POW! (Play Of The Week)

Gingerbread House
by Mark Schultz

You and your wife are a little stressed. What with money and career concerns and the added responsibilities of rearing two children, you have neither time nor energy for each other. And let’s face it! Your son Curtis is slow -- maybe he’s dyslexic; and your sweet little Maggie is a failure in kindergarten.

You’re both lying in bed, once again without sex, and you are half watching the television accompanied by canned laughter from the set. With eyes partly glazed, your thoughts are nowhere in particular except remembering that once you were happy in each other’s presence and you both had dreams. Is all this part of the typical thirtysomething woes?

Brian, you resent the fact that the younger men in your office are advancing and getting the promotions while you have the “family albatross” around your neck. Your wife Stacey, when she’s not at her tedious travel-agency job, spends her time schlepping the kids from place to place. Besides, she hates Little League games. Life for both of you has become stagnant with canned laughter underneath.

BRIAN. [I] Got an idea.
STACEY. What.
BRIAN. Hear me out. Don’t laugh. [I] Put some thought into this and. Um. I think. (Beat) I think that we should sell the kids.

ENTER MARCO. Your smooth-talking coworker has the perfect plan. If all he says is true, he has the connections; and his unconventional logic is flawless. Besides, “people do it all the time.” It’s an all-around win/win situation. And it yours, Brian ... yours and Stacey’s ... for merely mentioning your selling price. However much you want, it’s yours. Sold!

So it is that Brian and Stacey sell their children to a wealthy Albanian couple; and thus, begins Mark Schultz’s hellishly funny and painful yarn.

They get their selling price, and their lives are never the same again. They taste the fruits of the good life but then must reexamine their obsessions and consciences driving them to do the unthinkable.

THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE is a series of 13 hilarious and sometimes chilling scenes over-time that explore the demise of the American idealized-family structure.

The cast requires 3 men & 2 women (20’s and 30’s) plus 1 young boy & 1 young girl. There are fast-paced and brittle scenes along with poignant and inventive monologues! This contemporary morality play is, indeed, a “comedy of horror” for today.

A must-read! A must-perform!

Reviewed by W. Martin