Back at home

Harmony Players have been away from home for a few years.

They return this week hoping to bring some laughs along with them.

The Portland-based theatre group, which has performed mostly in Muncie recently, is back home this week for its production of the comedy play “Charley’s Aunt” at Arts Place.

Linda Rodden, who runs Harmony Players and is directing the show, said last week that she was excited to be back in Portland and hoping for large crowds. The first part of that is still true, but circumstances have nixed the second.

The show, originally scheduled for performances Thursday through Sunday, has been cut back because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, there will be a single performance at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Tickets that have already been sold for any of the original show dates will be honored Thursday, but no additional tickets are being sold and the audience will be limited based on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The performance will, however, be livestreamed on Facebook. (“Like” the Harmony Players page on Facebook in order to be notified when the livestream begins.)

The show is a family affair, with Rodden’s husband Jordan, daughter Emma and sons Lucas, Tristan and Seth all part of the cast.

“As the boys have gotten older … they’ve become a little more selective about what they want to do,” said Linda Rodden of the choice of show. “And they have always loved this.”

“Charley’s Aunt” centers around Jack Chesney (Lucas Rodden) and Charley Wykeham (Lee Ostee), friends who are in love with Kitty Verdun (Jennifer McGraw) and Amy Spettigue (Emma Rodden). The women will not attend tea without a chaperone — Charley’s aunt Donna Lucia d’Alvadorez — so the men recruit a third friend to distract the aunt while they romance the girls. When the aunt does not arrive on time, Chesney and Wykeham are forced to alter their plans in order to keep their romantic plans intact.

Linda Moore of rural Portland plays d’Alvadorez, who eventually arrives, and the rest of the cast features Tristan Roden as Lord Fancourt Babberly, Jordan Rodden as Stephen Spettigue, Anne Casey as Ela Delahay, Seth Rodden as Brassett and Ron Freeman as Colonel Sir Francis Chesney.

It’ll be Freeman’s first time on stage since he reprised his role of Tevye in Harmony Players’ 2015 production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” He had taken on that role for a second time in order to be able to be on stage with his daughter, Amelia, for a final time before she headed off to college.

It was a bit of nostalgia that pulled him back this time around. Rodden had talked with Freeman about “Charley’s Aunt” about 15 years ago, telling him the show featured a role that would fit him well.

“When she told me that she was going to do it … I remembered those conversations,” said Freeman. “That was probably the big thing that drew me back in.”

In addition to being back home and working with family and friends, Rodden is excited about the comic aspects of the show. A lot of the hilarity stems from her son Tristan as Lord Fancourt Babberly.

“My son Tristan is hilarious,” she said. “He usually has a smaller background role or a serious role. When he was Igor here a few years ago for ‘Young Frankenstein,’ everybody found out how funny he was. … Everything he says in this thing is gold. He’s just hilarious.”