TNT Offers Charming, Odd-Couple Drama This Fall

Terrific New Theatre's 33rd season continues this month with "Grace & Glorie," a charming drama that will tug at the heartstrings while inducing laughter and smiles. The production will run Oct. 25-Nov. 10.

The play - written by Tom Ziegler - tells the story of Grace (portrayed by local legend Sandra Taylor), a feisty 90-year-old cancer patient who has checked herself out of the hospital and returned to her beloved homestead, a rustic cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, to die alone. Her volunteer hospice worker, the sophisticated Gloria (Julie Fuller), is a Harvard MBA recently transplanted to this rural backwater from New York. Glorie, as Grace calls her, is tense, unhappy and guilt-ridden, her only child having been killed in an auto accident while she was driving. As the two protagonists spar, argue and bond, they form a relationship of surrogate mother and daughter, teaching each other many life lessons in grace and glory.

Directed by Jonathan Fuller, the production will perform Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. from Oct. 25-Nov. 10, with Sunday matinees on Oct. 28 and Nov. 4 at 2:30 p.m. However, there is one notable departure from TNT's usual schedule: Due to the "Dia de los Muertos" festival at Pepper Place on Friday, Nov. 2, there will not be a performance of "Grace & Glorie" that night. Instead, TNT will present a special Wednesday performance on Nov. 7 at 8 p.m.

Rounding out the creative team for this production are set designers Kevin Thomas and Kenneth Patterson, lighting designer Scott Littleton, costumer Matt Roberts (a senior at Samford University) and stage manager Kim Dean Davenport. TNT's artistic director is Tam DeBolt, now in her third season.