About the Play:

The Best Laid Plans is a full-length comedy by Fred Carmichael. A successful spy novelist decides to take a Caribbean holiday to relax. Who knew that her work would follow her? A spy who has secret plans that every government is after, dies in her vacation villa. The missing plans are on his dead body that keeps... moving around until no-one knows where it is. There are even more complications. Your audience will never guess how it ends!

The Best Laid Plans is a spy-laden comedic farce involving international intrigue and a search for missing plans. Set in Jamaica in the late 1950s, when the fear of communism was real and frightening, and involving the adventures and misadventures of Ada Westbrook, an elderly Ian Fleming type author who writes sexy spy novels. Westbrook is called upon by government officials to act as a liaison between them and enemy powers. During her Caribbean vacation with secretary and confident, Frances Daniels, a spy dies in Ada's house. In his possession are secret plans every government is after. Since the plans are on the body everyone tries to steal the corpse, moving it all over the place until no one knows where its gone. When the deceased's twin brother shows up there's even more complications. Who's dead? Who's alive? Who is this Mr. Goralsky, aka the Mr. Big, behind it all? No one is who they appear to be in this fast paced farce.

The Best Laid Plans premiered in 1965 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 and community theatre productions ever since.

Cast: 4 female, 6 male

What people say:

"Packed with laughs and rapid fire lines... a brilliance of farce and barbed wit." — Manchester Journal

"Let yourself go completely and laugh as much as you can stand." — Rutland Herald

About the Playwright:

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."