Featured image: Kelly Bolton, Ed Jones, Grant Drager and David Cerda in a publicity image for It’s a Horrible Life – A Golden Girls Lost Episodes Musical Parody. Photo by Rick Aguilar Studios, supplied by Hell in a Handbag Productions.
Dorothy’s holiday crisis, a women’s prison melodrama and a singing Star Trek villain will share a season at Hell in a Handbag Productions. The Chicago company has announced three musicals for its 25th anniversary, taking its pop-culture parodies to Theater Wit and its own North Side space, the Clutch.
The season opens with It’s a Horrible Life – A Golden Girls Lost Episodes Musical Parody, the first musical in Handbag’s long-running Golden Girls parody series.
Artistic director David Cerda wrote the show and plays Dorothy, whose disastrous holiday audition leads her to wish she had never existed. An angel arrives to demonstrate how quickly her roommates would fall apart without her.
Ryan Kennedy directs a cast that also includes Kelly Bolton, Grant Drager, Ed Jones, Scott Sawa, Britain Shutters, Danne W. Taylor and Honey West. Performances begin December 3 at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.
The venue’s booking calendar lists previews December 3–5, a December 6 opening at 7 p.m. and performances through January 3. Preview tickets are listed at $32–$42 and regular performances at $35–$54.
Caged Dames follows in February, also at Theater Wit. Cerda’s musical returns to the women’s prison films of the 1940s and ’50s, particularly Caged, following an innocent woman into the fictional Calumet City Women’s Penitentiary.
Handbag first produced the show in 2006.
The Chicago premiere of KHAN!!! The Musical! (A Parody Trek-Tacular) runs August 7–September 19, 2027 at the Clutch, 4335 N. Western Ave.
Brent Black wrote the book, music and lyrics, with Alina Roth credited as co-conceiver. Its source material includes Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Three-show season tickets are available from Handbag, and individual tickets for It’s a Horrible Life are available through Theater Wit.
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