Based on a long-unpublished short story by Mark Twain, this musical adaptation by Aaron Posner and James Sugg tells a tale set in 1876 in the small town of Deer Lick, Missouri, where our young heroine, Mary Gray (Jillian Louis) loves and is loved by our hero, Hugh Gregory (played by Aaron Young, and the show mines a lot of laughs in the misuse of his first name because it sounds like “you”). Mary’s father, John (Trip Plymale) is a dour, hardscrabble farmer who’d prefer a rich man for his daughter, but he’s grudgingly willing for the pair to wed—until he discovers that his brother, David, will leave everything to Mary in his will, provided she does not marry Hugh. Enter a mysterious stranger (Nick Santa Maria), complete with black cape, hat, and a plethora of odd foreign accents, who announces that he’s royalty and wants to marry Mary himself, and you’ve got the picture.
Nick Santa Maria, Jillian Louis and Aaron Young in Florida Studio Theatre’s A Murder, A Mystery & A Marriage.