SOME ADULT THEMES. VIEW AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.

Sarah Ruhl says that she likes her actors to have "a sense of irony," and to be "touched with a little brush of the irrational."

Melancholy Play is a delightful farce about suffering, life, and the human condition. In Ruhl’s nonlinear form of realism the show is full of astonishments, surprises, and mysteries.

Tilly, a bank teller, experiences a vastness of feelings in a world where the routine and the unamazing seems to dominate. All who meet her are drawn to her heightened sense of reality, emotion, and "sensual sadness." However, all this attention and love fills Tilly with happiness like a balloon with helium, and her glee wreaks havoc on her band of fawning companions. She was so beautiful when she cried, and now she won’t stop smiling! 

Off-beat and zany, gentle and sexy, Melancholy Play shows you what it means to be human. It is glorious to cry and throw yourself onto a couch. It is wonderful to stare longingly out the window. There is a word for what you are feeling, but it is probably not in English. It is a good thing to feel, and there is a big difference between being depressed and melancholy, but beware that you don’t become so melancholy that you turn into...gasp!...an almond!