Is He Dead? is playing at the Fergus Grand Theatre from May 4 to 9 and May 11 to 13.
The show is based on Mark Twain’s 1898 manuscript discovered over a century later and adapted for the stage in 2007 by David Ives.
The mischievous Twain had the impudence to appropriate as his main character, the real life 1840s Barbizon artist Jean-Francois Millet, (The Gleaners) and to speculate on what would happen to the prices of the artist’s output if it was announced that he’d turned up dead.
The play depicts the Frenchman as a talented but struggling and heavily-indebted artist for whom success has been elusive.
That is, until his pupil friends hatch a plan to fake the artist’s death to skyrocket the value of his paintings.
Millet quickly re-enters as his imaginary twin sister, a widow, Daisy Tillou, both mad and madcap.
In doing so, they must convince Millet’s grieving fiancée Marie along with her impoverished widower father and sister Cecile, into believing the widow Daisy Tillou is Millet’s grieving twin sister.
The show is directed by Zoe Dunbar and Acey Kaspar with set design by Robert Banning and costume design by Sara Dunbar.
Tickets are available at the box office, at 519-787-1981 or at fergusgrandtheatre.ca.
