The Caltech Playreaders

2017-2018: The 67th Season

All of our readings will be held at 7:30 pm
at the Caltech Athenaeum in the Hall of Associates.

Please note our start time of 7:30 p.m. The doors will open at 7:15.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

The Murder Room by Jack Sharkey

Directed by Cara King

A Note from the Director

The English countryside...an isolated cottage...a wealthy, eccentric gentleman. It sounds like the setting for the perfect crime, but in this case, it's also the setting for a perfectly hysterical comedy. A murder has been committed (unless it hasn't), and the murderer was the housekeeper in the kitchen with the cyanide, or was it the wife in the garden with the polka-dot bicycle? Welcome to The Murder Room, Jack Sharkey's madcap mystery-farce that the Newcastle Morning Herald called "a minor gem...witty and sophisticated," and the Canon in Memphis described as "a good mixture of Agatha Christie, Monty Python, and Abbot and Costello."

Jack Sharkey (1931-1992) was a teacher, a member of United States Army, an author of humor articles, a science fiction novelist, and a joke editor before becoming a full-time playwright. Before his untimely death from cancer, he had 83 plays published under five different names: Jack Sharkey, Monk Ferris, Rick Abbot, Mark Chandler, and Mike Johnson; Caltech Playreaders performed The Premature Corpse by "Mike Johnson" in 2014.

The setting: A country cottage in the north of England, a few decades ago. July.

Cast of Characters:

Name Decription
EDGAR HOLLISTER member of the landed gentry
MAVIS TEMPLETON HOLLISTER his very recent bride
LOTTIE MOLLOY their housekeeper
JAMES CRANDALL an inspector of police
ABEL HOWARD a police constable
SUSAN HOLLISTER Edgar's daughter
BARRY DRAPER Susan's fiance

Produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.