The oldest touring company in the country has one last season, one last play, and one critic who can save it.
The Penhallow Players have toured the country's little theaters for eighty years, and this autumn's tour is the last: the money is gone, the van is held together with gaffer tape, and the company has one show left to sell. Then a famous critic joins the tour to write a final farewell piece, and suddenly a rave review might bring the backers back. The director, the leading actor, the understudy, the stage manager and the critic spend ten weeks in cheap hotels and old theaters, putting on a play every night while their lives fall apart and come together offstage.
5 roles. You take one; your friends take the rest, and the narrator plays any left over. Anyone can bring a character of their own into a role instead.
The company's director, who inherited it from her mother and has spent twenty years keeping it alive on charm and unpaid invoices.
The company's leading actor, once nearly famous, who has played every great role in every little theater and is beginning to forget his lines.
A gifted young understudy who joined the company for one season to learn the craft and is about to be thrown on stage every night.
The stage manager who drives the van, fixes the lights, calls every cue and quietly holds the entire company together.
The country's most feared theater critic, who has joined the tour to write its obituary and finds himself, against all expectations, falling in love with the company.