MTP Event to Show Off Auditorium Improvements; Next Show July 24
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
On Friday, after a renovation and a rededication that are meant to announce not just a reopening but a recommitment, the Mill Town Players are inviting the public inside to see what has changed, what has been restored, and what it now means to make theater in a room that feels newly awake.
Will Ragland, the artistic director and founder of the company, said the evening will begin with a ribbon cutting and a few remarks on the front steps before the doors open for a public house tour of the historic auditorium. The event, scheduled for 7 p.m., offers an opportunity for invited guests and anyone else who wishes to come by to try the new seats, admire the improvements, and reacquaint themselves with a building that has been given enough attention to seem old in the right ways and new in the important ones.
The renovation arrives just in time for the company’s season finale, “Guys and Dolls,” which will open on July 24 and run for 14 performances over three weekends through August 9. Ragland described the musical as a classic of postwar American theater, built from Damon Runyon’s portraits of gamblers, showgirls, and New York hangers-on, and set to Frank Loesser’s score — a collection of songs so familiar that they seem to have been in the air for longer than any one production. He pointed out, correctly and with a certain theatrical relish, that the material has already lived many lives: on Broadway, in the 1955 film, in high school auditoriums, in community theaters, and now in Pelzer, where it will inhabit a freshly reopened room that seems made for exactly such a thing.
Ragland said he has returned to “Guys and Dolls” several times in his career, once as an actor and once as a director, and is now approaching it with a cast of 22 local performers, each one apparently determined to make the old show feel newly discovered. The production is set in 1930, a choice that suits both the architecture and the aesthetic of the room: an era of vaudeville’s tail end, early film glamour, and a broader American appetite for characters who seem to be moving too fast to stay respectable. In that spirit, the company plans to use a live orchestra — nine musicians on the band deck — and to make live music a permanent commitment for future productions.
The choice of “Guys and Dolls” for the theater’s reopening is not merely convenient; it is thematic. Ragland suggested that the show belongs in a room like this, with its old bones and its renewed polish, because the production itself is about style, timing, and the improbable dignity of a perfectly made entertainment. He also said the company is not trying to duplicate any previous version, whether Broadway or film, but to create its own production — a local, distinctive production that may turn out to be the one people remember.
The response to that prospect has already been strong. More than half the tickets have been reserved, Ragland said, with the new Saturday night shows already shaping up to be the likeliest place to find seats. Tickets available here.
