IF YOU GO* What: “Don’t Cry for Me, Margaret Mitchell.”* When: 7:30 p.m. today, Saturday, Thursday and Feb. 5-6, 11-13; 2:30 p.m. Sunday and Feb. 7 and 14.* Where: Gem Theatre, 700 S. Tennessee Ave. (Highway 411), Etowah, Tenn.* Admission: $12 (not recommended for children under 12).* Phone: 423-263-3270.* Web site: www.gemplayers.com.
It took Margaret Mitchell 10 years to write “Gone With the Wind.” In a new play at the Gem Theater in Etowah, Tenn., producer David O. Selznick expects his movie script to be done in a week.
Reviewers describe the action onstage from playwrights Duke Emsberger and Virginia Cate as “hilarious, irreverent and mostly true.”
The comedy is set in 1939, and Selznick has begun filming “Gone With the Wind,” but he’s not happy with the script. He considers only one man up to the task of rewriting it, the legendary Ben Hecht. But Hecht has never read the book. So with time running out, Selznick locks himself, Hecht and director Victor Flemming in a room.
That’s when the fun begins … for the audience.
“You will laugh until you are out of breath at the antics (that produced) one of the classic movies of all time,” said a reviewer at the play’s premiere at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va., last summer. The production played to sold-out audiences.