Over a Barrel is up and running!

Just now, I sat next to four septuagenarian besties eating breakfast in the hotel where I’m staying. They talked about a lot of things: health, prescriptions, salaries, workers’ rights, high heels, and, of course, other people. Because I’m experiencing the very specific type of sentimentality a playwright feels the night after opening a new show, I couldn’t help but think of Eunice, Flo, Dottie, and Mack, the characters whose journey we follow in Over a Barrel.

Tickets for which can be bought here!

Our heroes (which is how I refer to them in the stage directions — one of those details only people reading the script would know) start out the play by thinking they’ve got it made, and then immediately lose all their cash. And not just their cash.

Eunice has inherited all her husband’s precious stocks. Our heroes cheers to the New York Stock Exchange, because “Nothing bad has ever happened to the New York Stock Exchange. And it never, ever will.”

And then, you guessed it, the NYSE crashes for the first time ever, and Eunice’s wealth is gone in a flash.

(This is where I mention I’m not an expert on the NYSE or even stocks in general, but I think you knew that.)

This is, of course, all happening during a time when it was difficult for women to make money for themselves, which is why our heroes end up getting a little creative with their money-making strategies. In 1901, unmarried women generally couldn’t even have bank accounts, and married women needed their husbands to co-sign. That went on for way longer than you may think.

Given all that, our heroes need to deal in cash. Eventually, that cash comes from a bogus cure-all cart where they heckle and coerce passersby to purchase their good-for-everything, bad-for-nothing draught. At this time in American history, regulations on products intended for human consumption were virtually non-existent. The FDA wouldn’t even be created until 1906, and testing on food and drinks was very limited before 1902. (Criminal podcast has an amazing recent episode on this called The Poison Squad, which I highly recommend.)

Our heroes’ cure-all cart days are short-lived after a pesky scientist spoils their plans, but in reality, many bogus treatments stayed on the market for years, sometimes decades, if the users were convinced enough — and desperate enough for relief of whatever ailed them.

Over a Barrel opened last night, with a big house of enthusiastic laughers! It was thrilling. Especially given that a bus full of 50 teenagers made up part of the audience. This could really have gone either way. My fists were clenched as the lights came up, but when the first absurd bit started about 20 seconds into the show (no spoilers!), and they all laughed, I knew we were going to be all right on this ride together.

It’s all very exciting, and it was a wonderful night!

But I know what you’re really here for…

This toilet brush horse greeted me with blank-eyed enthusiasm when I arrived at my parents’ house this week, and I need to not be the only one aware that this is something that exists in the world.

If only our heroes had about 100 of these to sell at a high price, the play would only be about 10 minutes long, because who wouldn’t want one of these? Right?

Right?!

Back to my septuagenarian breakfast-mates. I can’t help but think what our heroes’ lives would be like at that age, and all the advancements they would have experienced between 1901 and, say, 1950. They would have thought they’d seen it all. But I hope they’d still be sticking together, timeless besties who survived a lifetime of change.

See Over a Barrel now thru June 27th!