The Man Who Came to Dinner
Is an unexpectedly hilarious 1939 comedy by Kaufman and Hart (of You Can’t Take it With You fame). The play centers around an eccentric and famous radio personality, Sheridan Whiteside, who has slipped on the front doorstep of a small-town family and is now confined there to convalesce under orders of an elderly and perhaps incompetent country doctor. The antics he imposes on his simple hosts include a $784 phone bill, a parade of British and Hollywood elite, murder convicts, and gift deliveries that include coach roaches, penguins, an octopus, and a sarcophagus from the Khedive of Egypt. To make matters worse, Whiteside’s secretary is falling in love with the local newspaper man, potentially leaving him without his decade long personal manager. This play just gets funnier and juicier at each turn of events!
