by Hallie Quinn. @halliequinn_.
INDIANAPOLIS, IN - The opening performance of Dog-Eat-Dog Playhouse’s Sweet Charity sparked joy and excitement from the company; well, except for Samantha Brum (Ponytail Girl/Ensemble), who spent the evening waiting on a delivery from Polly’s Posies that never came.
“I’m not mad, truly I’m not,” claimed Brum, while trying to reach her partner of seven months, Ricky Vessels, on FaceTime for the fourth time in a row. “I could have sworn I told him that I was the featured dancer in the ‘Frug’, and that my favorite flowers were white roses, but it must have slipped my mind. Besides, he’s been so busy making his Hot Ones reaction videos. You guys are seriously going to love him...let me try calling again.”
Logan Holland, close friend and castmate of Brum, offered some helpful insight into the situation at hand.
“I don’t know why Sam is surprised,” Holland shouted at us, so that she could be heard over the sounds of Brum’s sobs coming from the upstairs bathroom. “He always turns down her invites to our company parties so that he can focus on ‘vibes with the guys.’ Last week, I overheard her ask Ricky what he would do if she got hit by a bus. His response was ‘depends; single or double-decker?’”
We turned to Polly Paulson, owner of Polly’s Posies, in hopes of an explanation - but mostly just to get Brum to stop singing “Chasing Pavements” to herself.
“I would have remembered someone named Ricky calling,” Paulson groaned while aggressively removing a hangnail with a pair of pruning shears. “That was the name of my son’s imaginary friend. Every time I hear the name ‘Ricky’, I disassociate and down a bottle of Riesling. If you must know, my bowel movements were regular that next morning, so I’m telling you, he didn’t call.”
At press time, Brum plans on making the drive to Chicago to visit Ricky on her next day off, with his favorite Axe spray and vape flavor in tow. Once we got a hold of Vessels in hopes of a comment, he refused, but did unconvincingly suggest that he had “never heard of a Samantha Brown.”