Seven Keys to Baldpate (Play)

The setup is delicious: a writer bets he can produce 10,000 words in a single night at an abandoned mountain resort, and he's staked his reputation on it. But the snow is piling up outside Baldpate Inn, and the intruders keep arriving one by one, each with their own key and their own secret reason for being there. What begins as a simple writing retreat spirals into a farce of mistaken identities, overlapping conspiracies, and the kind of combinatorial chaos that only seven keys can create. George M. Cohan, the man who gave America "Over There" and "Give My Regards to Broadway," proves here that his theatrical instincts extended far beyond songwriting. Adapted from Earl Derr Biggers' novel, this play whirs with the mechanical precision of an early 20th-century mystery box, yet its real magic lies in the sheer audacity of its premise: what happens when every shadow harbors a plot, and nobody is who they claim to be? The comedy emerges not from punchlines but from the spiraling absurdity of too many secrets in too small a space.