Anthony Dodge

A Femme Noir Mystery
Butch Diamond is a private dick without one.

MOM, a patient in a care home, is visited by 2 attending doctors
and 1 nurse on this particular day. This is not a play about the
failings of medicine, it is a play about kindness. The lack of
kindness, the appearance of kindness and real kindness. We need
more.

1947.
Two men from different backgrounds meet in a Hollywood hotel room. In Dodge’s new play, they drink and debate about Art, Commerce and the occasional Rhinoceros. Their names are Disney & Dali and
this is the true fiction of what happened.

"Set in 1895, in London's fashionable theater district, the plot concerns two rather bizarre murders - one of a theater critic (egad!) and the other, the ingenue for the D'Oyly Carte season of Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. Along with Richard D'Oyly Carte, W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, there are appearances by other theatrical and literary luminaries of the day, such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, "Dracula" author Bram Stoker, and the great actors Sir Henry Irving and Dame Ellen Terry. They are all tossed into this glorious goulash of a play with such gleeful dexterity it will take your breath away. The thrill of watching skilled actors changing not only wigs and costumes, but their very silhouette, is exhilarating."
~JACK EDDLEMAN, Special to the Herald (Sarasota, Florida)

Score: Upon Request

Sometimes your authentic self needs a little nudge.
The play takes place in Row G of a large Broadway theatre. What follows is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the fabulous.

Three siblings on the brink of losing their Mother, jump through the hoops of the byzantine Elder Health Care system, and ultimately find themselves a family at the end.

Done in the snappy-patter style of the great mystery writer, Raymond Chandler, Dodge & Dodge explore a genre usually reserved for male dominated stories and male dominated heroes. Our detective is still a strong, sure, smooth operator, but this time it's a Woman. Butch Diamond likes women and they like her. A lot. Her physical attractiveness is secondary to her confidence and her moxie.
While there are no chronicles confirming the 40's detective heroine as actually existing in those conservative times, the play explores how much--or how little--we have changed when it comes to embracing outcasts and disenfranchised citizens-- and journeys thr.ugh a world behind closed doors.
And closets.
You could call it a postmodernist-feminist mystery play.
You could call it Femme Noir. We call it VENUS FL YTRAP

"Set in 1895, in London's fashionable theater district, the plot concerns two rather bizarre murders - one of a theater critic (egad!) and the other, the ingenue for the D'Oyly Carte season of Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. Along with Richard D'Oyly Carte, W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, there are appearances by other theatrical and literary luminaries of the day, such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, "Dracula" author Bram Stoker, and the great actors Sir Henry Irving and Dame Ellen Terry. They are all tossed into this glorious goulash of a play with such gleeful dexterity it will take your breath away. The thrill of watching skilled actors changing not only wigs and costumes, but their very silhouette, is exhilarating."
~JACK EDDLEMAN, Special to the Herald

Hats! is written by husband-and-wife team Anthony Dodge & Marcia Milgrom Dodge with songs by Doug Besterman, Susan Birkenhead, Michele Brourman, Pat Bunch, Gretchen Cryer, Anthony Dodge, Marcia Milgrom Dodge, Beth Falcone, David Friedman, Kathie Lee Gifford, David Goldsmith, Carol Hall, Henry Krieger, Stephen Lawrence, Melissa Manchester, Amanda McBroom, Pam Tillis and Sharon Vaughn.
Inspired by The Red Hat Society, Hats! is an original musical about a 49.999-year-old woman, MaryAnne, who reluctantly faces the inevitable 50th birthday. In the production, MaryAnne warms up to her 50th once she meets several remarkable women who show her about fun and friendship after 50.

On the eve of Country music legend Jimmy John Angel’s Reunion Concert with his ex-wife and even bigger star, Dixie Diamond, Jimmy John’s life of unscrupulous trickery--on stage and off – is exposed in this cross between KISS ME KATE and THE GRAND OLE OPRY. Featuring over a dozen Gatlin hits plus 4 more written exclusively for the musical—this brand new musical comedy is sure to delight fans of both Country Music and the classic Broadway musical!

It's Fall 1963. Sidney Bernstein, a brash cub Reporter resents his routine assignment and steals a lead on the deathwatch on the notorious Robert Stroud, The Birdman of Alcatraz. Through legwork and pluck, Sidney discovers that the legend of The Birdman is fiction and resolves to find and print The Truth. Along his journey he encounters the author of the book "The Birdman of Alcatraz," the last Warden on The Rock, the prison Chaplin, the Head of the Parole Board and many others including Hollywood star Burt Lancaster and the real Robert Stroud. Stroud is an unrepentant killer, as interested in his notoriety as he is his fame, and gloats how he will be remembered the world over. Sidney, through his stubborn determination discovers surprising things about the ugly side of this legend-and himself.