Sophomore playwright Kit Goldstein
has created a musical adaptation of “The Wrong Box,” based the classic book by Robert
Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. The play, performed by an 11-member cast
from Mountebanks, the Union College
student theater club, opens on Friday, Nov. 15, at 8 p.m. in Yulman Theater.
Goldstein wrote the adaptation, music, and lyrics for the
two-and-a-half hour show. She was also the director.
Set in late Victorian England, “The Wrong Box”
is the story of an elderly gentleman, Joseph Finsbury, who is a member of a
tontine – a fund which will pay a substantial sum to the last surviving member
– and his scheming nephew Morris, who would do anything to inherit his uncle's
winnings. When Joseph is involved in a train wreck and assumed dead, Morris
does everything in his power to cover up the death and win the tontine, and
mass confusion and chaos ensue.
Included in the cast are Jeff Silver, Michael Woodrow,
Becca Hutton, Alex Given, Jane Yoon, Julie Francis, Guy Goldstein, Jhulian
Newell-Little, Alexi Nowell, Dana Smullyan and Kristina Yost.
Besides Goldstein, the production crew includes Josh Dubbs
(producer), Anchia Kinard (stage manager), Nathan Stodola (music director/pianist),
Nina Kalinkon (sets), Ashlyn Andersen and Umber Gold (costumes), and Cooper Braun-Enos
and Evan Reid (lights and sound).
This is the fifth play Goldstein has written or co-written
(with sister Umber Gold '00). She has produced three musicals (including a revue
based on Freshman Preceptorial that was presented during Steinmetz Symposium
last spring), one comedy and a historically-based dinner theater mystery. She began
work on “The Wrong Box” last spring. It has been in rehearsal since the start
of fall term. Goldstein is a native of Niskayuna.
Performances are Friday, Nov. 15, and Saturday, Nov. 16, 8 p.m., and Sunday, Nov. 17, at 2 p.m. in the Yulman Theater. Admission is
free. For more information, call (518) 388-6812.