Mouse in the House is now available!

My 31st play with Pioneer Drama Service (and 35th play overall) has just been published. It's titles Mouse in the House, and if you love my crazy, over-the-top farces like It's a Madhouse! or Freaky Tiki, they you're definitely going to check out this one! 

Rodent trouble

Mouse in the House is a full-length comedy about Jeff and Quinn, a young couple who see a mouse in the Victorian home they're selling just moments before their open house is set to begin. Their hard-driving realtor Moira has the solution. Call an exterminator--and fast!

But kindhearted Quinn puts her foot down, insisting that no traps, cats, or poisons be used. And so, unbeknownst to the others, each of the three calls an exterminator specializing in "humane" methods that include everything from kazoos to Viking weapons (Quinn never said anything about swords and war hammers!).

The result? Pure havoc as the exterminators prove better at chasing off the potential buyers than the mouse!

Mouse in the House has a cast of 33, although with doubling you can perform it with as few as 18 actors. The play uses only a single living room set and runs about 70 minutes.

If you'd like to know which Netflix original series inspired Mouse in the House, check out my earlier post about the play here. To read a sample from the script or review the ordering information, visit the play's page on the Pioneer website by clicking here.

The perfect town

Readers of the script might wonder why I set the play in Wabasha, Minnesota. Well, bear with me. There are actually several parts to that answer.

My research into possible settings started with one of the exterminators. They're intended to be a legitimate exterminating company named Sheldon's Touchy Feely Pest Control. The thing is that they happen to be avid Viking reenactors as well, which explains why they arrive with those aforementioned Norse weapons in hand. And that, of course, meant that the play had to take place in the great state of Minnesota.

But which city? Well, I wanted the action to be set in a stately Victorian home. The place means a lot to Quinn--she grew up there, after all--and it just seemed to be that the home would seem even more meaningful if it had some history and some elegance to it.

When I Googled a list of Minnesota cities noted for their Victorian homes, the first one that popped up was St. Paul. Well, that was just too big. This story had to be set in a small town.

The next few places on the list held much more promise: Stillwater, Minnetonka, Rochester. But I also needed the town to be quiet. Very quiet. One of the couples looking to buy the house got themselves into a horribly noisy situation with their current home (think planes, trains, and golf balls) so they're desperate to find a place that's much more peaceful and relaxed (which is what makes the aforementioned havoc even funnier).

So I Googled the quietest town in the Gopher State and up popped one place with a very musical, very Minnesota-sounding name: Wabasha. This picturesque town of 2500 flannel-wearing souls on the Mississippi River turned out to be perfect. The nearest airport is 40 miles away, there's not much train activity (other than the Holiday Train I refer to in the script), and golf courses are minimal.

It wasn't until later that I learned that the town was also the setting for Grumpy Old Men, the 1993 comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Which makes me very happy. Mouse in the House may not have an all-out brawl on the ice. But I hope it will make people laugh as much as that comedy classic.