Mame

Act One

Orphaned Patrick Dennis, aged 10, and his nanny, frumpy and anxious Agnes Gooch, are wandering the streets of New York City, slightly lost as they search for Patrick’s Aunt Mame, who lives at Three Beekman Place. Patrick reads the instructions from the will of his late father, which illustrate that he is to live with Mame Dennis, but the “trustee with sole authority” over his fate is the Knickerbocker Bank. Agnes prays for guidance and, even though his father was a Presbyterian, convinces Patrick to join her in a song (“St. Bridget”).

Meanwhile, in elegant Three Beekman Place, giddy, unconventional, charismatic socialite Mame Dennis is throwing a cocktail party in celebration of the “gin in the bathtub” and all the friends she hasn’t met yet (“It’s Today”). She chats with her best friend, the chic alcoholic operetta star Vera Charles, and her friendly suitor, the overlooked publisher Lindsay Woolsey, and jokes with the crowd as her houseboy, Ito, shows Agnes and Patrick into