Arts & Entertainment

'Consider the Oyster' Premieres at the Purple Rose Theatre

The new comedy will open Thursday for a 12-week run.

In a fitting end to its 20th anniversary season, the Purple Rose Theatre Company in Chelsea will present the world premiere of Consider the Oyster by David MacGregor. The play opens Thursday and will run through Sept. 3.

The comedy follows the story of Gene Walsh, a Detroit Lions fan who impulsively proposes to his girlfriend during the Lions’ Super Bowl victory. When she joyously accepts, he tumbles over the coffee table. This chance fall begins a hilarious cascade of startling twists that turn the happy couple's future upside down and inside out.

Director Guy Sanville said production on Consider the Oyster is going well and caps off a year that featured four world premieres by Michigan playwrights.

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“It’s a great, entertaining show for the summer,” Sanville said. “It’s got a theme that everyone can relate to. It’s a really funny story about love and friendship, and it asks the question: What does it mean when you tell someone that you love them?”

MacGregor said inspiration behind the story came when he read a study conducted by French biologists who proposed using powdered oyster shell to help repair human bone damaged by osteoporosis or by sports injuries — and from the idea that all oysters are born male and turn female.

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“My writing is usually kicked off by a five-second moment," MacGregor said. "The last play I wrote, which was about Isaac Newton, was literally me watching a documentary on Newton at 2 a.m., listening to some historian quoting a letter Newton wrote to the philosopher John Locke.

“Based on that, I started doing the research on Locke and Newton’s relationship, and the play just built itself from there,” he said.

No stranger to the Purple Rose stage, MacGregor is teaming up with Sanville for the fourth time in nine years.

“It’s great working with Guy. The best part is, from the word go, we’re both trying to get to the same destination. I’ve worked with other directors where you feel you are constantly having to swim upstream, but with Guy, we’re both on board,” MacGregor said.

“We have a really good working relationship," he said. "It’s a collaboration; you want someone you have implicit faith and trust in, which is a rare thing to have.”

Sanville, who has directed more than 30 plays for the Purple Rose, including more than two dozen world premieres, said he enjoys any chance to collaborate with MacGregor.

“He's one of my favorites. I like his work a lot. I like the stories he tells. David writes smart, funny and sexy plays,” Sanville said. “He can write both tragedy and comedy. Everyone has a tragedy in them, but try to find a well-constructed comedy, and that’s hard.

"I like working with David because I don’t have to choose my words," he said. "I can tell him what I think. At the end of the day, we’re here to serve the play.”

The production will enjoy a 12-week engagement from Thursday through Sept. 3. Seven low-price previews of Consider the Oyster will be performed Thursday-June 23, with the press opening June 24.

Regular performances for the duration of the engagement are at 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, with matinees at 3 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays.

For more information and to order tickets, visit the Purple Rose website.


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