ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio — Sisters Amy Abercrombie and Alexa Ross both have a passion for theater – and this summer, each will perform in a local production directed by the other.
The family connection doesn’t end there: Ross will play an elderly version of the sisters’ mother in Abercrombie’s show about their mother’s life, which features songs written by the sisters’ grandmother.
But before the curtain rises on Abercrombie’s show, the production directed by Ross – a French farce – will debut at Stuart’s Opera House 2 p.m. Sunday, July 13.
“The French Have a Word for It” will cap off the local theater company ABC Players’ 2024–2025 season “with a riotous romp through romance, deception and delightful chaos,” according to the group’s press release. The show centers on a “flirtatious wife who vows to remain faithful—so long as her husband does” and whose convoluted “scheme to expose his fidelity (or lack thereof) spirals wildly out of control,” the release says.
Earlier in life, Ross saw another play by the same playwright, George Feydeau, and its humor stuck with her, she told the Independent. Reading various plays at Ohio University’s Alden Library, she stumbled upon this one.
“I just thought it was hilarious,” she told the Independent. “It worked.”
Abercrombie is double-cast in the production.
“There’s a lot going on, a lot of sin going on,” Abercrombie said. “It’s great fun.”
Abercrombie’s play, “Elinah of the Heights,” will be performed on Aug. 15 and 16 at Arts West. Set mainly in the 1920s and 1930s, the show involves Abercrombie’s and Ross’s mother’s experience as a popular debutante in the world of Brooklyn society.
The show’s main focus, however, is on her loneliness, both as a child and later in life, after her divorce.
“It’s not a terribly remarkable life that she lived,” Abercrombie said – but that’s part of what makes the story worth telling for Abercrombie, because loneliness is a common experience.
The show adapts songs written by Ross’s and Abercrombie’s grandmother, Rebecca Hooper Eastman, and her collaborator Mabel Daniels, both in the class of 1900 at Radcliffe College, according to a press release the sisters shared. The pair wrote three musicals performed at the college and in and around Boston.
“She died before we were born,” Abercrombie said of their grandmother. “But I’m so glad I had this music, because I finally got around to playing and seeing how wonderful some of them are –– they’re just funny. She’s had a wonderful sense of humor. And then I thought, ‘I’m probably the only one in the world that has these songs, and I want to do something with them.’ So I decided, ‘well, I could write a play.’”
The show connected the sisters to both their mother and grandmother in this way, and other family members are helping out in the tech crew and in a family orchestra. But the musical is by no means limited to the sisters’ family, with community members participating in the cast as well.
Abercrombie told the Independent she is still looking for additional help with the show’s tech crew, and she encouraged interested residents to email her.
Proceeds from the show will be sent to the American Friends Service Committee for humanitarian aid to Gaza.
