1986-1987 Season

“But Why Bump Off Barnaby?”, by Rick Abbot


This lunatic show poses a fascinating mystery. When Barnaby Folcey is murdered at a family gathering at Marlgate Manor, it transpires that he had a motive to murder everybody else, but no one had a reason to want him dead. While dying, he scrawled the letters "b-a-r," which can implicate everyone. While the bizarre group frantically tries to unmask the murderer, people vanish, poison is found in the sherry, and the police take forever to arrive. Meanwhile, there's a secret treasure to be found, a mystifying limerick to decode, and all sorts of doom to be avoided before the killer is finally unmasked and destroyed using one of the funniest methods ever seen on a stage.

Opal’s Baby, by John Patrick


The setting is again Opal's tumbledown home on the edge of the city dump, where Opal has a visitor looking for a tire to fit his 1927 Reo truck. Misguided into thinking that Opal is a rich eccentric, the shifty visitor, Norman, announces (fallaciously) that he too is a Kronkie—and Opal's long-lost kin. The upshot is that the warmhearted Opal takes him, and his whole family, in—whereupon they scheme to do her out of her supposed fortune. When Norman confides that his daughter-in-law, Verna, is pregnant (abetted by a well-placed pillow), Opal decides to leave all her worldly goods to the "baby," and the others have to settle for petty thievery while they figure out how to get around their lie. Needless to say the "plot thickens" hilariously as they do so, but happily all ends well, at least for Opal, who emerges safe, sound and ready for whatever may come next.