About the Play:

Exit the Body is a full-length comedy-mystery by Fred Carmichael. What do a mystery writer, jewel thieves, a dead body or two and a New England house all have in common? Find out as four different couples search for missing bodies and hidden gems with hilarious results, guaranteed to keep your audience guessing and laughing until the very end.

Exit the Body is about a successful mystery novelist Crane Hammond who rents an old house in New England to rest up before she begins writing yet another bestseller. However, the house is the rendezvous point for a band of thieves searching frantically for a stash of jewels. The focal point of the set is the closet which opens into a living room and a library. A body found in the closet promptly disappears (hence the title) only to be succeeded by another. The hunt for the jewels reaches a climax at two A.M. when four couples unknown to each other turn up to search. With the chance of finding stolen treasure, you have to look...right? Not since the days of Mack Sennett's slapstick comedies has there been such an hilarious series of entrances and exits.

Exit the Body premiered in 1961 at the Dorset Playhouse in Dorset, Vermont by the Caravan Theatre Summer Stock Company. It's been a popular and a favourite play for high school, college, and community theatre productions ever since.

Cast: 5 female, 5 male

What people say:

"Hilarious, delicious, uproarious, hysterical.... [The] audience, howled, guffawed, and applauded." — Bennington Banner

"Never have tears of laughter flowed so freely." — Rutland Herald

"It is refreshing to see a play that has no profanity, sexual content, or political agenda." — Broadway World

Fred Carmichael (1924-2009) was an American playwright and actor. After years of touring and summer stock theatre, he and his director wife decided to have their own theatre and moved to Dorset, Vermont in 1949 and began a long running relationship with the Dorset Players until 1976, producing a full season of summer theatre. From the early 1950s through the mid-1990s, he wrote over 50 comedies and murder-mystery comedies many of which premiered at the Dorset Playhouse. It was once said about his plays that "Fred Carmichael is a deft plotter – crucial to the mystery form – but his light touch turns standard whodunits into comedic soufflés."