"The Cider House Rules" Photo Gallery

"The Cider House Rules Part 1 & 2"
Adapted by Peter Parnell
From the novel by John Irving
Directed by Quin Gordon

It doesn’t get any grander than this: John Irving’s sprawling, best-selling 1985 novel, “The Cider House Rules,” adapted and transformed by Peter Parnell into this epic, award-winning, two-part, five-hour stage play with 17 actors performing more than 60 roles, plus a pianist and a violinist! Quin Gordon directs this multiple-decades-encompassing, pre- and post-World War II tale set in rural New England. In this metamorphosis from page to stage, not only is there too much story to be contained in just one play, but the brilliant structure delivers a kind of one-two punch. (Shades of “Nicholas Nickleby” or a Dickens novel.)

The labyrinthine—and thoroughly engaging—plot revolves around two men: Dr. Wilbur Larch, the ether-addicted physician at St. Cloud’s Orphanage and Hospital who delivers unwanted babies and secretly performs illegal abortions, and Homer Wells, a perpetual orphan whose attempted adoptions never “stick.” He becomes Larch’s surrogate son, assistant, apprentice and, eventually, a doctor—after detours of falling in love and working in an apple orchard where he encounters migrants at the cider house.