For Immediate Release
December 30, 2024
Press Contact: Michael Kyrioglou
michael.kyrioglou@gmail.com
Washington Stage Guild’s
ESCAPE FROM THE ASYLUM: A MADCAP MYSTERY
Begins January 30. Sequel to Last Season’s Hit Comedy “The Victorian Ladies Detective Collective” by Patricia Milton
Directed by Morgan Duncan with Returning Cast Members
Washington, DC – Escape From the Asylum: A Madcap Mystery, the sequel to last season’s hit comedy The Victorian Ladies Detective Collective by Patricia Milton, begins the 2025 portion of The Washington Stage Guild’s 2024-2025 Season of Determination. Escape From the Asylum: A Madcap Mystery includes returning performers from The Victorian Ladies Detective Collective, Steven Carpenter, Jen Furlong and Laura Giannarelli, along with Maddie Baylor, making her WSG debut, directed by Victorian Ladies director Morgan Duncan. Performances run January 30 thru February 23, 2025, with four Pay-What-You-Can previews: January 30-February 1 at the Washington Stage Guild’s home, The Undercroft Theatre in the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue, NW. Opening/Press performance is Sunday, February 2 at 2:30pm.
ABOUT THE PLAY
Escape From the Asylum: A Madcap Mystery: Will the women outsmart the men AGAIN?! Dual adventures ensue in this sequel to last season’s sell-out, The Victorian Ladies’ Detective Collective. Three intrepid lady detectives hatch a plan to free a perfectly sane woman explorer shut away in an asylum by her husband. If that weren’t enough, they also try to identify who is stealing the explorer’s inheritance. Follow the clues to solve two mysteries amidst a Victorian seance, a pre-Freudian alienist, some cross-dressing, and barriers to gender equality at every turn. Welcoming back some of the Stage Guild’s Victorian Ladiescast and director! Area Premiere.
“WHIP-SMART DIALOGUE” – San Francisco Chronicle
“[A] BLEND OF PUNS, POLITICAL SATIRE, AND SCHOLARLY FEMINIST INSIGHT, all played for laughs and maximum damage to patriarchal pomposity.” – Theatrestorm
“DIVERTING COMIC WHODUNNIT…playwright Patricia Milton brings gleeful subversiveness to 19th-century mystery tropes in this play, which reimagines an Arthur Conan Doyle-style crime tale through a contemporary “she persisted” lens. Amid the laughs, Milton does an impressive job meting out plot twists.”
– Washington Post about WSG’s The Victorian Ladies Detective Collective
FROM DIRECTOR MORGAN DUNCAN
“We love a good sequel, don’t we? When we come to know such rich, well presented characters, it’s natural for us to want to know more about them, to see what they’d do under a different set of circumstances. The playwright, Patricia Milton, is using our familiarity with the Victorian detective trope to say some real, important things about very modern concerns. Good story tellers use these distant time periods to give us some perspective on problems that might be too uncomfortable to deal with otherwise. Escape from the Asylum is going to be so much fun for me to direct and, with any luck, more fun for you to come see!”
FROM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR BILL LARGESS
“Audiences and critics were tickled by the clever period comedy of these sleuthing Victorian Ladies, so it was great to find that there’s more delight in store. The sequel is also going to be a welcome reunion with the same director, some of the characters, and some new ones to add to this romp of a thriller.”
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Patricia Milton is Resident Playwright at Central Works Theater in Berkeley, Ca, and her plays have been produced around the world. Her productions at Central Works include Bamboozled (Outstanding Production, East Bay, and Outstanding Ensemble, Theatre Bay Area), Hearts of Palm, Reduction in Force, The Victorian Ladies’ Detective Collective (BroadwayWorld Critics Choice “Best of Maine” 2022, at The Public Theater), and Escape from the Asylum (Outstanding Production, 2022, SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle). Enemies: Foreign and Domestic (Central Works) was awarded Outstanding World Premiere Play by Theatre Bay Area. Her audio plays are Bystanders (Central Works) and The Law of Attraction (New Conservatory Theater Center, San Francisco). Without Mercy was commissioned and produced by Off-Broadway West. Her comedy Believers was produced in San Francisco (Wily West Productions) and in Istanbul, Turkey.
ABOUT THE TEAM
The cast of Escape From the Asylum: A Madcap Mystery includes returning performers from The Victorian Ladies Detective Collective, Steven Carpenter, Jen Furlong and Laura Giannarelli, along with Maddie Baylor, making her WSG debut.
Maddie Baylor is a recent college graduate who is making her D.C. theatre debut in Escape From the Asylum. Maddie attended the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where she earned a degree in both English literature and theatre. At her alma mater, she performed in Julius Caesar, Pride and Prejudice, The Play That Goes Wrong and Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. More recently, she has been dabbling in musical theatre, in Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, and a musically-equipped version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. When Maddie is not working onstage, she is immersing herself in other positions within the theatre world and this past fall, worked at Ford’s Theatre as the personal assistant to Scott Bakula, during their production of Mister Lincoln.
WSG Associate Artistic Director Steven Carpenter performed most recently in last season’s The Victorian Ladies Detective Collective, and prior to that with WSG, Ben Butler, Memoirs of a Forgotten Man, Bloomsday, Hard Times, Pygmalion, and The Philanderer (Helen Hayes Award nomination) along with numerous others. His directing credits include this season’s Faithless, as well as An Unbuilt Life, Major Barbara, Sam & Dede, Resolving Hedda, Red Herring, Opus, and The Underpants, among others. Other area productions include God of Carnage at Compass Rose, The Cripple of Inishmaan at 1st Stage, The Price and ART at Bay Theatre, Barrymore, Hysteria, and Trumbo for Rep Stage, and The Chosen at Theater J. He received a Helen Hayes nomination for his production of Thief River at Theatre Alliance and was a recipient of the Mary Goldwater Award for Directing. A third Helen Hayes nomination came for providing the onstage sound effects for the Guild’s It’s A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play.
Jen Furlong returns to WSG to reprise the role of Loveday in the Victorian Ladies play series. Prior to the VLDC, her previous credits include An Enemy of the People at Greenbriar Valley Theatre opposite Stuart Margolin and plays at Round House Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Studio Theatre, Rep Stage, Everyman Theatre, Theatre IV, Arena Stage, Kennedy Center, Ford’s Theatre and American Century Theatre and Circus Millennia. Jen is the author of the bestselling YA supernatural adventures Hidden City and Tattooed Angel, the middle grade series Meredith’s World and picture book Mrs. Cheesely Loves Cheese. She co-wrote the yet-to-premiere theatrical circus Circus of Night with Neil Gaiman.
Laura Giannarelli is a Stage Guild founding company member who has performed in more than 40 WSG productions including The Victorian Ladies Detective Collective, Major Barbara, Gulf View Drive, and See Rock City in recent seasons. She directed this season’s Shaw’s Shorts and last year’s season opener Dorothy’s Dictionary, and previously, The Good Doctor, It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, Widowers’ Houses, and Candida for the company.
Escape From the Asylum is directed by Morgan Duncan, a frequent collaborator with Stage Guild, recently seen in Shaw’s Shorts. Duncan has done 20 shows with the Washington Stage Guild since The Marriage of Figaro in 1988 through Shaw’s Shorts in 2024 as an actor and The Victorian Ladies’ Detective Collective last season, his third time directing for Stage Guild. He holds a BFA from Howard University and has performed regionally at theaters like the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. Locally, he has performed at Arena Stage, Folger Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Round House Theater, Everyman Theatre, and others. He was a long-time member of the Capitol Steps.
The production team includes Megan Holden (Scenic Design), Marianne Meadows (Resident Lighting Design), Cody Von Ruden (Costume Design), Mike Winch (Sound Designer), Bess Kaye (Fight Choreographer), Bill Largess (Dramaturg), and Elaine Randolph (Production Stage Manager).
DATES & TICKETS
Escape From the Asylum: A Madcap Mystery by Patricia Milton runs January 30 to February 23, 2025, with performances Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2:30pm & 8pm, and Sunday at 2:30pm.
The run begins with four Pay-What-You-Can performances Thursday, Jan. 30 at 7:30pm, Friday, Jan. 31 at 8pm, and Saturday, Feb. 1 at 2:30pm & 8pm (Pay What You Can tickets can be purchased for any cash price at the door beginning one hour prior to curtain). Opening/Press performance is Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 2:30pm.
All tickets are General Admission and are $50 Thursday & Saturday/Sunday matinees, $60 Friday & Saturday evenings. Student Admission is half-price with a valid Student ID. Senior Citizens 65 years and up get $10 OFF General Admission Prices. Groups of 10 or more get half-price tickets. Purchase online at https://stageguild.org/buy-tickets.
ABOUT THE THEATRE
Founded in 1986 by a professional company of theatre artists dedicated to producing literate, challenging works in a collegial and supportive atmosphere,
The Washington Stage Guild quickly established itself as an indispensable component of the D.C. area theatre scene; recognized as early as the end of the first season (1987) by The Washington Post. The ensemble theatre company’s acclaimed repertoire of neglected classics, unfamiliar works by familiar playwrights, and stimulating new plays from around the world is presented in a style that is the Guild’s own—direct and clear, with a strong commitment to adhering to the author’s intent.
