Audiences will be laughing their heads off, and desperately trying to follow the comings and goings of a priceless necklace when Upper Canada Playhouse opens its first production of the new season.
There’s A Burglar In My Bed by Michael Parker, is the hilarious new show coming to the Playhouse June 9 to July 3.
This play follows in the tradition of Parker’s other shows – Playhouse favourites The Amourous Ambassador, The Sensuous Senator, Whose Wives Are They Anyway? and Hotbed Hotel.
Filled from top to bottom with hysterical gags and intriguing plots and plans, There’s A Burglar In My Bed is going to delight play-goers.
“Audiences love Parker’s plays,” said Donnie Bowes, artistic director of Upper Canada Playhouse, who is also directing the season’s opener.
“So do the actors. We always have as much fun rehearsing the show as audiences do watching it. The characters are funny, the story line engaging and the dialogue and physical gags are hysterical.
It’s wonderful entertainment and feel-good time well spent.”
The plot of There’s A Burglar In My Bed centres around a well-to-do couple, Billy and Ashley Worthington, who are looking for an opportunity to divorce each other and move on with their new lovers.
However both Billy and Ashley covet the fabulous Worthington Necklace, a priceless family relic worth millions of dollars.
A pre-nuptial agreement cuts Ashley off – unless she can catch her husband in adultery, in which case she gets the necklace.
She and her lover, Teddy, lay schemes for Billy to be “seduced”, with a detective luckily lurking at hand to snap the incriminating photos.
But Ashley and Teddy have reckoned without husband Billy and his lover, Buffy, who also intend to keep the Necklace, cutting Ashley out.
Billy and Buffy have together worked out an underhanded plan to grab the Necklace for themselves, a plan which will employ a fake assault and a cat burglar.
The Worthingtons are grimly (and hilariously) determined to do each other out of the priceless Necklace in this wild farce.
Unfortunately everything that can go wrong with their schemes, will go wrong.
Davis the detective will prove inept, Marianne the seductress gets the wrong man and crime caper planner Deborah robs the wrong person.
Soon everyone is mired in comic chaos, misunderstandings and mistaken identities in pursuit of the fabulous Worthington Necklace.
Director Bowes has put together a talented cast for his fast-paced, high energy production.
Returning to the Playhouse as Billy and Ashley Worthington are Garfield Andrews and Debra Hale, with Perry Mucci as Teddy and Susan Greenfield as Marianne.
All four are veterans of other Michael Parker productions at the theatre and are “in top form for this upcoming hilarious romp,” according to Bowes.
Alan J. Cooke, who was first seen by audiences as the man servant in last season’s The Gentleman Clothier, returns as Davis the disastrous detective. Jody Osmond, the ferocious bride in 2015’s Stag and Doe, is Deborah, the would-be robber.
Making her debut at the Playhouse as the perky and scheming Buffy is actor Alanis Peart.
The set for this production has been designed by John Thompson, while Tristan Goethel, the Playhouse technical director, will handle lighting and effects for the show.
Ahead in the Playhouse 2016 season are Steel Magnolias, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Jonas and Barry in the Home, Dean and Jerry: What Might Have Been and, at Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street.
Audiences should fasten their seat-belts as Upper Canada Playhouse kicks off this spectacular 2016 summer season with the rollicking comedy, There’s A Burglar In My Bed, opening June 9.
For tickets and information, contact Upper Canada Playhouse at 613-543-3713 or 1-877-550-3650.
