Some of Charlottesville’s favorite improv players are bringing funny back.

Play On! — A New Virginia Theatre will bring the world’s longest-running musical to its home stage at the Theatre at Ix.

Play On! — A New Virginia Theatre has a busy schedule planned for its 2008-2009 performance season.

Here’s a quick and easy way to bone up on American history — with the emphasis on the funny bone.

Who knew, 58 years ago, when Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls” opened on Broadway, that someday people would be able to carry tiny telephones that could ring to the music of the show? Imagine the difference in the “If I Were a Bell” number.

Play On! — A New Virginia Theatre will bring the musical “Guys and Dolls’’ to its Theatre at Ix stage starting 8 p.m. Thursday.
Gangsters, gamblers, nightclub dancers and missionaries are among the characters in Frank Loesser’s Tony Award-winning Broadway show about bustling New York City in the 1940s.
Clinton Johnston directs a cast that includes Heather Waters as Sarah Brown, Allen Van Houzen as Sky Masterson, Mark Gruber as Nathan Detroit and Jane Scatena as Miss Adelaide.

Play On!, the relatively new community theater in the old Ix building, has produced a nice variety of shows during its short life.
With Beth Henley’s “Impossible Marriage,” it moves toward the end of its second season with whimsy and heart.
Henley may be best known for “Crimes of the Heart,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in the early ’80s, and on film for “Miss Firecracker.”
Henley is a Southerner, and “Impossible Marriage,” like her other plays, is based around Savannah and features quirky characters not quite in touch with reality, which is what can make them lovable. Or at least interesting.