities of humanity.


Don Marquis was said to be “America’s next Mark Twain,” and the stories out of Archy’s poetic mind are full of wit, wisdom and philosophy.


Archy and Mehitabel ran until the late 1920s as a newspaper serial. The pair have been featured as a Broadway musical, “Shinbone Alley,” written by a young Mel Brooks in 1957, and no less than Eartha Kitt and Carol Channing have performed the role of Mehitabel on stage, on records and as a television special in 1960.


A full-length feature movie, again with Carol Channing, was released in 1971.


Other memorable characters by Don Marquis include Warty Bliggens the Toad, Freddy the Rat, The Old Soak, and a host of whimsical characters with a bent toward literary ruminations.


Gale McNeeley’s career has spanned Broadway, regional theater, television, film and circus. An Irish tenor with a wide musical and performance range, McNeeley has studied physical comedy in Europe and teaches clowning and Commedia Dell’Arte.


He is a graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater and Antonio Fava’s Scuola Intenazionale Dell’Attore Comico in Italy.

 

 

 

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Actor Gale McNeeley will perform his one-man show,

Upcoming Calendar

30Mar
03.30.2024 9:00 am - 2:00 pm
Lakeport Community Cleanup Day
30Mar
03.30.2024 9:00 am - 11:00 am
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30Mar
03.30.2024 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Lake County poet laureate inauguration
31Mar
03.31.2024
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31Mar
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