LATER LIFE by A. R. Gurney

On a terrace overlooking Boston Harbor, Ruth (Rebecca Stewart) and Austin (David Shaw) are introduced at a cocktail party and find themselves on familiar territory. Ruth remembers that they have met before on another terrace, overlooking another bay. It was thirty years ago on a balmy evening looking out over the bay of Naples. As they become reacquainted, Austin soon also remembers that romantic evening. He is divorced, Ruth is separated and they are both aching for a moment of reconnection. Those moments, as Ruth says, are very rare. The audience too is rooting for them to find a future together. But they are too often interrupted by other guests from the party who come out onto the terrace. There are ten guests in all, and in a theatrical coup, they are all played by two actors. Skip Cady and Becky Bailey range hilariously from a crotchety old golfer and his grandchildren-obsessed wife to a worried computer nerd and an assertiveness-enabled female musician. It is a play of longing and laughter . . . a sophisticated and bittersweet comedy.

TABLE MANNERS by Alan Ayckbourn

Sarah (Laine Gillespie) and Reg (David Shaw) turn up at the family home to look after his invalid mother, and to allow his sister Annie (Robin Ng) to take a much needed holiday. But it soon becomes apparent that Annie is not going away with her bumbling suitor Tom (Mike Backman), but with her sister Ruth’s (Pat Langille) husband – Norman (Kevin Fitzpatrick)). With Annie’s plans for a naughty weekend scuttled, the house is bursting with the fireworks that are created by family members who simultaneously despise each other and can’t get enough of each other. The weekend’s two breakfasts and two dinners don’t turn out to be cheerful and relaxing family gatherings, but brilliantly comic explosions. One of Alan Ayckbourn’s comic masterpieces, it has been described as “wildly funny, beautifully written.”

The first installment of the brilliant "Norman Conquests" trilogy, hailed as "a landmark of theatrical achievement" by the London Daily Mail. ".. a tour de force so exceptional I can only throw my hat in the air and rejoice." John Barber, Daily Telegraph

MURDERERS by Jeffrey Hatcher

Gerald (David Shaw), Lucy (Deborah Solomon*) and Minka (Jean Hines) have all been very naughty! In fact, they are murderers. They also happen to be residents of Riddle Key Retirement Community in Florida. That these disparate characters committed murder is not in question, but as for why...well, that is left up to the slightly twisted imagination of playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. Hatcher's keen and offbeat sense of the ridiculous thrives among the cul de sacs, manicured lawns and electric golf carts of Florida. You may or may not be a murderer yourself, but everyone will ultimately be charmed by this glorious evening of crime. Directed by Shaker Bridge Theatre's artistic director, Bill Coons*.