Play Nice!

Play Nice!

Venus Theatre Play Shack
21 C Street Laurel

PLAY NICE! has been called a "gothic dream," "a fantasy horror story," and a cross between Grimm's Fairy Tales and Flowers in the Attic by audiences at staged readings in Ohio, New Jersey and New York. The story was inspired by Jean Genet's classic, THE MAIDS, in which role-playing reaches frightening new levels. As PLAY NICE! begins, someone has poisoned the Diamond siblings' mother. When she returns from the hospital, there will be hell to pay The struggle of two sisters and their brother to deal with the Dragon Queen is both highly theatrical and very real. Matilda, the eldest, copes by cooking and forcefully hiding her little sister in order to protect her. Luce, their brother, marches with the high school flag squad -- a fixation which has already put him in hot water. Young Isabel excels at pretend, which becomes the most valuable weapon in their arsenal. They enlist a fourth young person, a homeless poet, and the power of imagination is kicked into high gear. An attic in a New Jersey suburb becomes a battlefield where the lines between generations are blurred and the boundary between the actual and the unreal is reduced to an illuminated rectangle and a box labeled "Mad Rabbit."

Thru - Sep 26, 2010