About the Play:

All Restaurant Fires are Arson is full-length comedy by Bruce McManus. The play focuses on a trio of childhood friends who come together again after years apart. Tom is a troubled cop on leave and a buddy to Ron, a philandering priest who has come home for the funeral of his female lover. Completing the triangle is Tanya, the high school babe who went on to become a successful New York businesswoman but is back hoping to discover something about her future from her past.

All Restaurant Fires are Arson – the title refers to an old cop joke – is about three friends from high school, now in their fifties, who are at the centre of a story that is part thriller, part mystery, part romance, part exploration of this thing called middle age – and all black comedy. Tom, and ex-cop in his fifties, and Ron, a philandering priest, have been friends since grade school. Their friendship will never die, but their high school friends and acquaintances can and do. They're surrounded by deaths, that might be accidents, or might be murder driven by incidents in their past. And Tom may be under suspicion. He has a violent temper and a past full of resentments toward the deceased. Tanya, the most beautiful girl in the school, has always resented the attention that came her way. For Ron, Tanya and Tom the past is always present and the end of their future seems all too close. All Restaurant Fires are Arson is a dark and comic look at our relationship with our own mortality, and with each other, as we struggle to face the inevitable.

All Restaurant Fires are Arson premiered in 2008 at the Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg.

Cast: 2 female, 4 male (doubling)

About the Playwright:

Bruce McManus is a Canadian playwright, Artistic Director and educator. He is the author of over twenty plays including Selkirk Avenue, which was nominated for a Governor General's Award for Drama and was produced in both Canada and the United States. He has taught playwriting at university, in high schools and through continuing education programs. He has lived across Canada, but has spent most of his life in Winnipeg.