"Acting:  An art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing."  ~Ralph Richardson

Dear Audience,

We are firstly going to apologize for the ineptitude of our writers and crew--for we had forgotten to craft the plot before the script.

So, here by sheer luck and a rock-paper-scissors game, is the actual bona fide plot for this play as well as the crew list, as scribbled on a napkin by Corinne Bonham Woolworth, "The Miss Lovett of Putnam Avenue". RIP.

Cast n' Crew:

Corinne Bonham Woolworth, C.B.E (1995-2016): born to vaudeville parents Violet and Sweeney Woolworth, started acting at the age of 3 in a local production of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, traveling around with them until eventually breaking it on Broadway with the lead role in Thoroughly Modern Millie's revival at 16 and moving on to play Marlboro Mackie in M&Ms and Marlboro: the Candied Cowboy Country Musical! and a gender-flipped version of Violet the Musical, as well as a short-lived stint as Bobby Pepper in Curtains! the Musical. He says of this role, "It's confusing, it's weird...but I'm gonna charge in there and make this my most iconic role yet!" On his supposed relationship with Frankie Wong, the actor who plays Paolo Cladwell, he had this to say: "RUBBISH. Tabloids...but I'd love to work with him again on another show."  

 Elvira Elizabeth Bathory: born to milliners Hillary Bathory and Bernie Leadbetter, she started acting at the age of 15 with the self-titled play Elvira, The Gamer Misogyny! She wouldn't talk to us much, but she had this to say of her role: "IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN BIGGER. THE ROLE IS A FEMINIST ICON, DAMMIT! AN ICON! AND YOU SHRUNK HER ROLE?! I'M CALLING MY LAWYER!" Of her co-stars: "I hate the mindless capitalism of the theatre business. What idiots would take a role in it except for my co-stars?! Hey, where the hell are you going?!"

Frankie Wong/Paolo (name redacted): born to game developers Adrien Pirelli and Nellie Wong Lovett, he never expected to reach Broadway, or get the role of the dashing Mr. Paolo Cladwell opposite his real-life wife, Mary Ann Sutton Foster, who played Elsa as well as their three girls, Marinette, Selene, and Alya, who respectively play Cladwell's daughters. "He's this charming rich guy, an ideal. I'm just a normal guy who just happened to land this part. At least I get to play alongside my wife...but I think someone else deserves this crazy role more than I do..." Of the relationship between him and the lead actor, Corinne: "He's headstrong. A good partner to work with...a good singing voice. I heard about the tabloids, and--what are they smoking? He's twenty! He's like a son, I guess..." 

The Volgelson Brothers and Emmeline: emigrated from Sweden, they moved to New York at the ages of 12, 13, and 5 in search of fame and fortune on Broadway as Those Three Pastry Chefs in We DEclair Him Dead, A Mystery Spinoff of The Drowsy Chaperone. On playing the roles of Teenage Sarah, Young Sarah, and Old Sarah: "It wasn't very hard, really. Despite the heinous murder of our character at the end, we felt we could really capture her sense of complete and utter disgustingness."

Emmeline Volgelson soon got arrested for possession of meth in 2008 before dying in a weird pie incident.

Background characters/supporting were played by backstage crew members to save money, and Micro (uncredited) is played by miniature actor Charles Sherwood. Earring props donated by the DuPont Museum. Brixton played by Peach Croft, Oliver Campbell played by Finn The Stormtrooper, Kevin played by Craig McCraighlin, and Candace Owens played by Justin Shrive. Wander Over Yonder owned by Disney Animation Studios and Audrey (1983-2016) played by a stolen duplicate of Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. 

FINALLY, DAMMIT, THE PLOT.

It's a painfully sunny day in Eastwick...bright and full of unimpeded life. The birds are singing, the people are terrified--all knees had bowed millennia ago to the mighty interconnected powers of Frankie Wong's Paolo Cladwell, patriarch of the Cladwell Family and owner of Cladwell Online...now a new, more feminine threat rises to tear down his legacy and society as Eastwick knows it...with her pedophilic daughter in tow. Can this theatrical threat be stopped? Can the combined forces of Cladwell, his adopted son Ricky, and a gang of mobsters save the town from this encroaching evil plague?

 
Concessions served at entr'acte, no guns permitted in theatre, NO KICKING THE GODDAMN SEATS...enjoy the show.

"Yeah, he's not talking, Smurfy." 

"It'll talk. Give it more space...it'll crack sooner or later." 

"He was screaming at us last time..."

The two guards looked at him, shaking their heads and smirking like they were just done condescendingly deciding a fitting punishment for a badly behaved dog. He looked like a limp noodle, the moon was shining bright as the candle in his cell and I didn't know if his heart stopped or his legs developed blood clots, but Noodle's hair was as frizzy as The Bride of Frankenstein's--his eyes had deep chocolate bags underneath them, only hidden by the red suit he decided to change into after his black one got torn apart; growling and clawing at the door like a monster. Clearly Ruby Bridges decayed his mind quite a lot since he had first been incarcerated back in 2012. 

This was going to be a long day, I could tell. The fallen prince had been through a lot--he clearly wanted to be anywhere else than Ruby Bridges by the actions he had taken. But here he was, with the guards and--and...me. A minute and a half of bickering, though; as if some sort of magic had wormed its way into my head...something I had stored up in my head since they let me in as a visitor bolted up...

"May I try to talk to him? I know how it happened too, I can help, honest." 

A couple of grunts of stale indifference before at last they let me in. A growl, a couple of weird wolf-like sniffs, then a small broken grin. Fine, he told me, but these two have to leave. I'm triggered by their presence. "Please leave?" "We can't..." they charged back--but after some convincing, they obliged my request and left me alone in the cell with what was once my close companion whittled to a bony skeleton.

"Would you like to tell me--" Suddenly I hit the wall, my friend's grin getting larger as he began to speak, or should I say--no, he snarled.

This was going to be educational...I knew they were about to set the stage for a whirlwind play, tugging at my petticoat.  

"Once upon a time...in a far off kingdom...there was a small Fedex crate...and in that crate, there was a baby. Nobody knew exactly what to do with the drooling pile of dung that sat swathed in a blue and white terrycloth nappie, housed in that crate with nothing else except a dry carton of expired milk for a companion/source of food. The sun was shining on its black little forehead by way of the small holes poked into the box, and its thin lips kept crying and crying, holding the empty carton like it was a stuffed animal. The kid needed to breathe anyway, crying was the first thing the mother goddess rigged it to do, and my god was it going to take Mother up on her cruel narcissistic challenge to crush the unfairly gendered kid." He tugged on the chain keeping him tied to the bed, grinning like a madman as he went on, blinking a total of twice before moving on with the story.

"No one picked it up for days...until, one particular May, a police car came thundering by like a speeding motorcycle--probably to pick up donuts or save somebody...but it was the fastest speed the kid could have seen it coming, only stopping when it saw the crate sitting there like an unwanted cat." A haggard breath or two before he continued on, the guards only dropping in to dole out more liquid food. "Two men the size of bagels shut the door of the vehicle and began to hoist up the package, occasionally making weight jokes before sliding it into the backseat of the car, continuing to speed off into the daylight to corral the latest criminal." The lights, the sounds, the blur of the street...all visible from the little thing's temporary cardboard prison." 

"ALL RIGHT, HANDS IN THE AIR! THIS IS THE POLICE!" "Which police?" "THE OHIO/BROOKLYN POLICE DEPARTMENT!"  The kid's little eye peeped through the hole curiously. What was this? Was the ride over? BING BING BANG, BING BING BANG, BING BING BING BANG! No, but that was an awesome small bump in the road. The real ride would come the next day--when an average mother with hoop earrings, straight brown hair that would make Parky's Farm proud; a face that'd deftly hidden her abusive, abrasive nature, and a small equally brown haired imp of a girl with skin white as snow came barreling through that door like they were invited to a newly installed mall instead of an adoption agency that was on the verge of bankruptcy after a weird but surprisingly cordial goth couple slumped out, the wife decked in a black maternity gown and the husband...the husband looked like something out of a Calvin Klein magazine and the wife looked like a fairy tale queen." 

My friend stopped, grabbed at the nearest washcloth and wiped his sweat-pealed brows with it before slurping down the slop the guards brought to the cell. Surprisingly, it tasted less like correctional facility soup and more like hotel service soup to him now, as pathetic as it sounded. He looked high as a kite and his voice slurred a little, but he sighed, shot something into his arm, and slumped down into the edge  of the cell before continuing with a dazed smirk.

"Tell me more, please?" Inquiry, inquiry, inquiry. That was always a good sign, the girl had a brain bigger than her mouth.