The Evening Sun has an article up about "Great Expectations." It's on the front page of the print version, but it'll probably only be online for a day or two, so here's the picture and the article:


S-E stages “Great Expectations”
By Jeffrey Genung
Sun Managing Editor
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SHERBURNE - Many high school drama clubs stage simple productions familiar to both the students performing in them and the audiences they seek. Each spring, the high school drama club at Sherburne-Earlville tackles more challenging fare.

“Elements of this play are certainly difficult,” director Colleen Law-Tefft said of this weekend’s production of “Great Expectations.” Based on the novel by Charles Dickens, the play tells the story of Pip, an orphan in mid-19th century England who encounters a host of trials and tribulations in his quest for love and acceptance. Challenging her students with non-standard high school works is something Law-Tefft said she enjoys doing, although she admits to being surprised that most of her more than 30 young charges have never read the Dickens classic. “I understand that it’s optional reading in high school these days,” the veteran director said.

Nevertheless, senior Luke Murphy, who plays the omnipresent Pip, dove right into his role - and broke his leg in the process. Actually, an off-stage sports injury landed the longtime thespian on crutches, but he promises to be back on two feet by opening night tomorrow. “Rehearsals have been a little bit difficult,” Murphy said of his encumbrance. “A lot of acting is about body language, and I haven’t really been able to get into that much.”

While Pip struggles with a dirt-poor childhood and a sudden and mysterious windfall of wealth, Murphy struggles with his role’s more understated nature. “Pip is a lot more subtle than some of the other parts,” Murphy said. “It’s more difficult because he’s a character rather than a caricature.”

Charles Dickens was fond of characters in the extreme, perhaps none more so than the Machiavellian Miss Havasham, played here by senior Bonnie von Mechow. “She’s pretty much nuts,” von Mechow said of her character, a cold-hearted heiress made bitter by a jilting lover decades ago. “She’s sworn revenge against the opposite sex,” von Mechow said, “and she goes to great lengths to make people’s lives miserable.”

The transition from S-E senior to haggard old maid was made easier for von Mechow by what she calls a “10-pound wig,” but still there’s a challenge in being evil, in a Dickensian way. “It’s really hard being creepy,” she said. “Colleen kept telling me she needed to see more madness.”

Perhaps the greatest victim of Miss Havasham’s madness is her young ward Estella, played as an adult by senior Lauren Mettler. “She’s very impersonal, very cold,” Mettler said of her character, who becomes the object of Pip’s unrequited love. “She’s raised by Miss Havasham to hate men; she was basically ruined by her.”

Mettler’s previous stage roles have leaned more toward the whimsical side, but there’s nothing whimsical about Estella. “This is a more serious role for me,” she said, adding that the difficulty for her has been “trying to act like this cold-hearted lady, but showing that somewhere underneath she’s human, too. There are emotions beneath the corsets.”

While “Great Expectations” is largely a serious drama, that doesn’t mean the students involved in the drama club aren’t having fun, and learning along the way. “The cast has really come together,” von Mechow said. “We’ve got such a wide variety of people in it this year, but everyone has really fit into their characters and gotten along.”

“It seems like I’ve always been doing this,” Murphy said of his high school drama career. He added that even while he doesn’t intend to pursue acting, the drama club experience “has really helped me in the long run, in how I relate to people and not getting nervous or being shy.”

Mettler added that being on stage “allows you to do anything or become anyone you want.”

It’s giving that kind of experience to her students that keeps Law-Tefft coming back as the club’s advisor year after year. “I love working with the kids,” the director said. “They have such great energy. You’d think that they would tire me out, and sometimes they do, but really their energy on stage transfers to me.”

To catch the wave of that energy yourself, check out the S-E Drama Club’s presentation of “Great Expectations” in the high school auditorium Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. Tickets are $6 and are available from Service Pharmacy in Sherburne or at the door.