Lucky Nurse and Other Short Musical
Plays
Four Short Musical Plays by Michael John LaChiusa
June 2004
These four one-act musical plays span such seemingly incompatible
subjects as construction site visitations by the Virgin Mary and flop
house plumbing, are all unified by a sense of irony, irreverence and,
finally, compassion for the workaday lives of their characters.
THE STORIES: After being deserted in her wheelchair while her
cranky nurse goes shopping, the title character of AGNES
persuades a stranger to kill her, thus releasing her from her limited
and unhappy life. In BREAK, two construction workers achieve new
insight into their lunch hour woes when the Virgin Mary pays them an
unexpected and confused visitation. The sundry characters of EULOGY
FOR MISTER HAMM wait on line to use their flop house's one available
bathroom, and find they must unwillingly band together when they fear
that their superintendent may be dead. The action of LUCKY NURSE
takes place in a single night. Madge, a nurse who works with newborns,
worries about having to put her dog to sleep because he's getting too
old. Her friend Jerry leaves his shift to cruise a singles bar where he
meets and seduces Sherri. Afterwards, Sherri takes a cab home and
meditates on her frequent one-night-stands, but the driver upsets her
and she jumps out. Finally, the cabbie ends up at the hospital to have a
look at the baby he abandoned only hours ago while Madge looks on and
wonders, unknowingly, how anyone could desert their child in the middle
of a cold night.
AGNES calls for 1 man, 2 women, directed by ?. BREAK calls for 2 men, 1 woman, directed by Cristen Susong. EULOGY FOR MISTER HAMM calls for 2 men, 2 women, directed by ?. LUCKY NURSE calls for 2 men, 2 women, directed by Scott Susong.
Audition/Interviews for this collective production will be in February
of 2004
Future
Projects
June
2005
Scott & Cristen Susong in The Last Five Years
a chamber musical
by Jason Robert Brown
TBA Frida and Diego
a new musical about Mexico's most colorful couple.
by Keiko Takeda and Adair Seldon
TBA Winter of the Fall
a new epic musical
by Lawrence Rush and Lee Wind