RIVERTON, Wyo. – The beloved English country gentlemen -- Toad, Rat, Mole and Badger --will stroll the local stage next month as Central Wyoming College presents “The Wind in the Willows.” The play is an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s 100-year-old novel about animals who live as humans.

Theater director Mike Myers said the antics of the gentlemen bachelors who live on the English countryside will be entertaining for both children and adults. And he has a group of seasoned students to bring them to life in Jeremy Gross, Josiah Sifuentes, Rick Wiblemo and Ted Haworth.

Tickets are now available at the college box office for $8 and $6 for students and seniors. The show will be presented on the first two weekends of December. Evening performances on Friday and Saturday nights, Dec. 4-5 and 11 and 12 are at 7:30. A special morning performance is planned for Saturday, Dec. 5, at 10, and a Sunday afternoon matinee will be presented at 2:30 on Dec. 13.

NOTES from the DIRECTOR:

“Toad dominates the story,” Myers said of the character played by first-year theater student Jeremy Gross, who was the male lead in CWC’s recent production of Dark of the Moon. Toad is rich, self centered, obsessive and gets himself into all kinds of trouble.

Rat, played by theater student Josiah Sifuentes, is a sophisticated scholarly water rat who takes the shy and timid Mole, played by Ted Haworth, under his wing.

Rick Wiblemo, a broadcasting and theater student at CWC, is the Badger, who pretends to be rough and gruff. He’s older and wiser and the others look up to him. He is intent on changing Toad’s impulsive and conceited ways.

Myers said all four of the leading characters are docile riverbank animals, who are supported by numerous rabbits, squirrels and hedgehogs.

“Then you have the dangerous characters that live in the Wild Wood . . . weasels, stoats, ferrets and foxes and they don’t like the main characters, and they particularly don’t like Toad,” said Myers.

The entire company includes 37 actors, many of which will play multiple roles, and includes several children.

Alan Bennett was commissioned to adapt Grahame’s now 101-year-old novel for the stage by a well-funded British theater company for a lavish Christmas-time production. Bennett’s adaptation suggests 19 different locales, Myers said, explaining that at times during the show, a boat, a car, a gypsy caravan, a train and a barge cross the stage.