Steven Glavey

In the closing years of the 17th century, an astronomer battles with a mute magician (Doctor Vysarius) for the attention of an impish boy-emperor. Having built a new, far-seeing telescope, he glimpses something in the heavens hurtling towards Earth – but, the machinations of the magician keep anyone from heeding his warnings. As the heavens tumble down, and visions of vivisected angels begin to populate his dreams, the astronomer struggles to wrest the court from the eerie power of Doctor Vysarius.

This play, written in our present age of grand illusion, points fearfully back toward another – the 17th century: a blazing world of waning monarchies, mystic charlatans, star-mad scientists, and growing existential unrest barely disguised by a taste for frenzied ornamentation. Taking distraction and fascination as its subject, the central question of the play is this: what if, when the Church censured Galileo for his long stargazing, they had been right to do so? What if there are such things in Heaven that, being seen, might stare back, might resist being made known? What, that is, are the dangers of an Enlightenment founded on the principle of obsession?

A young girl (Greta) comes to serve at a castle presided over by a baroness (Eleanora) with a mysterious affliction, entering into a world of singing flowers and moonlit monsters. When the baroness' seductive brother (Rudolf) returns from a long absence, Greta is caught up within the inescapable trap of the siblings’ furious and bizarre rivalry, and is confronted with strange affections on both sides.

"Perils of the Flowerbed" is a Gothic exploration of queer desire and unreal bodies, of monstrosity, and the frightening inescapability of family ties.

A killer lurks in the shadows at a New England mansion where a family gathers to mourn the death of their monstrous patriarch; a pair of Egyptologists travel to a an old house on the English Moors to hear the last will and testament of an old colleague-turned-enemy, and compete to receive a prize as sweet as honey; a young man turns to a club of Satanists to snatch back his stolen inheritance...

Three tales of terror come together in this ghoulish offering, modeled after the anthology horror films of the 1970s. A dark comedy, the macabre episodes of "The Old Man's Back Again" coalesce around thematics of inheritance, of last wills and testaments, of what we are owed by birth and what we owe in return, and around the figure of the mysterious, smiling attorney, Mr. Marrobone, who oversees, participates in, or otherwise casts his shadow over all three tales.

When the devilish Lord Malateste undertakes to kill his elderly father, his utterly unprepared servants, Philaster and Cariola, must hurriedly prepare a poison-plot. But, between the young lord's impatient prodding and the last-minute intrusion of an unknowing servant (named Steve), the trio's lethal designs go dangerously cockeyed, culminating in a cavalcade of death the which the wise may learn from and the unwise profit-still by laughter.