Captivated

The Musical Comedy of a Modern Scherezade

Book & Lyrics by Kathleen Cahill
Music by Deborah Wicks La Puma

Synopsis

It is the 1990s. At the little First National Liberty Constitution Bank of Rhode Island, Krista Fay Floeting, assistant to the bank president and fiancée to the loan officer, is depressed. She gets through the day by daydreaming away her own anxieties and suspicions that things may not be right at the bank. Modest Clark Delgato arrives for a meeting. An accountant conducting an external audit, Clark has lost his voice as a stress-reaction to his discovery that the bank has been engaged in fraudulent activities.

The bank’s unscrupulous president, Lloyd Maloney, and his son, Loan officer, Andrew Maloney, lock Krista and Clark in the bank vault while they figure out how to get away with the fifty million they have embezzled. They decide to frame Clark as a dangerous, stop-at-nothing bank robber and Krista as Clark’s former lover and now 50 million dollar hostage.

Trapped in the subterranean world of the vault, with Clark unable to speak the truth about the embezzlement, Krista’s daydreams and fantasies become so vivid that eventually Clark becomes a part of them too.

Meanwhile, in the world outside, an ambitious reporter, Denise Delgado, uses their misfortune as her ticket to fame, and ends up in cohoots with the bad guys to literally “blow this story apart”. But Krista and Clark are saved by Krista’s outrageous imagination when they meet up with Death (disguised as a Hispanic cleaning woman), who helps them escape the vault, the bad guys, and the dangers of their former lives.

History

Captivated was first created and workshopped at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1993. It later received a staged reading at Signature Theatre’s Stages series in 1995, and in 2005, after significant rewrites based on workshops at American University, and was presented at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theatre at its annual Page to Stage Festival.

Musical Numbers

1. A QUEEN IN CHAINS – All

2. TEN AFTER TEN – Krista, Chorus

3. ODE TO RHODE – Chorus

4. ME AND VAN GOGH – Krista, Chorus

5. OFFICIAL STATEMENT – Maloney, Andrew, Denise, Chorus

6. TRICK OF THE HEART – Krista, Andrew

7. SHIVERING BLUES – Krista

8. NINE BEFORE TEN – Maloney, Andrew, Denise

9. DREAM WITH ME – Krista, Clark

Audio recorded live at the 2005 Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival, featuring Sherri Edelen (Krista), Janet Patton (Denise), Michael Vitaly Sazonov (Andrew), Stephen F. Schmidt (Maloney), and Bobby Smith (Clark).

Production Elements

Cast: 2 Women, 3 Men and Chorus

Female
KRISTA FAY FLOETING – Maloney’s daydreaming assistant (Alto)
DENISE DELGATO- a reporter for Channel 8 news (Alto)

Male
CLARK SMALL – An accountant who has lost his voice
LLOYD MALONEY – President of the bank (Bass/Baritone)
ANDREW MALONEY – Loan officer of the bank and Krista’s fiance (Tenor)

Music: Traditional Musical Theatre
Technical Requirements: Minimal
Musical Difficulty: Intermediate
Suggested Audience: Adults

Authors

KATHLEEN CAHILL (Book & Lyrics) – is a graduate in Musical Theatre at the Tisch School of the Arts. Her awards include three Edgerton Foundation Awards, the Jane Chambers Playwrighting Award, two Connecticut Commission on the Arts Playwrighting Awards, a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Award, a Rockefeller Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts New American Works Grant, and a Drama League Award. She was a DGF Travelling Master in 2019. Her play Charm (NNPN Showcase) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; her play The Persian Quarter was nominated for a Steinberg Award. (Both published by Dramatic Publishing.) Her produced musicals include Friendship of the Sea (North Shore Music Theatre) Dakota Sky (Olney Theatre) an opera, Clara, two opera/cabarets, A Tale of Two Cities: Paris and Berlin in the Twenties (Maryland Center for the Performing Arts), a comic opera cabaret, Fatal Song (most recently Utah Opera) a short opera, The Better Man, (Utah Opera) Perdida, the Winter’s Tale set in Mexico (Published by Dramatic Publishing.) Her plays include the comedy, Course 86B in the Catalogue (Salt Lake Acting Company) The Still Time (Georgia Rep/ Porchlight Theatre, Chicago) the comedy, Women Who Love Science Too Much (Porchlight Theatre and NPR Radio) Charm ( National New Play Network Festival, Salt Lake Acting Company premiere, Kitchen Dog Theatre, Dallas; Orlando Shakespeare; Taffety Punk, Washington D.C., New Hampshire Theatre Project, among others) The Persian Quarter ( Salt Lake Acting Company, Merrimack Rep.) Harbur Gate, an NNPN commission. (Salt Lake Acting Company, 16thstreet Theatre, Chicago.) Henry, Louise and Henri (one act) and The Robertassey at Women’s Playwrights Initiative, Ivoryton Playhouse, CT; The Robertassey was the featured play at the 2019 Seven Devil’s Playwrights Conference. Silent Dancer a groundbreaking dance/play premiered at the Salt Lake Acting Company in April 2019. A new musical, LATE, about the effects of gun violence on a small group of high school students, will be presented at Berklee College of Music in Boston in 2020 (Postponed due to coronavirus) and is currently a project with Moonbox Productions, Boston. Recent: Her play One Stone was a semi-finalist at the Gary Marshall New Play Festival, and the first prize winner in the Women’s Voices Festival at Mad Cow Theatre, Orlando. Madera Canyon is a finalist at the Cell Theatre, Albuquerque. She wrote the screenplay for the independent feature, Downtown Express.

DEBORAH WICKS LA PUMA (music) – see her bio page

Purchase

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