McKeever Play To Travel Overseas Next Month

By Bill Hirschman

Michael McKeever and Christopher Renshaw are going to London.

And they’re taking the code with them.

Well, they’re taking The Code with them, The Code being the acclaimed play that McKeever wrote and Crenshaw directed back in April 2022 at Ronnie Larsen Presents’ production at the Foundry.

The Southwark Playhouse Elephant company – source of the hits Operation Mincemeat and the Curious Case of Benjamin Button – will preview a production Sept. 12 to Oct, 12 with an official opening night Sept. 17.

The play looks at the hidden rules of Hollywood through the lens of four characters navigating a town where appearance shapes possibility.

It focuses mercilessly on the industry’s hypocritical denial and repression of many of its artists’ homosexuality since its founding.

And in a broader relevance, it excoriates “mainstream” society’s thorough-going violation of individuality by insisting that our icons (and by extension, all of us) cannot publicly be who they really are – sexuality being only one facet.

McKeever said, “It’s fascinating to me how relevant the issues in the play have become in these strange times in which we live.”

In rereading the script, McKeever felt a growing desire to rewrite some of his work, so he added a 20-minute of new material to The Code.

Florida Theater On Stage’s review in 2022 held: “What pushes this fine work into a deeper pertinence for Florida audiences who still read a newspaper in the spring of 2022 is the inescapable resonance. These forces depicted from 70 years ago are thriving in Tallahassee and the nationwide GOP this month – worse that they are duplicitously covered up with more finesse (and sometimes blithely with less) than in 1950 when the play is set.”

The Miami-based Crenshaw – who led Miami New Drama’s A Wonderful World – will direct the London version. His cast includes John Partridge, Solomon Davy, Nick Blakeley and features the Tallulah Bankhead character to be portrayed by Tracie Bennett, She played Judy Garland in London and New York runs of Over The Rainbow

The local production did so well that McKeever began shopping \it in New York where his Daniel’s Husband and Mr. Parker had been produced. He connected with a producer he knew, Tim Kiersted. That led to multiple backer’s auditions and readings that involved Bennett whom McKeever knew socially.

The prolific Florida-based playwright and co-founder of Zoetic Stage, said, “Needless to say, I’m thrilled. I’m really, really excited.”