Southport Magazine

Brunswick Little Theatre is proud to present the last show of the 2022 season, “The Last Night of Ballyhoo” by Alfred Uhry, the playwright who also wrote the iconic Driving Miss Daisy. The show will run Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Dec. 1-3, and 8-10 at 7:30 p.m, and Sunday, Dec. 4 and 11 at 3 p.m.

The play takes place in Atlanta, Georgia, in December 1939. “Gone with the Wind” is making its world premiere, and Hitler is invading Poland, but Atlanta’s German Jews are much more concerned with who is going to Ballyhoo, the social event of the season. Especially concerned is the Freitag family: bachelor Adolph, his widowed sister Beulah (Boo) Levy, and their also widowed sister-in-law Reba. Boo is determined to have her dreamy, unpopular daughter Lala attend Ballyhoo, believing it will be Lala’s last chance to find a socially acceptable husband. Adolph brings his new assistant Joe Farkas home for dinner. Joe is Brooklyn born and bred, and furthermore is of Eastern Euopean heritage – several social rings below the Freitags, in Boo’s opinion. Lala, however, is charmed by Joe and she hints broadly about being taken to Ballyhoo, but he turns her down. This enrages Boo, and matters get worse when Joe falls for Lala’s cousin Sunny, who is Reba’s daughter, home from Wellesley for Christmas vacation. 

Will Boo succeed in snaring Peachy Weil, a member of one of the finest Jewish families in the South? Will Sunny and Joe avoid the land mines of prejudice that stand in their way? Will Lala ever get to Ballyhoo? The family gets pulled apart and then mended together with plenty of comedy, romance, and revelations along the way. 

The “Last Night of Ballyhoo” is directed by Ken Greenman.

Buy tickets online at https:// www.brunswicklittletheatre.com or purchase in person at Ricky Evans Gallery, 211 North Howe St. in Southport.