By Kelly A. McCoy
preview by
For those of you crazy enough to miss the icy cold weather Nebraska normally offers at this time of year, pine no more! Downtown Omaha’s Blue Barn Theatre is prepared to offer you a peek into a world cold enough to make you wish you’d worn long johns to see *The Ice-Fishing Play by Kevin Kling.
The play, which runs through Feb. 24, is set in a fishing resort on a Minnesota lake. Its protagonist is Ron, the owner of the fishing resort. With the hope of catching “the big one,” Ron drives his truck out to his ice-fishing house on the night of the biggest blizzard of the century.
“As soon as he gets out of his truck and gets into the ice house, his truck falls through the ice,” artistic director Kevin Lawler says. “So he’s stranded out there on the ice.”
Ron proceeds to take inventory of his life, as any stranded man might. Kling provides an interesting twist to the standard monologue one might expect, however.
“As he spends the night out there through this blizzard … people from his life come to the icehouse and talk to him and kind of rework his life,” Lawler says. “It’s a little bit like the movie *It’s a Wonderful Life, except it’s a bit darker and a bit funnier.”
Lawler says the theater chose to do *The Ice-Fishing Play because of its script.
“Just because the whole script itself is such a great journey, and it really recreates a whole world not a lot of people get a chance to go into this world — ice-fishing and inside an ice-fishing house,” he says. “And then it uses such great comedy and drama combined. It’ll be a superb evening of theater.”
The play will show Thursday through Sunday nights. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students.
