Chance poster: a man and a glamorous drag queen

2013 · A musical play

Chance

A musical play about love, risk and getting it right.

Nov 2011
Workshop production, York Theatre, New York
2013
World premiere staging, the Alcove Theater, San Francisco
2016
Fresh Fruit Festival, New York

A gay psychologist and a handsome young rent boy stumble down a unique path to healing when guided by a mysterious Hollywood glamor queen, played by a gender illusionist. Fifty-five-year-old Gregory has spent his adult life denying the loss he suffered as a young man during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. After a near-death experience, The Lady appears. Is she an inner guide from the Jungian collective unconscious, or a musical hallucination brought on by a small stroke?

Gregory is pushed out of his solitary reality by his unlikely muse and down the rabbit hole of a mid-life crisis, where he enters a turbulent, dangerous relationship with a young male escort named Chance.

Richard Isen was a member of Pen and Piano, NMTSF's resident writing company, which created the revue Show Me Yours.

The company

Music, book and lyrics by Richard Isen
Directed by Robert Kalfin, founder of the Tony Award-winning Chelsea Theater Center
Musical direction by jazz artist Tammy Hall

The companyRichard Hefner as Gregory · Randy Roberts as The Lady · Ken Lear as Chance

DesignScenery by Tony Dunnigan · Costumes by Corinne H. DiTullio · Lighting by Dylan West

What they said

“…a non-stop, intimate epic…”

“Buzzin’” Lee Hartgrave, BeyondChron

“…you must see Chance!”

Jan Wahl, KRON-4 TV

“…a fascinating evening of original musical theater…”

Richard Connema

“And God does it feel good to watch a new play that manages to feel personal without being self-indulgent and presents something cerebral without seeming self-important. What do they call that trick again? Oh yeah: good writing.”

Adam Brinklow, EDGE San Francisco