A Little Bird Told Me

A gilded, lavishly designed new comedy by Writer-Director William T. Buster, this is a love letter to the great 1930’s comedies. Set in 1938 New York, among the Park Avenue elite, A Little Bird Told Me is a living tribute to such stylish shows as The Women, Private Lives, and The Front Page. This chic and cutting play features sharply drawn characters, elegantly attired, each with comic quirks and dark inner reaches. Drinks flow freely, furs, gowns and jewels abound, and elegantly-attired women take off the gloves and explode in lethal jealousy in some wild cat-fights. One man is caught in the middle of them all. Action takes place in the posh Park Avenue office of Dr. Kendall Garret, (William Buster) a prominent psychiatrist. He caters to an elite clientele of some of the most famous, and infamous women in New York. Included are a young Broadway star, a guilt-ridden victim of the casting couch, Sheila Martin- (Christiane Amorosia) the doctor’s jealous and voguish wife Mrs. Garret- (Adyana delaTorre), a seriously disturbed alchoholic nymphomaniac, Mrs Wallace- (Rachel Kincaid), cold society matron Patricia Pepperdine -(Nadja Hoyer-Booth), and her sexually precocious 16 yr-old neice Paula Pepperdine- (Meg Phillips). All women are drawn to the doctor through the vicious gossip in the prominent columns of the day. He is wrongly credited with providing sexual and psychiatric help. This only increases his appeal, and it becomes impossible to get an appointment! Out to get him, in a vendetta against psychiatry, is feared columnist Leona Bird-(Linda Gilmore), who pens an acidic column entitled A Little Bird Told Me. She tracks the doctor’s every step, and those of his clients. His new receptionist, young and outspoken Eileen Miller from Iowa, (a star-turn by Keri Seymour), is new to New York, and the rampant elitism, the malignant class structure in place. She is repulsed and bewildered by the madness and superficial lives of those around her.  In the end, the secretary, herself feeling betrayed, sets up a hilarious, explosive final scene. The doctor is ambushed by his most unstable patients and Leona Bird, setting in motion a physical assault at the hands of Herbert Wallace, a jealous husband (Nick Santasier). Leading into the doctor’s nervous breakdown onstage, we see the destruction of his practice, the end of his marriage, and the poignant revelation of why he chose psychiatry to begin with.  Rounding out the cast are a voluptous party girl predisposed to attempt suicide for attention, Mrs. Zimmerman (Seregon O’Dassey) and the mentor of Dr Garret, Dr. Himmel from Yale, (Miles Berman).