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Brownbrokers
72nd Original Musical

Elsewards

based on Hansel and Gretel
by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm

Book and Lyrics by Jessie Hopkins
Music by Jerzy Fischer
Directed by Albert Huber

December 6-9, 2007
Thursday, Friday & Saturday at 8 PM
and Sunday at 2 PM
Stuart Theatre

Dark, absurd and uncanny, Elsewards is a musical that places the classic fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel in an urban forest where an appetite for metaphor leaves meaning ill-fed. From colossal cakes to man-eating printing presses, Elsewards tells the story of the search for meaning in a world made unreadable by its own verbosity.

This production is entered into the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival’s Musical Theatre division of the Michael Kanin Playwriting Award.

Plot Summary

Sixteen years old and tongue-tied, Harold Harrow is the son of an acclaimed novelist and stepson to a powerful literary critic.  When Harold inherits the coveted Hotel Maudlin, where he had been living with his famous parents, the elite Literati drive him out for his inability to articulate himself.
Meanwhile, Harold's stepsister Gretchen escapes from the Hotel, where her mother had hidden her on account of her "hideous" features. When Harold and Gretchen meet on the streets of Elsewards, Gretchen keeps her identity a secret, believing she is merely Harold’s "ugly stepsister.” The two develop an unconventional friendship and, with the help of a disillusioned old dandy, vow to help each other mean more than the roles that were written for them.

About Brownbrokers

Founded in 1935, Brownbrokers is a unique student organization that presents a full-scale student-written and student-directed musical each year as part of the Brown Theatre Season. Brownbrokers is a producing board consisting of peer-elected students who have participated in past Brownbrokers productions.

Complete artistic control over a Brown Theatre production is a rare and exciting opportunity for students, as evidenced by award-winning playwright Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night Of Ballyhoo, Parade), who began his career as the author of two Brownbrokers shows in the mid-1950s, and more recently by EMMA, the nationally acclaimed 2000 Brownbrokers show that was reprised at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., winning the American College Theatre Festival's Best Musical Award.