"BRIDESMAIDS MEETS HALLOWEEN..."
After a Hollywood Housewife's recent scandal ignites a flurry of backlash on social media, she and her entourage flee to the countryside to hide from the haters. But things go horribly, comically wrong as the ladies find themselves in the middle of a manhunt for the Berkshire Strangler. Mistaken identities, bad cell service, power outages, Roomba, and a mysterious landlady all drive this hilarious thriller from the writers that brought you The Buffalo Kings, The People Downstairs, and The Night Before.
acclaim for nightsweat
" Take a cast of irreverent women, throw in biting jokes about Florida and cancel culture, add a dash of murder and you have the perfect recipe for a fun theater experience."
Maggie Duffy, Tampa Bay Times
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"nothing escapes Ms. Symons’ satirical spear. Wokeness, pronouns, white privilege, Ozempic, don’t say gay, horror movie tropes, fake news, Tucker Carlson, and on and on. Plus there’s a running gag about Hall & Oats that works every time. If you need a hearty evening of laughter, this one is for you."
Jon Palmer Claridge, Creative Loafing Tampa
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"Symons throws out the laugh lines like darts — some topical, some groan-worthy, some redundant, some genuinely funny — figuring, it seems, that if one doesn’t stick, the next one may hit the target. And the targets are plentiful."
David Warner, The Gabber
"Unapologetic, irreverent comedy."
Creative Loafing Tampa
"Hilarious thriller"
BroadwayWorld
“In recent years, theaters across the country have produced a slew of social-issue-driven plays tackling the dire circumstances humankind finds ourselves in,” Symons says in her program note. “Not that those plays aren’t thought-provoking works of art which provide deeper insight into the complicated world we inhabit, but my question is this: Why is theatre saddled with this responsibility? Why are theatre artists suddenly called upon to be activists? What happened to storytellers who seek to entertain or help audiences escape from our troubled world? Why are regional audiences so often served hefty portions of lentils
and dark leafy greens and denied chocolate cherry tarts?”
Personally, I like a balanced meal of juicy meat, healthy vegetable and delectable desserts. Symons’ previous offerings were all soup-to-nuts, tragicomic fare, serving up a combination of laughter and social commentary – the endurance of female friendships in Lark Eden, the lessons of family life in The Buffalo Kings, the importance of telling even dark stories in Naming True, and the love of a father for his daughter in The People Downstairs.
“This play of yours — a chocolate cherry tart as you call it in your program note — would seem to be just for laughs. Is that fair to say?” I asked Symons during our phone chat. “Is it really a vacation from social messaging?”
“At the end of the day, it does say something beyond the laughs,” Symons admitted. “I don’t think people will be talking about it when they leave the theater, but I think it does say something about the times we live in, this culture of backlash.”
Perhaps in taking things too seriously, in censoring people with unpopular ideas, she suggested, we are missing the real danger we are all facing – “The real enemy is the guy with the chain saw at the door.”
Margo Hammond, Creative Pinellas
Natalie Symons
Author / Playwright