Reading: Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil

With memorable tunes from vaudeville composers such as Irving Berlin and Harold Arlen comes Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil, a new jukebox musical devised by Timothy Krause (a Portland theatre- maker whose historical drama Bread and Roses won Portland Civic Theatre Guild's 2024 New Play Award). Inside the Paradise Music Hall, heavenly voices lead to hellish choices when Frank, a vaudeville producer, strikes a Faustian deal to save his theater by casting Helen, a fallen angel seeking a comeback, and three aspiring performers, Harry, Jack, and Will. However, Helen's manipulative ways and selfish desires lead the whole gang straight to Hades to confront dark truths and moral dilemmas through increasingly surreal vaudeville acts that include song and dance, magic, drag, and even the River Styx embodied by circus acrobats. Pack Up Your Sins shines its spotlight on ambition, betrayal, and the consequences of choices in a harmony of comedy, drama, and fantasy. (This production is a reading of the play.)