Banner staff reports

Jackson County Community Theatre opens its 2016-17 season with the comedy, “Moon Over Buffalo” at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 19 at Royal Off-the-Square Theatre in Brownstown.

Performances continue on Aug. 20, 26 and 27.

“Moon Over Buffalo” is a madcap farce by Ken Ludwig. The main characters, George and Charlotte Hay, played by Matt Nieman and Tracy Cox, are fading stage stars of the 1950s.

They are acting currently in “Private Lives” and “Cyrano De Bergerac” at a repertory theater in Buffalo, New York, with a cast of five actors. On the brink of a disastrous breakup caused by George’s dalliance with a young ingénue, they receive word that they might just have one last shot at stardom.

Famed director Frank Capra is coming to town to see their matinee, and if he likes what he sees, he might cast them in his movie remake of “The Scarlet Pimpernel.”

Unfortunately for George and Charlotte, everything that could go wrong does go wrong. A visit from their daughter’s clueless fiancé and hilarious uncertainty about which play they are actually performing, caused by Charlotte’s deaf, old stage-manager mother, who hates every bone in George’s body, is a perfect recipe for disaster.

As with all farces, the situation involves mistaken identities, lots of doors and other situations leading to hilarity.

Nieman was most recently seen on the JCCT stage in last season’s “Boeing Boeing,” and Cox last appeared in JCCT’s 2014 production of “Deathtrap.”

Other cast members include Connie Hardaway (Ethel, Charlotte’s mother), Kat Baute (Rosalind, George and Charlotte’s daughter), Jacob Dufour (Paul, stage manager for the company, Rosalind’s ex-fiancé), Jeremy Hendrix (Howard, a television weatherman, Rosalind’s current fiancé), John Hiester (Richard, a love-sick lawyer who is courting Charlotte) and Aurora Willman (Eileen, the actress who was the object of George’s indiscretion).

The production crew includes John Hardaway as director, Amy Miller as stage manager, Julie Bradley and Kathy Passereni as costumers and Stevi Begley as sound technician. Vickey Oliphant will operate the lights, and Joel McGill, Joe Bradley and Joe Reynolds are building the set, which was designed by Hardaway.