Carnegie Players presents our
2027 Season
The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde’s famous 1895 farcical comedy that satirizes Victorian social conventions, particularly marriage and hypocrisy, through witty dialogue and mistakeen identities. The plot follows two bachelors, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, who invent fictitious personas (like the name "Ernest") to escape social obligations, leading to romantic complications with two women who insist they can only love a man named Ernest. The play is celebrated for its clever wordplay, memorable characters like the formidable Lady Bracknell, and its exploration of themes like identity, class, and the triviality of serious institutions.
This story is as familiar as you remember. Mary Lennox, a sullen and spoiled young orphan, is sent to live with her brooding uncle at gloomy Misselthwaite Manor. Discovering a hidden, neglected garden, Mary plants the seeds of new life for all those drawn into her secret refuge. A wonderful story of transformation, from the author of our immensely popular Anne of Green Gables.
A smash comedy hit in London and New York, this much-revived classic from the playwright of Private Lives concerns fussy, cantankerous novelist Charles Condomine, who has remarried but finds himself haunted (literally) by the ghost of his late first wife, Elvira. Clever, insistent and well aware of Charles’ shortcomings, Elvira is called up by a visiting “happy medium,” the eccentric and flighty Madame Arcati. As everyone’s personalities clash, Charles’ current wife, Ruth, is accidentally killed. She “passes over” and joins Elvira, allowing the two “blithe spirits” to haunt the hapless Charles into perpetuity.
A small theatre company is just three weeks away from opening A Christmas Carol. Cliff Clinkscales, a retired radio personality playing Ebeneezer Scrooge, loves to antagonize Miles Fisher, a beloved Elvis impersonator playing Jacob Marley, and thus also Dana, the show's increasingly annoyed director. But the production nevertheless promises to be a success.
That is, until promotional materials arrive with an egregious typo: 'Carol' is misspelled on everything! The creative team agonizes about what to do, but with no budget to reprint and rental costumes due to be delivered, there's really only one solution, right?
Dana and the creative team decide to transform the Dickens classic into an under-sea spectacle, of course! Dana will work on the script, Drew will rewrite lyrics for the songs, Alex will fish-ify costumes, and Casey will modify the set. Even the cast jumps aboard with enthusiasm, excited to play Jacob Marlin, Bob Crabbit, Tiny Tang, Old Jackfish, etc. — except Cliff, whose obstinance threatens to sink the whole production.
When catastrophe strikes (at a heavy metal concert, no less), Cliff is accosted in his bedroom by an old friend, who forces him to hilariously confront ghosts from his past and come to terms with not only his own mortality, but his jealousies as well.
Fish puns and Elvis titles fly in this heartwarming and fin-tastically fun twist on the treasured 'tail'!