I Do! I Do! tops menu at Gaslight Dinner Theatre

Release Date: 1/15/2002. Expired: 3/1/2002

Michael and Agnes are young, wellborn and oh so much in love. It’s their wedding day and for the next 50 years they will face and have to deal with the true meaning of marriage, including success, domestic and emotional crises, children, children’s weddings, children’s children and, finally, old age and 50 years of memories.

In The Renaissance Repertory Company’s production of I Do! I Do! in the Gaslight Dinner Theatre, this Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt musical adaptation of Jan de Hartog’s Tony award-winning play The Fourposter brings to life the everyday goings on with Michael and Agnes through 50 years of married life.

As a successful writer, Michael becomes demanding, pompous and arrogant in his affluence while Agnes stays at home and raises two children. As her life goes on she feels like a nobody and becomes irritated at Michael’s ways. But Michael, too, has his own list of aggravations.

The original play opened on Broadway Dec. 5, 1966, and starred Mary Martin and Robert Preston. The show ran for 560 performances and turned out to be a high point, not only of the 1966-1967 Broadway season, but of the decade as well. It also furnished the song My Cup Runneth Over recorded by Ed Ames and climbed to the top of the pop charts in 1967.

Other songs in this musically driven production include All the Dearly Beloved, Together Forever, Goodnight, I Love My Wife, Something Has Happened, Love Isn’t Everything, Flaming Agnes, My Daughter is Marrying an Idiot and This House.

Directed by Jan Y. Dial, senior director of Theatre and Drama at The Renaissance Center, I Do! I Do! is sure to appeal to the very hearts of audiences, and perhaps for some may even mirror familiar states of affairs.

“It’s very sweet, very nostalgic, set back in the late 1800s and goes through 50 years into the early 1940s,” Dial said. “Just the costumes alone are a little challenging because you can’t go buy them off the rack. They have to be built.”

Dial said the audience will witness Agnes and Michael aging over their 50 years as they apply their makeup on stage and don period costumes. She said the way the play is written, it calls for intimacy between the characters and the audience, drawing the audience closer in to the hearts, souls and minds of the characters.

“It’s written that way,” Dial said. “The writers love very intimate shows, so even if we were doing this on a big stage, we would push everything closer to the lip of the stage because they want it to be more intimate.”

The production is very realistic in that most significant conversations between husband and wife take place in the bedroom, Dial said. They’re not always nice and little things get on their nerves.

“They actually have a whole little song about it, Nobody’s Perfect, where he brings out a list of things about Agnes that bother him. But she has a list, too, and it drops all the way to the floor,” Dial said.

Patrons will discover whether or not Michael and Agnes have been faithful to each other, if their marriage survives life’s ups and downs, and what they go through once the children leave home. The play moves along to a culmination of the relationship between the two characters as it develops over the years.

Playing the role of Agnes is Amy Arrington while Greg Frey takes on the role of Michael. Both are members of the Renaissance Repertory Theatre Company.

I Do! I Do! runs Friday evenings Feb. 1-March 1 in the Gaslight Dinner Theatre at The Renaissance Center, with a special performance on Valentine’s Day Thursday, Feb. 14. Tickets are $25 for dinner and the show. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. Reservations are required.

For more information or to make reservations call The Renaissance Center at (615)740-5600.

The Renaissance Center is located at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 minutes west of Nashville off of Interstate 40 at the 172 exit.

Visit the Gaslight Dinner Theatre page for more about dinner theatre.

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