The Red and Black

If you think you recognize someone in the new play from the Town and Gown Players, you're probably right.

"Academia Nuts," written by Gregg Kreutz, is a satirical look at academic culture of a small college as a poet's lost manuscript is searched for, which director Steven Elliott-Gower calls "part farce, part mystery and part love story."

Elliott-Gower, an adjunct professor in International Affairs and the Assistant Director of the Honors Program, called the play an amusing look into the lives of college academics.

"I think it's the perfect show for Athens, an academic town," Elliott-Gower said. "It's a pretty gentle spoof of academic life, a classic farce with mistaken identities and people hiding in closets."

The play, which starts Friday and continues to next weekend, features absurd situations and clever players.

Elliott-Gower said he especially loved the character of Stuart, who he described as a "ne'er-do-well."

"He's a man exploring the outer realms of shamelessness," he said. The play should appeal to the University audience, he said, because of the echoes of an actual campus experience.

"I think for a lot of people, especially professors and some of their students, they're going to recognize a lot," he said.

Overall, he said, the play is notable not only for its classic style of humor or the level of recognition it creates in the audience, but for the relationships between the characters that emerge over the course of repeat-viewings.

"I knew it was funny, but I didn't realize at first it had as much subtlety as it did," Elliott-Gower said.

Article Tools