Westport Country Playhouse's Autumn Script in Hand Playreadings Begin 11/10

Westport Country Playhouse's autumn Script in Hand playreadings will kick off with the humorous and stirring historically based drama, "Trying" by Joanna McClelland Glass, on Monday, November 10, at 7 p.m., followed by Agatha Christie's classic hodunit, "The Mousetrap" on Monday, December 15, at 7 p.m. Director of both one-night-only Script in Hand playreadings is Anne Keefe, Playhouse associate artist and curator of the playreading series. Casting for both readings will be announced soon. Tickets to each Script in Hand playreading are $15.

In "Trying," Francis Biddle, a former Attorney General under President Franklin Roosevelt, and the former Chief Judge of the American Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, is now an old curmudgeon in his Washington, D.C. home office. His irascibility has prevented him from keeping a secretary long enough to help him write his memoirs---until he meets his match in a young Canadian woman. Based on playwright Glass' own experience during 1967-68, the story tells of the two 'trying' to understand each other in what Biddle knows is his final year of life.

"I'm a huge fan of Joanna Glass," said Keefe. "Her characters, like her, have honesty and humor. I've been waiting for a chance to do this play at the Playhouse, and I'm happy that the time has arrived."

Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" is about a group of strangers, stranded in a boarding house during a snow storm, one of whom is a murderer. The suspects include the newly married couple who run the house, and the suspicions in their minds nearly wreck their perfect marriage. Others are a spinster with a curious background, an architect who seems better equipped to be a chef, a retired Army major, a strange little man who claims his car has overturned in a drift, and a jurist who makes life miserable for everyone. Into their midst comes a policeman, traveling on skis. He no sooner arrives, when the jurist is killed. To get to the rationale of the murderer's pattern, the policeman probes the background of everyone present, and rattles a lot of skeletons.

"I confess to being a total Anglophile and yet in all my years of going to London theatre, I've never seen 'The Mousetrap,' in spite of the fact that it has been running for more than 60 years on the West End," stated Keefe. "I hope to bring together a lot of Playhouse favorites to explore this fun thriller that literally begins on 'a dark and stormy night'!"

Director Anne Keefe served as artistic director of Westport Country Playhouse with Joanne Woodward in 2008, and as associate artistic director from 2000-2006, also with Ms. Woodward. She co-directed with Ms. Woodward the Westport Country Playhouse production of "David Copperfield," and directed many Script in Hand playreadings.

Script in Hand sponsors are Marc and Michele Flaster; Script in Hand partners are Ann Sheffer and Bill Scheffler. Script in Hand corporate sponsor is People's United Bank Wealth Management. The series is supported, in part, by the White Barn Program of the Lucille Lortel Foundation.

Photo by Kerry Long