Unnecessary Farce

January 28 – February 6, 2027

Waterfront Playhouse, Mallory Square, 407 Wall Street

The Waterfront’s mainstage returns to Paul Slade Smith, whose The Angel Next Door played there previously, with Unnecessary Farce. Two cops have set up a sting in a cheap motel, hoping to catch the mayor taking a bribe. There are two adjoining rooms, a video camera pointed at the wrong one, an accountant, three crooks, a Scottish hit man, and eight doors.

Smith’s play premiered in 2006 and has since become one of the most frequently produced comedies in American regional theater, largely on the strength of its construction — the plot is engineered so that every escalation follows logically from the last, however absurd things get.

Reviewers have called it the funniest thing they’d seen in years, and credited Smith with making the in-one-door, out-the-other machinery feel new again. It runs about two hours.

Schedule subject to change. Information courtesy of Waterfront Playhouse — visit waterfrontplayhouse.org for tickets and complete details.