Talent Night Saturday at Wayside Theatre

    DEXTER — Music, comedy and satire are featured at the Talent Night on Saturday. June 29 at 7 p.m. at the Wayside Theatre.
    Local performers, many with talent, will sing and play songs, act out original comedic skits, some based on

Garrison Keiller’s “A Prairie Home Companion” (APHC). Rounding out the evening skits and making its first local debut is “You Can’t Get There From Here,” a satiric view of local events. 
    Gladys Day (Tim Breen) and the Pips (Liz Breault, Barb Bekier, Dawn Huntt and Michelle Fagan) will delight with their costumes and unique version of “Midnight Train to Georgia.”
    Other singers performing are Lena Downes, Ed  Hummel, Connie Hall and Steve Batchelder.  Ruth Fogg will enchant with her cello and the Ripley Heights Trio will also make its debut. This trio of Joe and Nellie Kennedy (half of Evergreen) and Wally Warren will play old favorites and new songs on harmonica, bass, guitar and dulcimer.  The songs include “Across the Great Divide” by Kate Wolf, “Barbed Wire Boys” by Claire Lynch (which reminds Nellie of her family’s farm in Dexter) and a new song written by Nellie called “E-W Corridor Blues.”
    Comedic skits include the droll and serious reference librarian (Breault) who fights with a library board member (Breen) over the use of eBooks in their interpretation of APHC’s Ruth Harrison, reference librarian.  Fagan plays the meek library assistant Trudy. 
    An unhappy encounter with free-range chickens causes problems for cowboys Dusty (Wally Warren) and Lefty (Ron Apel) in APHC’s The Lives of the Cowboys. Bob (Mike Phillips) anxiously waits (yet again) for a telephone call on an art project while his long suffering and sympathetic wife Bernice (Dawn Huntt) tries to mediate with her derisive father (Hummel). Fagan plays the dog in this skit based on APHC’s Bob: Life of a Young Artist.
    Don’t miss the memorable bratty five-and-a half-year-old Edith Ann (Huntt), made famous by Lily Tomlin, who shares her worldly wisdom while perched on a rocking chair.
    Where can you go when “You Can’t Get There From Here”? Not to worry. Irv Ink (Hummel), Rock Anne (Barb Bekier), Dieter Fugue (Breen) and Sen. Tom Douglass (Dave Pearson) will tell you exactly where they want you to go and precisely how much you’ll have to pay to go. 
    MC is Pearson and up in the lighting booth is Chester Bekier.
    The Wayside Theatre is at 851 North Dexter Road (Route 23).  The doors open at 6:30 p.m.  Homemade pies and refreshments sold at intermission. For more information, call Breault at 924-7292.