A wild heiress gone amuck. Hijinx and hilarity. Jerry Girton’s last Riverland production, and third-to-last show.

These are but a few reasons why “Mame!” is expected to draw a massive crowd starting with its Thursday night opening.

Girton has had mixed feelings doing “Mame!,” a raucous musical set in the 1920s around a wealthy eccentric whose jet-setting life is turned upside down when her orphaned 10-year-old nephew moves in. While it’s Girton’s last Riverland show, he still has the Summerset play as well as the alumni show. He thinks it’s good he’s slowly weaning himself off of the trials and fast-paced nature of theater, but he’s slightly off-put over not coming back to school.

“I won’t be starting school, and it will be very bizarre,” Girton said. “My whole life, I’ve basically started school in August.”

Originally, Girton wanted to put on “Fiddler on the Roof” because of its opening number, “Tradition,” which he felt was appropriate for his final official Riverland show.

“(Riverland’s) tradition will carry on without me,” Girton said.

Yet Girton couldn’t secure the rights to “Fiddler,” as the company which owns the rights to the musical had prohibited amateur productions of it this year, which Girton didn’t find out until three days before auditions started. After scouring play catalogues, Girton stumbled upon “Mame!”, a show he’d never directed before. The musical had strong female characters, which was perfect for the strong actresses in Riverland’s theater program. In addition, Girton found something to tie the show into his retirement.

“There’s a song in ‘Mame!,’ and the name of it is ‘Open a New Window,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s pretty appropriate for me, starting a new part of my life,’” Girton said. “So I thought, ‘Hey, that sounds like a really good show.’ That gave me kind of an energy to do a new show.”

“Mame!” opens Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and will run until May 7.