By Erica Chayes Wida, Packet Media
Editor’s note: The Jan. 20 and Jan. 21 performances have been canceled according to Princeton High School officials. The play will be rescheduled at a later date., Patricia Wray’s Princeton High School drama students are putting their accents to use in the British play by David Foxton, “Card Play.” The winter performance featuring a deck of cheeky players will debut in the high school’s Black Box Theatre Jan. 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m., Tickets are available at the door and cost $10 for adults and $5 for students and seniors., “Card Play” is a fast-paced comedy about a pack of cards and their lives behind the scenes of a bridge club tournament. The cards each have big personalities and there is a definitive hierarchy in class — the Kings, Queens, Jacks and Aces dominate their social sector. Some cards are whiny, some greedy, bossy or apprehensive. One of the Queens, known as “Q,” is perhaps the most domineering and conniving, while another Queen, the Queen of Hearts, has Alzheimer’s and can rarely finish a sentence., The game on stage grows more intense as a group of cards plot to steal the trophies and gate money from the tournament. When some of the smaller, lower-class cards overhear the plan, they seize the opportunity to be brave in pursuit of a fair game., “I thought it was funny when I read [the script],” Ms. Wray said. “I had it for a while and just needed the right type of kids — funny and big, but able to take their characters seriously to portray to the audience the humanistic foibles and personalities of the playing cards.”, There are 19 cast members, many of whom are sophomores, who participate in the winter play as part of their requirement for being in Ms. Wray’s drama class., “It’s a play of mostly villains, and I love playing villains,” said Adrianos Karachalios, whose character is the cunning and manipulative Jack Flash, one of the upper-cards who schemes to steal the tournament winnings. “There is just so much fun you can have playing the bad guy. Jack is snobby and sarcastic and fun. The play has more bad guys than good — it’s a bunch of criminal syndicates.”, Adrianos also noted the old-fashioned style of the play, which seeps through some of the text, such as the insult, “knaves,” which refers to a crook., One of Jack Smart’s cohorts, Myra the Two of Hearts, is loud and pushy — a persona starkly different from the more introverted Molly Trueman., “The story is really funny, and can represent a range of things by using cards. There is a definite upper and lower class dividing them,” Molly said., “Everyone has really strong personalities in the play,” continued Nandeeta Bala, who plays the Machiavellian Q. “There are all these dichotomies that come across and work together.”, Many of the students are enjoying mastering their British accents for the play, which is something they have not yet worked on in Ms. Wray’s class. Some of the lower cards are required to practice a Cockney accent to show their class, while others practice an intonation reminiscent of a North London aristocrat.
