Frigid Festival Previews

The Question House

Produced by Breadbasket Productions

The Question House is the story of a little consulting firm with a big secret: the people who work there must speak only in questions or risk being struck dead by the hand of God. Or, at least, that's what owner and operator Harvey Krytz and his loyal secretary Margaret want everyone to think. Is Krytz crazy? What will happen if someone ends a sentence with a period? Audiences should prepare to laugh and squirm as they're sucked into a world in which the stakes are alarmingly high every time any character opens his mouth.

The Question House is the perfect farce for today's economic climate. It's about a boss who can't quite reconcile some unorthodox business practices with Jewish law (à la Bernie Madoff?), a secretary trying desperately to limit the damage, an agent of the law who doesn't know which end is up, and underlings who will do just about anything to hang onto a job. With the recession in full swing out there, getting to know the employees of The Question House may just make you feel a little better about your own job…or see the upside of unemployment.

I wrote The Question House when I was a college student, apparently filled with anxiety about what the corporate world might hold in store for me after graduation. Now, almost 10 years later, with corporate budgets being slashed right and left, anxiety about employment is a lot more commonplace. It may be a bad time to be a consultant, but it's a great time to revive this play. I am very glad that Catherine Siracusa and the members of the HB ensemble — especially Cam Kornman, who hung onto this script for eight years, waiting for a full production — were up for doing exactly that.

Tara Dairman, playwright