Lean Ensemble production to benefit local charities

An evening of whimsy, satire, laughter, hilarity and even tears is promised as the award-winning play “Love, Loss and What I Wore” by Nora and Delia Ephron unfolds at the April 19, one-night-only production by the Lean Ensemble Theater.

Staged at the Main Street Theatre on Hilton Head Island, the production is not only an entertainment event but an opportunity to support two important island charities — Women in Philanthropy and LoCo Motion Carolina Cups’ Breast Cancer Screening, Treatment, and Research Program.

“The entire concept is just so perfect,” said Myla Lerner, a member of the cast, president of the Lean Ensemble, and a member of Women in Philanthropy. “We were totally committed to offering an evening of empowering theater and an evening in which we knew that the income we raised would go directly to two important women’s charitable organizations.”

Lerner pointed out that the benefit, a staged reading, was planned for October, but Hurricane Matthew put everything on hold.

I saw “Love, Loss and What I Wore,” off Broadway a number of years ago. Some of the most incredibly comic lines continue to echo in my memory. Times have changed, and women are in different places, now, but there is an empowering universality about this script that you will find compelling. The Ephron sisters offer their best take on how to view it all.

On April 19, leaving their professional hats on the rack and donning their “Love, Loss and What I Wore” outfits, the stars of our production — Mary Briggs, Charlie Clark, Myla Lerner, Margaret McManus, Cathy Nairne, Sherry Nixon, Peaches Peterson and Didi Summers — will take their positions on stage.

The Ephrons’ story faces many of life’s enduring questions head on. Women’s wardrobes become a pathway and a connection to looking clear-eyed at women and beyond to their relationships.

Based on a book by Ilene Beckerman, filled with a superb collection of stories, vignettes and monologues, written by the Ephron sisters, “Love, Loss and What I Wore,” is riotously funny with periodic dashes of poignancy. Those same stories, vignettes and monologues remind me of turning pages in a personal journal, where the writer has added notes in the margins and placed in between some of the pages some carefully selected photographs, a well chosen postcard or a paper napkin.

This story was originally published April 12, 2017 at 10:54 AM with the headline "Lean Ensemble production to benefit local charities."