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Roulette

$13.00
Qty:
Full Length, Drama
3 men, 3 women
Total Cast: 6, Flexible Set
ISBN-13: 978-0-8222-2008-4


MIN. PERFORMANCE FEE: $105 per performance.
THE STORY: Dysfunction and black comedy reign in suburbia when Jon, an affable businessman and father, descends to his kitchen one morning for coffee. He pauses from his morning paper, carefully removes a revolver from his briefcase, loads one bullet into the cylinder, spins it, places it against his temple and pulls the trigger. Nothing, only the hollow click of an empty chamber. Jon tidies up and, briefcase in hand, leaves for work. His troubles, however, follow him there. Jon’s wife, Enid, is cuckolding him with his best friend and next-door neighbor, Steve, who shows up suddenly at Jon’s office to ask for a loan. Meanwhile, back at home, Jon’s rocker daughter, Jenny, is planning on sleeping over at her boyfriend’s house and attempting to enlist her mother, Enid, to convince Jon it’s all right. Trying to come to grips with this rapidly breaking home is Jon’s perpetually anxious son, Jock, who’s recently been rejected by his fraternity of choice. Virginia, Steve’s skittish and loopy wife, knows he’s sleeping around, but she won’t let a little thing like that stop her from popping in on Enid to borrow a pint of milk. When the hammer of Jon’s gun finally hits that solitary bullet, it sends the family over the edge of lunacy into the uncharted territory of honesty and reconciliation.
“Every now and then a cliché sheds its skin in American comedy to reveal something raw and unsettling. Cultural anthropologists and savvy heatergoers should know that this molting process is now occurring at the John Houseman Theater, where a sharp-tongued, broken-hearted and seriously funny new play called ROULETTE opened last night.” —The New York Times.