Thomas Wolfe Novel Comes to Life in CHS Play

The early chapters of famed American novelist Thomas Wolfe's life will unfold in The Little Theater of Chattahoochee High School when it performs Ketti Frings' Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of Look Homeward, Angel, based on Wolfe's semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. The show will be performed Nov. 29 and 30 and December 1 and 8 at 7 p.m.

Look Homeward, Angel is the World War I-era coming-of-age story of Eugene Gant (Alex Thomas), who has grown up in Dixieland, a seedy boardinghouse run by his domineering and penny-pinching mother, Eliza Gant (Alex Crump). Eliza generally treats her boarders better than her family, which includes her alcoholic husband, W.O. Gant (Bobby Singleton), a stonecutter who has a great passion for art but mediocre skills to achieve it; married daughter Helen Gant Barton (Amy Neal) and her husband Hugh Barton (Brian Samuels); and an older son Ben Gant (Sam Vernik), a newspaperman with dreams that on-setting tuberculosis won't allow him to achieve.

Eugene dreams of going away to college and leaving his hometown behind — but his mother stands in the way. His yearning for escape grows more when he falls in love with a new boarder, Laura James (Claire Peterson), an older woman who seems receptive to the young Eugene's advances while guarding her own secret that ultimately breaks the young man's heart.

Things come to a head as Ben, who Eugene idolizes, succumbs to his illness and prefers as his deathbed companion a drinking mate and maternal stand-in, Mrs. Marie "Fatty" Pert (Lynette Garcia), over his own mother Eliza.

Portraying the Dixieland boarders and townsfolk are Neema Tavakolian, A. J. Hatcher, Kayla Redic, Evelyn Martin, Derek Henderson, Chloe Louis, Christie Barker, Brian Wittenberg, Jake McCracken and Ross Manning

Tickets will be sold at the door for a price of $5 for the public. All performances will be held in The Little Theater, Room D109.