Arts & Entertainment

WHS Theatre Department Presents the Classic French Comedy 'A Little Hotel on the Side'

The show was rescheduled due to Sandy.

Westfield High School's award-winning Theatre Department will present the French farce, 'A Little Hotel on the Side' this weekend.

Performances will be Thursday, November 29 at 4 p.m.; Friday, November 30 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, December 1 at 7:30 p.m. 

The show was rescheduled from an earlier date to accommodate the outages and closures caused by Hurricane Sandy, which shut down the high school for eight days and interrupted the rehearsal schedule for the cast and crew who, like most Westfield residents, had no electricity and limited communication for days after Sandy hit. 

Find out what's happening in Westfieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"After all the stress caused by the storm, we're happy to give our school community and area residents a chance to come out and enjoy an evening of comedy," said director Daniel Devlin.

The show is a comedy about a group of guests and staff who get tangled in a web of ill-fated trysts at a Paris hotel.  It all starts when middle-aged businessman Benoit Pinglet (played by Matt Lynn), tired of being henpecked by his wife Angelique (Michaela Tropeano), tries to arrange an affair with the beautiful Marcelle (Nicole Zimmermann), who is the wife of his best friend Henri Paillardin (Geoffrey Ko).  

Find out what's happening in Westfieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

'A Little Hotel on the Side' is presented by a talented cast of more than 30 WHS students, and a student-run crew that transforms the Westfield High School stage into turn-of-the-century Paris.   

Senior Geoffrey Ko said that while the rescheduled date gave the cast and crew much-needed time for rehearsals, it presented new challenges.

"One of the major issues we've had to work around is the availability of the actors,
technicians, and crew. Because the week after Thanksgiving was supposed to
be our 'week off' before getting started on the spring musical ("Bat Boy"), people had set up things like vacations and auditions that can't be rescheduled, so we've had to work around those." 

'A Little Hotel on the Side' is Westfield High School's first production since its spring musical, 'Pippin, which was the top winner at the 2012 Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star awards.  

All performances will be at the Westfield High School auditorium, located at 550 Dorian Road. General seating tickets are $10 at the door.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here