The Blue Comet

7:30 pm on 11/1-2 and 7-8 and 2 pm, 11/3 & 9, Bartell Theatre. $20.

media release: The Blue Comet will be Madison Shakespeare Company’s first presentation as a resident company of Madison’s Bartell Theatre, with performances November 1-9 on the Drury stage. Set in outer London of the 1920s in the home of the pleasantly artistic Bedale family, the story opens in the middle of a three-pronged crisis. Expenditures on books, paints, and exotic hens far exceed the family income. A giant rogue comet is on a collision course with Earth. And a long-lost Australian relative is coming to visit. Faith and scientific convictions are challenged by the impending end of the world, and the gravitational pull of cousin Christopher disrupts the order of things long before the comet’s arrival. The comedy by prolific author Eden Phillpotts was performed extensively in England in 1926-1927 but has never before been fully staged on American soil.