About the Play:

Exit Who? is a full-length mystery-comedy by Fred Carmichael. A writer rents a house for a summer retreat, taking her country hating secretary with her – but there, she runs into CIA agents and retired military leaders and real estate people and pure zaniness. There's a hunt for the central intelligence microdots who have been hidden in the retreat home. Or so we believe. The result is pure bedlam.

Exit Who? is the hilarious sequel to Exit the Body. Both plays bring a best-selling mystery novelist named Crane Hammond and her loyal her loyal, wise-cracking secretary named Kate Bixley to the same rented house in Vermont. There, they get involved with a handful of local eccentrics and a mystery. In Exit The Body, it was stolen jewels. Here, it's a missing microdot containing plans of military installations, to be picked up by a master spy at midnight. One of our agents arrives to capture the spy but, when he suffers amnesia, it is left to Crane and Kate to find the spy and the microdot. The focal point of the set is two way closet which also opens into a library and the entrances, exits, and surprises in it take farce to a new height. Who is the spy? The very Vermont sheriff, Vernon Cookley, the society writer for the paper, the famous recluse who has come out of hiding to obtain rights to Crane's new book, the forgetful and distracting older neighbour, the rugged country cook, or the CIA agent himself? The finding of the microdot as well as the pinpointing of the spy is laced with Fred Carmichael's witty dialogue and confused situations. The two female leads are supported by a cast of characters to make this a sure fire evening of hilarity.

Exit Who? premiered in 1982 at the Fort Salem Theatre in Salem, New York. 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

About the Playwright:

Fred Carmichael (1924-2009) was a prolific 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."