Synopsis
Bad Madison Moody may or may not be dead. She can’t tell.
She inexplicably finds herself at the bottom of a cold, dark, abandoned septic
tank talking to the ghost of her Aunt Virginia. Madison was super bad to her
when Aunt Virginia was alive, and she has been even worse to the rest of her
family ever since. And now, Virginia is not pleased.
Madison Moody is bad to the bone. She is a beautiful,
clever, funny, chain-smoking, hard-drinking woman who is now in a wheelchair –
although nobody knows why. She has just rolled into town and tossed her family
out of their home upon discovering that she is actually the sole heir to the
property on Cape Cod.
Madison’s ditzy sister, Grace Bango, has a tendency to screw
things up. She is so bad at her job as a beauty consultant organizing house
parties, that her loyal, punch-drunk husband, Dirge Bango, has to patrol her
parties like a prison guard to prevent her agitated guests from leaving. In fact, bad luck is the constant companion
of the lovable but dysfunctional Bango family. Their every endeavor seems to
have disastrous consequences, always noted by their strange, gossipy neighbors.
Their 15-year-old daughter Poe is pretty and intelligent,
but she is bored and depressed. She wants to just disconnect from reality. Her
strange Abraham Lincoln look-alike friend, Gaylord, introduces her to magic
mushrooms on an island of crazed, carnivorous flies. She has decided that the
best way to truly disconnect is to actually become crazy, for she believes life
would be much more pleasant living in a mental hospital as a catatonic
vegetable. Aunt Madison turns Poe’s life upside-down, and she might actually
make Poe’s dream of lunacy come true.
The only other person who might be worse than Madison is her
ex-best friend, Gloria, the Amazonian, pill-popping, obsessive nurse who runs
the “Ann Coulter for President” website. Madison has a long history of
humiliating Gloria as well, and a grudge-carrying, drug-addicted nurse is not a
good thing, especially if she happens to be your nurse. Poe knows – she
experiences it first hand when she’s admitted into Brewster Mental Hospital.
There is one person who could bring some insight into
Madison’s motives -- the previously mortal Aunt Virginia, who now, as a ghost,
amuses herself by going to the local AA meetings – which, by the way, are
attended by the entire town, and are decidedly not anonymous.
The outrages Madison perpetuates reach the boiling point.
She disappears, and each character thinks the other has murdered her. No one
really knows, however, not even the audience and not even Madison herself,
whether Madison is dead or alive, until twisted events unravel to reveal
Madison’s bizarre fate.
