THE STORY: Jonathan Van Huffle, a wealthy but weak-willed widower, has promised his immensely spoiled daughter, Little Eva, a eunuch for her birthday. All the other girls have one. It’s an absolute requirement in her society, where the daughters of the wealthy are introduced to the joys and perils of sophistication by their personal eunuchs. The trouble is, Jonathan has also fallen in love with the scrumptious but scrupulous Miss McCracken, a progressive waitress at a tea shop who is adamantly opposed to the castration and sale of human beings. How can Jonathan reconcile the powerful desires of his daughter and his beloved? With the help and hindrance of a pair of nutty household servants, Little Eva goes on to triumph at the ball, though not in the way she or anyone else expects in this faux-Victorian comedy with songs.
“Part surreal black comedy, part cautionary moral fable…Quincy Long’s THE LIVELY LAD immerses viewers in a strikingly fresh alternative reality, playing fast and loose with conventional theatrical expectations while consistently obeying its own loopy internal logic. Long’s play posits a quasi-Victorian-era secret society in which unlucky males are gelded to become companions for upper-class debutantes, à la eunuchs in an Arabian Nights harem. This blunt metaphor for human cruelty proves wickedly hilarious in an unlikely but spectacularly effective stylistic marriage between formal comedy of manners and savage modern parody (think Oscar Wilde by way of Joe Orton), spiced with sardonic songs and live musical accompaniment.” —Los Angeles Times.
