A community theater company, the Merrillville Merry Art Players, has scheduled a melodrama, Suffer The Long Night, to kick off its new season. Unfortunately, opening night is in the middle of flu season, and 19 of the 23 original cast members come down with the flu. The show must go on, however, so the remaining players soldier on with the aid of few replacements. What else could possibly go wrong now? In a word, everything: out-of-sync light cues and gunshots, missing props, missing dialogue, matches that won't light, falling lights, a mustache that won't stay on, a traumatic injury to the face, using pointed fingers as guns when a pistol is suddenly misplaced. The list goes on and on.

Our play within a play?: Suffer The Long Night involves two escaped criminals, Chops and Louie, who take a family hostage on Christmas eve while the thugs hunt for buried jewels. Will the innocent Burling family survive? More importantly, will the American Theatre survive?