Bombshells
Full Length Play, Screwball Comedy / 5m, 4f
Zany hijinks and nonstop hilarity explode across the stage as literal and figurative bombshells drop from start to finish in this wild screwball farce. It’s the swankiest penthouse in London, and it’s been rented out for pennies on the dollar. The top floor of a tall building isn’t the safest place to party when the Nazis are bombing London on a nightly basis, but a little thing like the blitz won’t stop our boys from throwing a blowout the night before shipping out. Four young soldiers from disparate origins: Jersey a motor mouth sailor, Stillwater a rambunctious cowboy, Mousehole a charming British Lord, and Skatch...a Canadian. Four young women from disparate backgrounds: Garboldisham an elegant British Countess, Mary a London Cockney “Rosie the Riveter,” Jane an eccentric American, and Lulu a French debutante...or is she? The planned night of libations, love songs, and romance, devolves into madcap chaos as the party gets hijacked by the ambitions of a bellicose commanding officer, and the nefarious plot of an undercover Nazi spy. Insanity reigns as the various plots careen off the rails and the play hurtles towards an explosive climax where the girls want to rescue the boys and the boys want to rescue the girls, and everyone wants to fall in love.
Production History
Bombshells received a staged reading by Schreiner University and Playhouse 2000 in Kerrville, TX, on May 03, 2024.
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Bombshells received its World Premiere by Playhouse 2000 in Kerrville, TX, on February 07, 2025 and ran through February 23.
Jesirae Kessler (left) as Lulu, Irec Hargrove (center) as Jersey and Jessica Sturm (right) as Mary.
Brad Gilbert (center) as Mousehole, Jessica Sturm (right) as Mary.
Tasha Remschel (left) as Garbo and Treston Woods (right) as Stillwater.
A note on the text:
Lemuel Petty Mitchell was a tall, barrel chested, North Texas cowboy who, as he said, was not so much raised as grew up like a weed, a stone’s throw from the Oklahoma state line. In 1941, when the United States entered World War Two, and at the age of nineteen, he volunteered for the Army, dropping out of college to do so. From a boy he had dreamed of being a pilot. Lem and thirty-eight other men graduated flight class together. Lem and two other men from that flight class survived the war. He flew one hundred eighty combat missions, primarily delivering paratroopers as the pilot of the “Katy Jean”, his unkillable C-47 Skytrain.
Some forty years later, with a big toothy grin and a twinkle in his eye, he would regale his grandson with wild and hilarious stories of his adventures in Europe during the war: pilots taking turns flying under the eiffel tower; stealing a car from a captured Nazi air base, and joyriding it around the countryside; losing every other plane in his squadron at the battle of Holland; going to see a musical revue in Paris and the whole chorus line dancing out topless (my grandmother’s favorite story); and, of course, renting out a posh London penthouse with several other G.I.’s, only for the boys and their dates to end up hiding under the furniture as the blitz rattled chunks of the ceiling loose.
As a boy listening to those stories, the war sounded like a grand adventure, full of colorful characters and feats of derring-do. As an adult, I realize how often my grandfather chuckled through stories that must have been terrifying in the moment. Perhaps it was a coping mechanism, but it seems that a good many of the young people of that generation maintained an attitude of bemusement in regards to the war, well aware of the inanity of life in the military machine and the absurdities of life in a world gone mad. It’s no wonder that the “military farce” became its own subgenre of fiction in the wake of the war. In this spirit, I wish to dedicate this true story (slightly embellished) to Lemuel Petty Mitchell, Captain of the Katy Jean, and his indomitable sense of humor. May we all never lose our willingness to laugh at our troubles, no matter how tough the times may seem.