The Story

Modern-day Chicago. A cub reporter visits a retired Chicago police detective for a feature story about the case that made him famous – the gruesome murder of a CIA agent in a Chicago office building in 1948. Amid flashbacks, Detective Raymond Valente spins a gripping Cold War yarn. The reporter probes deeper and deeper into details the aging gumshoe would rather forget. Foggy recollections of long-ago glory days emerge from the shadows to reveal hidden truths of passionate affairs, traitorous intrigue, spiteful betrayals and grievous injustices. We meet Herbert Howard, a wealthy industrialist, and Belle, his younger, glamorous wife. She secretly gets her kicks as an incognito nightclub singer in the Windy City’s seedy underworld. He parades his trophy wife around town with lecherous pride while keeping secrets of his own. With Cold War paranoia a constant hovering menace, the story winds toward a shocking denouement, leaving the audience to ponder: Is justice delayed justice denied – or is it, like revenge, best served cold?

The Main Characters

Detective Valente

A handsome Chicago detective in his mid-twenties. Born and bred in Chicago’s notorious meat-packing district, he served with the Army in World War II. He’s bedeviled by the conflict’s untold horrors and aftermath, especially Stalin’s brutal repression of Eastern Europeans he and his platoon helped liberate. He spends sleepless nights in Southside bars with the city’s other nighthawks, brooding over the heroic death of his best buddy and commanding officer. By day, he's ambitious and earnest, but stuck on the vice beat busting hookers, pimps and johns. On his rounds, he happens to be the first cop on the scene of a horrific crime in a downtown skyscraper – an office worker sprawled on the floor, throat slashed. It looks like a robbery gone bad – except that the victim is a CIA agent and the office is a secret den of spies containing some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. As Valente works the case, he meets the love of his life, an unlikely witness who knows the traitorous killer’s identity. The only problem: Valente can’t have her unless he can convict the suspect......her husband!

Belle Howard

The wife of Herbert Howard, a wealthy industrialist. In her mid-twenties, she's smoking - with or without the diamond-studded cigarette holder frequently dangling from her lips. The youngest of seven from a poor family, she’s too ashamed and proud to discuss her background. She has a voice as beautiful as her visage and meets Herbert while performing in a community choir at an event he attended. He proposes on their second date, and she opts for the easy life as the wife of one of the wealthiest men in America. She quickly grows frightened by her husband’s strange mannerisms and bored by her life as his eye-candy socialite, so she launches a secret career as a lounge singer. She’s as sassy in her stage life as she is classy in her public persona. It’s a killer act.

Old Detective Valente

Our hero 60 years later. He's mostly confined to a nursing home, no longer well enough to see his beloved Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. He loves telling war stories from his days as one of the Windy City’s most famous detectives. More than anything, he wants the world to remember his greatest victory on his terms – as a masterful piece of detective work that sent a dangerous traitor to the electric chair. Nobody needs to know the sloppy details of police work that today’s bleeding-heart, pussy-footed liberals might find objectionable. They never lived on the verge of nuclear annihilation at the hands of an evil communist menace. He’s become an irascible old coot in his old age but his mind is still razor sharp. He slobs around the nursing home, baiting the staff, but uses his laptop to endlessly view old news clips of his glory days. He never married.

Herbert Howard

A wealthy industrialist. He’s a fidgety curmudgeon in his 50s who always seems to be hiding something even when he’s not. Whip-smart as a child, he was smothered by an overbearing mother who drummed into him irrational fears about loose women and deadly germs. He also served in Europe in the war, but was discharged under suspicious circumstances, leaving him conflicted – enraged at being ousted, yet proud enough of his service to have cabinets full of war trophies in his mansion. After the war, he dabbled in a little bit of everything – manufacturing, real estate, movies and liberal philanthropy – and becomes the richest man in America. When the CIA needs space for its growing Chicago station, he figures it’s his patriotic duty to provide the front for free in one of his skyscrapers. He waits until late in life to marry and hopes his carefree bride will change her wayward ways to settle down as a dutiful wife, but she’s as reckless and restless as he is obsessive and compulsive.

Demo Tracks

The Perp Walk

This is the opening number of the musical. Old Detective Valente is viewing a Youtube video about the famous case that made his career 60 years previously. Suddenly the video is replicated as live action on the stage, and we've flashed back to Chicago 1948. The prime suspect in the case of the murder of a CIA agent is being led out of the Police station by the young Detective Valente.

Remember Me

Our Femme Fatale, Belle Howard, has a secret life singing in seedy nightclubs in Downtown Chicago. Detective Valente, dead beat after a long night, drops in to a bar and hears the chanteuse sing this number.

Out There

In this number we are introduced to the lawless, violent world of Detective Ray Valente - nighthawk of 1940's Chicago.

Different Spaces

This number occurs after Detective Ray Valente has been to interview Herbert Howard, an extremely wealthy man who owns the office building in which the CIA agent was murdered. Valente (and the audience) have noticed that all does not seem well with The Howard's marriage and after Valente leaves Belle and Herbert retire to separate rooms to sing their thoughts.

End of Act 1 - The Plan

At the end of Act 1, Valente is now totally under the spell of the beautiful Belle Howard. She has told him that her husband, Herbert, murdered the CIA agent, and she's been living a life of hell as his wife. Together they hatch a deadly plan...

Creatives

Mike Woolmans, Music, Book & lyrics

Mike Woolmans is an award-winning British Composer based in London. He is the only composer ever to have been commissioned to write a full-length musical for BBC Radio 3, and he was commissioned by Sir Alan Ayckbourn to write a musical for The Stephen Joseph's Theatre in Scarborough. Mike started his career at The BBC and wrote countless jingles for BBC Radio One, winning several awards. He also appeared on the air every weekday afternoon as Mikey, part of Steve Wright's famous Posse, and had a hit single as one half of Arnee and the Terminaters - with an appearance on Top of the Pops! Mike also worked at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop - the in-house synthesised music department. He left the BBC to go freelance as a composer and has written many themes and scores for TV, Film and Radio.

Phil Kuntz, Book & lyrics

Phil Kuntz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist specializing in investigative and computer-assisted reporting. His work has exposed wrongdoing by powerful politicians in both U.S. political parties. He was a research consultant for Oscar-winner Alex Gibney's HBO documentary on Frank Sinatra, based in part on Phil's book "The Sinatra Files". His first play, "Count Basie Visits the Count Basie", will be performed at a theatre named after the Jazz great in Red Bank, New Jersey. Phil has been to hundreds of Bruce Springsteen concerts and lives on the Jersey Shore with his wife and twin boys.

Website Design

Francisco Figueira | Rajeev Gill

Direction

Mike Woolmans & Phil Kuntz

Demo Vocals

Mike Woolmans & Deborah Dutcher

Photography

Yassine Anthonisen Lazib

Costumes

Grith Rahbek

Make-up

Matilde Meiling

+45 29891610

The Detective

Bogdan Gorgos

+45 28993821

The Femme Fatale

Vanina Petrova

+4571398012

The Husband

Jesper Keller

The Old Detective

Frode Schwartz

+45 40327331

A new musical drama