What would you do with your own magic genie? Who hasn’t spent some minutes daydreaming about what you would ask for if a magic lamp were to cross your path? More money, good health, world peace? Well what if the magic genie in the lamp wasn’t a genie but a Jinni, and he took your wishes and turned them into curses. The money you get turns out to be stolen from a bank and you are sent to jail for the rest of your life. The good health you wished for starts a zombie apocalypse that you alone are immune to. As for world peace . . . no one can fight if there is no one to fight.

After Disney’s Aladdin and the 1965 TV show I Dream of Jeannie we have begun to think of genies as friendly, well meaning beings of great power. However in a great deal of literature the mythical beings known as Jinn are more likely to be portrayed as creatures of dark humor and malevolent intent. This is one of the ideas behind the Waterworks Players next show Who’s on First by Jack Sharkey.

The show has nothing to do with the Abbot and Costello skit talking about baseball players nicknames and more in common with the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. Who’s on First is the nightmare comedy that keeps the players trapped in a party that begins at 8, and at 8, and at 8. Camille is giving the party.

Don shows up in a jealous funk about his wife, Alice, whom he suspects of seeing another man. When Alice and Ben have arrived, it turns out their relationship is innocent. But by the time Don realizes this he has already shot Ben, Alice and even Camille. Camille wishes that things might have turned out differently and that is what happens. The dark humored Jinn twisting their dying wishes. All concerned find themselves back at the party’s beginning again and again doomed to live that same hour over and over again in strange and crazy ways. A labyrinth of hilarity exits to a shocker of an ending.

Auditions are Sunday June 15 and Monday the 16th at 7:30 at the Waterworks Playhouse on Industrial Park Road, Farmville. There are parts for 2 men and 2 women. Come prepared to read from the script with different accents. In addition, we need a number of stagehands to assist during technical week rehearsals and the four public performances.

The show runs July 18,19 and the 25, and 26th at 8 pm. For more information or to volunteer call the Waterworks Office at 434-392-3452.