2023-2024 Season

One of the darkest musicals ever written, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the unsettling tale of a Victorian-era barber who returns home to London after fifteen years of exile, to take revenge on the corrupt judge who ruined his life. While plotting his retaliation against the judge, Sweeney uses the tools of his trade to murder as many people as he can, while his business associate Mrs. Lovett bakes the bodies into meat pies and sells them to the unsuspecting public.

It's the mid-80s, and the whole world is on fire - literally. Aspiring writer Shep, currently tending bar in a little out of the way town, is resigned to his fate. A mysterious stranger arrives in town, offering Shep the opportunity to survive the apocalypse - IF he'll write a new Holy Book - including all the good parts and leaving out all the bad parts from all of the sacred texts from around the world. The stranger has also decided that the school's phys-ed teacher, Virginia, should be the editor. Other colorful characters from the town join them and allow us to ask the question "what would I do?'

Ten explorers. Four boats. One Grand Canyon. Men On Boats is the true(ish) history of an 1869 expedition, when a one-armed captain and a crew of insane yet loyal volunteers set out to chart the course of the Colorado River and Green River on the government's first sanctioned expedition.

Lee and Bessie could not be more different and, though sisters, have not seen each other for almost two decades. During that time Lee has been raising two challenging boys on her own. Bessie has been caring for their father, along with his dotty soap opera-obsessed sister. Now the two sisters are thrown together as Bessie has just been diagnosed with leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. McPherson's poignant play is about the laughter that can shine through life's darkest moments. Marvin's Room is real, hopeful, compassionate, and absurdly funny.

Marvin's Room is set in various locations (including a home, medical office, and Disney World) in Florida and a youth residential treatment institution in Ohio. The play has a contemporary setting, which was 1990 at play's premiere.

Prepare yourself for an evening of laughter as we present the following 8 one-act comedies selected from these two scripts by a master of the comic art form which explore the quirkier side of modern life.

FOREPLAY (OR THE ART OF THE FUGUE). Chuck, a self-styled Don Juan, and his girlfriend on a date at the miniature golf course. When they move to the second hole, a slightly older Chuck II appears with another date. Finally, an even older Chuck III, arrives with a young date who doesn't get his jokes, and worse, she's beating him at golf.

In TIME FLIES, two lonely but sweet young mayflies meet at a pond and really hit it off. Unfortunately, Horace and May watch a nature program on this first night out and discover they have a lifespan of only one day—and their lives are half over.

SURE THING is a classic of contemporary comedy: Two people meet in a cafe and navigate through a conversational minefield aided by offstage bell that allows them a re-do of their false starts, gaffes, and faux pas on the way to falling in love.

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS recalls the philosophical adage that three monkeys typing into infinity will sooner or later produce HAMLET and asks: What would monkeys talk about at their typewriters?

THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE brings together Dawn, a young woman with a stutter, and Don, the creator and teacher of Unamunda, a wild comic language. Don’s attempt to teach Dawn the language sends them off into a dazzling display of hysterical verbal pyrotechnics—and, of course, true love.

THE PHILADELPHIA presents a young man in a restaurant who has fallen into "a Philadelphia," a Twilight Zone-like state in which he cannot get anything he asks for. His only way out of the dilemma is to ask for the opposite of what he wants.

DR. FRITZ (OR THE FORCES OF LIGHT) A typical tourist fearing he has food poisoning is directed for treatment to Dr. Fritz- an anything but typical physician.

VARIATIONS ON THE DEATH OF TROTSKY - the title says it all.

Three love stories, a murder mystery, and a nuclear espionage plot converge in this noir comedy about marriage and other explosive devices. It's 1952: America's on the verge of the H-bomb, Dwight Eisenhower's on the campaign trail, and I Love Lucy's on Monday nights. Meanwhile, Senator Joe McCarthy's daughter just got engaged to a Soviet spy, and Boston detective Maggie Pelletier has to find out who dumped the dead guy in the Harbor - or else lose out on a honeymoon in Havana. A blunt-nosed, sharp-eyed look at love and tying (and untying, and retying) the knot.