THEATRE + COMEDY

The Country Playhouse BLACK BOX PRODUCTIONS presents The House of Yes, By Wendy Mcleod. Directed by Julie Thornley. A BLACK BOX PRODUCTION. Running Fridays and Saturdays, AUG 28 - SEPT 12, 2009 at 8pm, with a MATINEE: Sunday, SEPT 6 at 2pm, plus Thursday, SEPT 10 at 7:30pm.

Insanity doesn’t run in Marty Pascal’s family. It gallops. Still, the craziest thing he’s ever done is to bring his fiancée home for Thanksgiving dinner. That’s because Marty, who moved from the family’s Virginia homestead to New York some time ago, is desperately trying to live a normal life, something neither he nor his family is prepared for. His family prefers to live in the past but it’s not even their own past: it’s the Kennedys’ past.

Marty’s sister is not only a dead ringer for Jackie Onassis, she’s been going by the name Jackie-O ever since she attended an Ides of March party dressed as the former first lady. In between lies everything from a serious look at masterful manipulation to gut-bustingly funny lines about life in a dysfunctional family. But Marty needs less prompting than would seem necessary; once he’s back home, the old ties become binding.

The House of Yes turns conventional wisdom on its head: you can go home; what you can’t do is leave!

“The title came from graffiti I saw written on a bathroom wall: “We are living in a house of yes.” The play is about people that have never been said no to. It’s about insularity I see in the upper classes, people who have cut themselves off from the rest of the world and are living by the rules they’ve invented.”  Wendy MacLeod, 1995

Featuring: Jessica Knapp; Caleb George; Nate Suurmeyer; Kate Nelson and Ananka Kohnitz.

The objective of Black Box Productions is to present shows with a more liberal content and shows that it would not necessarily be possible to mount on our Cerwinske Stage. The black box space was originally named “Theatre Lab” and was generally home to a wide variety of original works, including those by the CPH playwright-in-residence, Diana Howie, and the occasional commercial production (Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus in 1996 for example). Artistic Director, Black Box Productions, John Paul Stevenson.

NOTE: This play contains adult language and situations that is not appropriate for anyone under the age of 18.