Pythian Building
147 SE 2nd Avenue
Hillsboro

This is a comedy set in the 1940s era of live theater by Moss Hart. Mr. Hart has also collaborated on such fine works as "The Man Who Came to Dinner" and "You Can't Take It With You"

A brief synopsis:
Action takes place in a suite at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston. It is the Opening Night of a fresh-faced playwright's brilliant new work. The backers have socked $300,000 into the production and have high hopes for the great success the play promises. When the curtain falls, it seems like this is going to be a huge flop. the Director, Backers, Writer, Leading Lady, and her mom all begin to turn on one another viciously. The next morning, it appears the play was actually very well-received. Now, they need to seek out the playwright who has decided to go back home, leaving behind all his hopes and dreams of becoming successful. He is persuaded to return at the last moment, but turns the tables on all those who were so eager to dismiss him as a failure.

Characters (ages listed are only guidelines, not absolutes):

Miss Lowell (30-45) - A ghostwriter for the autobiography of the leading lady, Irene Livingston; college-educated, she gives the audience an outsider’s perspective to the wacky goings-on behind the scenes.

Carleton Fitzgerald (40-60) - The director of the play; a man whose sense of the dramatic means he doesn’t just enter a room, “he pervades it"; intellectually verging on the pretentious, emotionally overboard, it is said of him, “he cries at card tricks.”

Frances Black (35-48) - The vivacious wife of the producer, Sidney Black; she is a professional figure skater in a well-known "ice show," although in the entertainment world, she is a babe-in-the-woods as far as investing in the professional Theater is concerned.

Owen Turner (48-60) – An urbane, soft-spoken, established New York playwright, who has come to opening night in Boston to wish his old colleagues well.

Stella Livingston (59+) – The mother of the leading lady; she is almost a perfect specimen of that redoubtable old pirate and saboteur; the veteran of a thousand fights and feuds from which she has invariably emerged unscarred, her age is as uncertain as the color of her hair, and as carefully guarded a secret; she is quite a handsome old hoodlum, and very well turned out; she has retained, undaunted through the years, the spirit and ethics of a "Dead End Kid.”

Peter Sloan (34-37) – The young, idealistic playwright; diffident and shy, "he has the body and face of a longshoreman, and the brooding deep-set eyes of a poet.”

Sidney Black (44-60) – The producer; a successful, fast talking, dynamo in a blue suit and blue tie whose "savage acquisitiveness" has recently included paintings, antique silver, furniture, and the most challenging, but also the most meaningful roll of the dice, the Theater.

Sven/Shriner/Plain Clothes Police Officer (29-39) - A Masseus, a Shriner, a plainclothes policeman; a versatile and funny jack of all trades.

Irene Livingston (40-55) - The leading lady; a great star of the stage, beautiful, charming, neurotic, and always surprising; she walks into a room and we know she is the star.

Tyler Rayburn (45-60) - Irene’s dry-toast stockbroker husband; never surprising, always surprised.

William Gallagher (50-70) - A backer, a Shriner; a star-struck native of Elkhart, Indiana who owns three factories, and always dreamed about a life in the Theater.