The Merc Playhouse has announced its 2024 schedule, which features three full productions including one by a local author, two Readers’ Theater presentations, and a Liberty Bell Drama Company musical.
The year starts with a Readers’ Theater production of “The Half Life of Marie Curie,” by Lauren Gunderson. The play explores the relationship between the famous Nobel Prize winner and a close friend who helps her through difficult times. The show runs Jan. 25-28.
“James and the Giant Peach,” from the book by Roald Dahl as dramatized by Richard R. George, will be presented March 14-24 with a full production telling the story of a boy’s magical journey.
The Liberty Bell musical, to be announced, will be staged in mid-May.
A play by local poet and playwright Cindy Williams Gutierrez, “The House,” will be a full production running Oct. 3-13. According to a Merc press release, “The House” is a “memory play… that revisits the turbulent, formative years of childhood through the eyes of an adult.”
A Readers’ Theater production of “Ravenscroft,” set in an English manor house around 1900 and described as a “psychological drama … a thinking person’s gothic thriller, a dark comedy that is both funny and frightening,” runs Oct. 24-27.
Rounding out the year is a full production of “Sherlock Holmes and the First Baker Street Irregular,” by Brian Guehring, in which Sherlock Holmes and a 14-year-old street urchin assistant work together to solve two dangerous mysteries.
For more information, visit www.mercplayhouse.org.