Doug DeVita's THE GRUESOMELY MERRY ADVENTURES OF NELL DASH Set for Hudson Guild Theatre

THE GRUESOMELY MERRY ADVENTURES OF NELL DASH, AN IRREPRESSIBLY SENSIBLE CAPITALIST WITH A VENGEANCE is set for the Hudson Guild Theatre (441 W. 26 St. - between 9th/10th) on Tuesday, February 28, 6:15 PM; Saturday, March 4, 8:30 PM; and Sunday, March 5, 1:30 PM. Tickets are $18 at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2778296.

What would happen if characters from Oliver Twist, Sense & Sensibilities, The Threepenny Opera, and Sweeney Todd all met in a high-comic melodrama?

Imagine...The Artful Dodger, after witnessing Fagin's demise, disappears to be the best criminal in Fagin's honor... reappearing as Mack, the knife. Meanwhile, Nancy - who was originally from an aristocratic family ("Nancy" could be the nickname of Marianne Dashwood) -- and her sister, Elinor... or Nell (our heroine) could be short for Nellie (as in Mrs. Nellie Lovett) get themselves into quite a nasty bit of trouble with Bill Sikes ... and the fun starts there!

Power playwright, Doug DeVita insists that this play is "drug-induced" as he came up with the idea while on Imitrex to stop his migraine, with PBS playing in the background.

Adding to the excitement, Dennis Corsi directs Billie Aken-Tyers, Erika Amato, Chris Dunlop, Rob Maitner, Carole Monferdini, Sean Barry Parsons, Doug Hussein Rossi, and Jessica Vera in this literary mash-up of melodramatic musings written by an author whose star is truly on the rise.

DeVita's play, The Phillie Trilogy, won Scrap Mettle Arts Inaugural Emerging Playwrights Program competition and a presentation at the opening of the Great Griffin Reading Series at 13th Street Repertory Theater. His play, Just A Rumor (co-written with Gary Lyons) was a semi-finalist at the Eugene O'Neill Playwright's Conference and has had readings at New York's Abingdon Theatre Company and London's Menier Chocolate Factory. His produced work includes two musicals: The Tempest (music and lyrics by Brian Allan Hobbs) and As You Like It (music and lyrics by Paul Johnson); The Fierce Urgency Of Now, produced by Arouet in Seattle in 2014 and in New York as part of the 2016 Fresh Fruit Festival (directed by Dennis Corsi), and given a Stage2Page reading at Abingdon Theatre Company in 2015 (directed by Adam Fitzgerald). His ten-minute play, Checking The Basement for Leaks (the first play in The Phillie Trilogy) has been performed at the Gallery Players Black Box Festival of New Works in New York, The Driftwood Players Short Works Festival in Seattle, Ramapo College in New Jersey, and The Warner International Playwrights Festival in Connecticut. He has also collaborated with actress Lane Bradbury (the original Dainty June in Gypsy, starring Ethel Merman) on her one-woman show, Lane Bradbury: Let Me Entertain You, Again, which was performed at the Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles in 2013, and at Feinstein's/54 Below in New York in 2015. Other works include Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor; Goddess of The Hunt; and now, The Gruesomely Merry Adventures of NELL DASH, An Irrepressibly Cheerful Capitalist With A Vengeance. Doug belongs to both The 9th Floor Playwrights Collaborative and The 36th Street Writers Block (formerly Abingdon Theatre Playwrights Group 1) in Manhattan.