Fans of my acting career had to wait a long time between my early high school successes—a doomed explorer in The Mummy’s Curse and a doomed submariner in Submerged—and my resurrection as a doomed poet in August: Osage County 50 years later. Now my fans will be glad to know that I have landed a role as understudy in the upcoming production of A Month of Sundays.

This play is a Town & Gown Second Stage production, running only one weekend: just three performances.

A Month of Sundays was originally a British play; then it ran on Broadway and now it’s playing in Athens, and it features an all-star cast, understudy excepted.

Rick Rose plays Cooper, a wisecracking widower who uses humor to enliven his endgame. He’s abetted by his friend Aylott (Jeff Evans, in his 30th year on the T&G stage), always ready to say hello to a glass of whiskey and a game of chess—a member in good standing of their two-man Escape Committee.

Danielle Bailey Miller is the nurse who elicits Cooper’s teasing, and Cindy Nason plays the housekeeper who can return his barbs. Virginia Simmons and Speedy Arnold are Cooper’s daughter and son-in-law, who visit him every first Sunday—only out of duty, he suspects. Gay Griggs McCommons directs. (Yeah, that explains me.)

A Month of Sundays has a lot of humor, but it’s also about aging, which ultimately, isn’t always funny, even though we might as well laugh about it. Cooper and Aylott devise various stratagems for keeping their spirits up, even as they are stalked by the ills the flesh is heir to. Mainly, the play, like all the good ones, is about human life and how we cope through human companionship.

Jeff Evans moved to Florida several years ago, but what the heck! Jeff and Rick are rehearsing their scenes by Skype. They have so much experience between them that they think they can pull this off by long-distance. Enter the understudy. If there should be a sudden blizzard or something that prevents Jeff’s coming up from Orlando to perform, it’ll be just like in the movies: “You’re on, Kid,” they’ll say, and as I step into the spotlight I will be chagrined that I never got around to learning my lines.

So, here’s a little bit of early warning. A Month of Sundays runs Friday and Saturday Apr. 29 and 30 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 1 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $5 at the box office or at townandgownplayers.org. All three performances are in the Athens Community Theatre behind the Taylor-Grady House at the corner of Prince and Grady avenues.

That’s it: just the three shows, so make your plans. This is live theater with real people out there making it happen. And if Florida gets snowed in, one of them will be an understudy doomed to demonstrate dementia.

Wait! Don’t Miss Wait Until Dark

This is the last week of Wait Until Dark at Town & Gown, and the play has it all: a noirish atmosphere, a thriller script, a great set, a powerfully evil performance from Steven Carroll, Patrick Hooper’s shifty cop, Patrick Najjar’s arrivals at crucial moments, Greer Jones’ promising theater debut as a bratty girl and a perceptive performance by Bekah Lee as the blind woman who can see better than anybody. Don’t miss this evening of good theater directed by Cameron Logan: Thursday, Apr. 14–Saturday, Apr. 16 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Apr. 17 at 2 p.m. in the Athens Community Theatre.

Piedmont Gardeners Tour This Weekend!

This may be the best one yet: five intown gardens, including the UGA President’s House. Now’s your chance to see how Jere does it. In addition, you’ve got Dera Weaver’s lovely cottage garden on Prince Place, Susan Hable and Peter Smith’s designer garden on Cobb Street, Wayne Amos and Charlie Hunnicutt’s inviting shade garden on Hill Street and Janet and Alex Patterson’s old Southern garden on Springdale Street.

You know the drill: Rain or shine, this Saturday, April 16, from 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Tickets, which are also your tour brochures, are $15 if purchased from a participating merchant or $20 at the gardens Saturday. $10 students. All the tour info can be found at piedmontgardeners.org.