Happy in the Poorhouse

Langston Hughes once asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” Derek Ahonen’s ensemble comedy Happy in the Poorhouse explores the same question, albeit with more madcap and less poetry. Mary and her husband, amateur mixed martial arts fighter Paulie, are planning a welcome home party for Mary’s ex-husband, Petie. What is already a recipe for disaster quickly becomes even more combustible when Petie brings his gay male nurse, Stevie, for Paulie and demands that Mary leave with him so they can rekindle their troubled marriage. In the middle of everything, Paulie’s sister Penny shows up with her new girlfriend and announces that she is giving up on her dream of being a country singer. Meanwhile, Mary has given up writing children’s books, leaving Paulie the only one in the family clinging to a dream. Happy in the Poorhouse is a brash and bold ensemble comedy with an underlying heart about the value of keeping your dreams.