'Pig's Valise' aims for laughs

Author: Megan O’Keefe

After winning laughs on stage last weekend as Joe Farkas in "The Last Night of Ballyhoo," Andrew Zox '05 will try his hand at comedy once again this weekend when he presents "In a Pig's Valise," his senior directing work, in the Hepburn Zoo. The play, a parody of the 1940s detective genre, stars John Stokvis '05 (senior work) as detective James Taxi alongside Eliza Hulme '05 as Dolores Con Leche, a woman searching for her missing sister.

Despite the play's mysterious premise, Zox said the work is above all a comedy. "It's a combination of physical comedy with detective-style Shakespeare," he noted. "It's a funny play. We see a lot of dark shows on campus and I wanted to do something uplifting."

Written as a musical, "In A Pig's Valise" was adapted by Zox and the play's band director Ari Joseph '05, who together removed 80 percent of the show's original music and reworked the play with a new soundtrack, including new compositions written especially for Zox's production. Despite changes to the play's original musical format, a band shares the stage with actors during much of the show and salsa-dancing sequences take center stage during a nightclub scene.

Zox, who has previously directed "Long Ago & Far Away" and "Three Days of Rain" in the Hepburn Zoo, selected "In a Pig's Valise" as his senior directing work after seeing Hulme and Stokvis perform a scene from the play in an acting class last spring. Like Zox, Stokvis was drawn to the script's comedic elements. He said, "People will not stop laughing from the moment it starts to the moment it ends. It's hotter than a freshman in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform."

Zox was tight-lipped about the meaning of the play's title, but audiences will have a chance to solve that mystery for themselves when the play opens tonight. "In a Pig's Valise" will be performed in the Hepburn Zoo today at 8 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.