By Ron Bernas
"A Little Murder Never Hurt Anybody"
October 3rd - October 24th, 2024
This six-character comedy is a spoof of and love letter to the screwball comedies of the 1930s and to stage mysteries in general. It is a one-set, two-act piece featuring witty dialogue and slapstick comedy.
The play opens with the rich, bored Matthew promising to kill his rich, bored wife Julia so he can become a jet setter like his friend who recently lost his wife. Julia, who's always about three steps ahead of him, plays along. And so the game begins - a hilarious year-long match of wits and the witless.
During the year the play takes place, there are several mysterious deaths that occur on the grounds of the family estate, a butler who is not what he seems, a detective who can't buy a clue, and two innocents (sort of) caught in the hilarity as they plan their wedding. While Julia cleverly dodges Matthew's devious murder attempts, the Perry friends and staff are dying off mysteriously. It seems Matthew is successful in murdering everyone but Julia.
As the bodies fall, dim-witted daughter Bunny contemplates calling off her wedding to unwitting Donald since all the intended gift-bearing guests are dying. Enter Detective Plotnik - a Sam Spade reincarnation who suspects everyone, but hasn't a clue. That is, not until Donald stumbles upon Julia and gentlemanly butler Buttram in what Donald mistakenly perceives as a compromising situation. Donald jumps to the conclusion that Julia is the murderer - trying to murder Matthew! It ends in a nice bang and with a bit of a message about the importance of love.
"A delightful surprise...an evening of fun just on the proper side of slapstick." - Lansing State Journal
By Doug Stone
"Sealed for Freshness"
January 9th - January 31st, 2025
Doug Stone has set his play in 1968 during the heyday of Tupperware parties. Hostess Bonnie invites a group of neighbors over for a party. The guest list: perky, rich Jean, Jean's cranky and very pregnant sister Sinclair, ditzy-blonde Tracy Ann, and new neighbor Diane, who's made quite a career selling Tupperware, but at the expense of her marriage. The mix of personalities and the number of martinis consumed lead to a great deal of absurd high jinks plus revelations of an equal number of secrets and insecurities.
"A Raucous Comedy!" - Associated Press
"It makes its audiences loopy with giddiness." - theatremania.com
By Niel Simon
"Barefoot in the Park"
March 13th - April 4th, 2025
Paul and Corie Bratter are newlyweds in every sense of the word. He’s a straight-as-an-arrow lawyer and she’s a free spirit always looking for the latest kick. Their new apartment is her most recent find – too expensive with bad plumbing and in need of a paint job.
After a six-day honeymoon, they get a surprise visit from Corie’s loopy mother and decide to play matchmaker during a dinner with their neighbor-in-the-attic, Velasco, where everything that can go wrong does. Paul just doesn’t understand Corie, as she sees it. He’s too staid, too boring, and she just wants him to be a little more spontaneous. Running “barefoot in the park” would be a start…
“A bubbling, rib-tickling comedy.” – The New York Times
By David Bottrell & Jessie Jones
"Dearly Departed"
June 6th - June 29th, 2025
In the Baptist backwoods of the Bible Belt, the beleaguered Turpin family proves that living and dying in the South are seldom tidy and always hilarious. Despite their earnest efforts to pull themselves together for their father’s funeral, the Turpins’ other problems keep overshadowing the solemn occasion: Firstborn Ray-Bud drinks himself silly as the funeral bills mount; Junior, the younger son, is juggling financial ruin, a pack of no-neck monster kids, and a wife who suspects him of infidelity in the family car; their spinster sister, Delightful, copes with death as she does life, by devouring junk food; and all the neighbors add more than two cents.
As the situation becomes fraught with mishap, Ray-Bud says to his long-suffering wife, “When I die, don’t tell nobody. Just bury me in the backyard and tell everybody I left you.” Amidst the chaos, the Turpins turn for comfort to their friends and neighbors, an eccentric community of misfits who just manage to pull together and help each other through their hours of need, and finally, the funeral.
“If you were amused by the kind of bucolic mayhem of…GREATER TUNA, this more ambitious trip down a rustic main street could be just your dish of cola.” —New York Post.