Is He Dead? at The Adobe Theater

Mark Twain wrote Is He Dead? In 1898 during a lecture tour abroad, but a combination of many factors prevented it from ever being produced. In 2002, the manuscript of the play was re-discovered and given to David Ives (All in the Timing) to adapt and stage for Broadway, where it was lauded as “shriekingly funny.” In this madcap comedy in the cross-dressing tradition of Charlie’s Aunt, we meet Jean-Francois Millet, a young genius painter, deeply in debt, whose only way to pay his debts is to die, as only dead painters obtain fame and fortune. Millet fakes his death and passes himself off as his sister, the Widow Tillou. How will he get out of a dress and back into life with his sweetheart?