Story, Script, Music & Aristic Director - Larry Carter
Stage Director - Bob Garrett

In 1842, the great English poet Robert Browning wrote a poem telling the very old story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. This well-known story relates how the Town Council of Hamelin refused to pay a piper after he rid them of a plague of rats, so he spirited off their children to a magical cave. He and the children rushed inside and were supposedly never seen again. Browning's story, although accurate as far as it goes, is, unfortunately, incomplete. What happened next after the piper and children entered the cave? His illustrator, Kate Greenaway, apparently knew more about the story since we see in one of the final illustrations children dancing in a meadow around a cherry tree, a scene that obviously isn't taking place inside the cave. For that matter, why did all those rats suddenly invade Hamelin in the first place? Browning wrote a masterful poem, but he apparently didn't know the rest of the story. There is a character so sneaky that Browning apparently didn't know he even existed - the Rat Master. He had an old grudge with the city of Hamelin for driving him out of town for befriending rats. He got his revenge by sending the rats to Hamelin, then tricking a piper into bringing the children to his cave. He was outwitted by the courage of the girl the original story calls the "Child on Crutches" who befriended the Piper and, with him, rescued the children from the cave. Borrowing from the vaudeville tradition, we start with a pre-show concert where each actor performs a short musical piece by way or introduction. Then we present the one-act musical melodrama. The audience CHEERS ON THE HEROINE (the "Girl on Crutches") and HISSES AT THE VILLAIN (the Rat Master). Good triumphs over evil and everyone - even the Rat Master - lives happily ever after. Larry Carter, Artistic Director