IF YOU GO* What: “Duck Hunter Shoots Angel.”* When: Thursday through June 6.* Where: Cumberland County Playhouse, 221 Tennessee Ave., Crossville, Tenn.* Admission: $24 adults, $23 seniors, $13 students.* Phone: 931-484-5000.WHERE YOU KNOW HIMMitch Albom, playwright of “Duck Hunter Shoots Angel,” has worked as a singer, piano player, sports writer and author. Among his best-known books are “Tuesdays With Morrie, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” “For One More Day” and “Have a Little Faith.””Duck Hunter Shoots Angel” debuted in 2004 at the Purple Rose Theater, in Chelsea, Mich., a theater started by actor Jeff Daniels. It went on to become that theater’s highest-grossing play.
A story of duck hunters named Duwell and Dewayne who are afraid they may have shot an angel in the deepest Alabama backwoods is intriguing on its own, but a New York tabloid reporter, a local Gasmart shop girl, a half-man/half-alligator and a ghost add spice to the comedy that opens Thursday at Cumberland County Playhouse.
“Duck Hunter Shoots Angel” is written by best-selling author Mitch Albom and has been likened to another Southern comedy, “The Foreigner.”
“It’s a wonderful piece,” said CCP producing director Jim Crabtree. “It’s hard to describe. It’s a little quirky, but we think our audiences will really enjoy it.”
The story finds a depressed New York journalist and his reluctant photographer — who work for a tabloid “three steps down from the National Enquirer” — searching for the two duck hunters who believe they’ve made the errant shot.