COSTARS Jenny Aldrich and Don Walker have been entertaining theater audiences for more than twenty years

21 years of (mostly) romantic comedy

Banyan Theater Company

Sarasota, Florida

June 27 – July 14

Come see Jenny and Don as Fanny and Gardner Church, in Tina Howe's heartwarming play "Painting Churches"

Gardner and Fanny Church are preparing to move out of their Beacon Hill house to their summer cottage on Cape Cod. Gardner, once a famous poet, is now retired. He slips in and out of senility as his wife Fanny valiantly tries to keep them both afloat. They have asked their daughter, Mags, to come home and help them move. Mags agrees, for she hopes as well to finally paint their portrait. She is on the verge of artistic celebrity herself and hopes, by painting her parents, to come to terms with them and they with her.

"Beautifully written. . . . A theatrical family portrait that has the shimmer and depth of Renoir portraits." - The New York Times

"A radiant, loving and zestfully humorous play . . . distinctly Chekhovian. Howe captures the same edgy surface of false hilarity, the same unutterable sadness beneath it, and the indomitable valor beneath both." - Time

Earlier This Season

Selby Library

Sarasota, Florida

March 20

84, Charing Cross Road

It all began in 1949 with a letter by Helene Hanff in New York, inquiring about second-hand books from Marks & Co., a bookshop in London. As Helene’s sarcastic and witty letters are responded to by the stodgy and proper Frank Doel from the bookstore, a relationship blossoms into a warm and charming long-distance friendship lasting over twenty years. It’s also a love story, the love of good literature. This dramatic reading of the letters, from the delightful and beloved book, 84 Charing Cross Road was adapted by  Jenny Aldrich and Don Walker.

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