Presents
Lon Winston and Valerie Haugen

in

Park Your Car in Harvard Yard
by Israel Horovitz



Opening Night at Thunder River Theatre Company
By Kim Doose
Glenwood Springs Post Independent
February 5, 2004

In this season of Golden Globe awards and Oscar nominations, it is nice to know that we have our own professional troupe of actors in the Thunder River Theatre Company.

The company presented Israel Horovitz's Park Your Car in Harvard Yard on Friday, Jan. 30, in a leased space at the Sopris Shopping Center in Carbondale. The group converted a bare storefront space into a mini playhouse.

The play is about a cantankerous, cynical, high school music teacher named Jacob Brackish, superbly played by TRTC's director, Lon Winston. Brackish, a lover of classical music, in the last year of his life, reflects on his failures and missed opportunities. His grievances toward life play out meticulously to the background music of Bach, Vivaldi, Strauss, Brahms and Mozart, which is an ingenious strategy that uses the music as a symbolic, often ironic metaphor that compliments the story.

Valerie Haugen, TRTC's associate director, plays Kathleen O'Hara, the timid, yet brash young woman who answers Brackish's ad for a housekeeper. Her motivations in caring for the man are revealed through her sometimes cruel and crude words and actions, along with a wicked sense of humor that slowly and dramatically exposes her nature. Haugen's ability to take her character through such a precise and believable transformation in 87 minutes is something you would expect to see on Broadway. And it is why GSPI readers have voted her best actress five times in the annual Locals Choice Awards.

This is real theatre. The play, with its solid plot, sharp dialogue and humor, allows Haugen and Winston to lead the audience through a complete and satisfying experience. And although the pair will not collect gold statues this year, they win, easily. Not only for their gifts of acting, but also for their collaboration, passion and desire to nurture a theatre company here in the Roaring Fork Valley.













































Lon Winston, Artistic Director
Thunder River Theatre Company

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