About the Play:

The Red Address is a full-length drama by David Ives. It's the story of a middle-American businessman whose company and whose very life and sanity stand under attack by a rival who threatens not only to take over his business but to reveal his sexual secret. The Red Address is a tough-talking drama that's part noir mystery, part searing drama, part verbal comedy.

The Red Address follows a seemingly ordinary American businessman and the relationship between his public life and powerful romance with his understanding wife. E. G. Triplett is the owner of a successful milk distributorship. He leads an outwardly respectable, all-American-male existence until a mysterious (and possibly mob-connected) business rival, Driver, comes to town and threatens not only to take over E.G.'s business, but to reveal his sexual secret. When he's feeling down, his loving Southern belle of a wife named Lady, knows just what he needs: a trip to "The Red Address." But actually, that's the couple's code for the husband cross-dressing in the privacy of his own home. Heels, lace panties, black nylons and a red dress brighten E.G.'s mood considerably. But is E.G.'s secret safe? Driver begins dropping hints that he knows what's what, setting E.G.'s personal and professional lives on a collision course. When Lady is brutally murdered, E. G.'s world collapses and he makes a desperate attempt to hold himself together – losing his own life in the process. In the end, only E.G.'s friend, Dick, is left to piece together the meaning of what had happened, and to try to make sense of the baffling man he had known as E.G. Triplett.

The Red Address was first staged in 1991 at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco's most important and longtime playwrights' theatre, and revised for its premiere in 1997 at Second Stage Theater off-Broadway in New York City. The play has been performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 4 male

What people say:

"…something like a short story…a cross between Maupassant and a film noir…." — New York Post

"The Red Address … is a balancing act, and what holds its themes together is Ives' keen sense of irony, his shrewd theatricality…this play abounds in verbal felicities." — New York Daily News

"Playwright David Ives is the master wordsmith. Ives can indeed create crackling scenes." — New York Newsday

"David Ives has cunningly couched serious themes in a seemingly comic shell, which makes the developments that much more unsettling. It is remarkable how swiftly Ives gets us involved with his personages, outlandish though they may be." — New York Magazine

About the Playwright:

David Ives is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist who was born in Chicago and educated at Northwestern University and Yale School of Drama. He is perhaps best known for his evenings of comic one-act comedies, a reputation which resulted in the The New York Times referring to him as the "maestro of the short form." A former Guggenheim Fellow in playwriting, he has also written dramatic plays, narrative stories, and screenplays. He lives in New York City.