Tonight is Opening Night for the Peninsula Players’ production of “The Fantasticks.”

In case you’ve been living too long with your head buried deeply in our beautiful beach sand, “The Fantasticks” original off-Broadway production ran a total of 42 years and 17,162 performances, making it the world’s longest-running musical.

Rita Smith, the director of our local production, has long wanted to do this play in our community, and is very excited about having it run the next three weekends at the River City Theater in Ilwaco.

Jim Tweedy, also known as “Pastor Jim” at the Ocean Beach Presbyterian Church, has admitted he would have paid to play the part he has, while young Michael Veland has been having a blast refining his very theatrical “dying scene.”

As for my part, I’ll be volunteering tomorrow night as a ticket taker and cookie pusher. It takes an entire village to produce a play like this, as I mentioned in my March 1st blog entry, and it takes a huge number of theatergoers for the playhouse to break even on a musical of this magnitude.

So I invite you to DO YOUR PART in supporting local theater. Come see the show! Counting tonight, you’ve got nine chances… three performances each weekend, but please don’t delay, as you might end up being disappointed. When word gets out how terrific this production is, it’s sure to be a sellout.

The new River City Theater is located next to the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco, right across from the post office. Tickets for all performances are now available at the usual outlets, or at the door the same night—if there are any left!