The Gristmill Playhouse: A Nightmare in Three Acts

Fame is a Madness.

He brought you "S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller" and "The Union Club: A Subversive Thriller." Now the curtain rises on Don Winston’s most fiendish tale yet.

Betty Rose dreams of Broadway. Talented, ambitious, and obsessed, she was the biggest fish in college. But New York is a harsh wake-up. Unemployed and ignored, she faces a career as cocktail waitress instead of on the stage. And the clock is ticking.

She jumps at an internship at the country’s most famous summer stock playhouse, in spite of its bizarre, all-controlling reputation. There, she joins a family of eccentric and endearing fellow actors and bonafide stars, lorded over by the benevolent dictator Rex Terrell. With nonstop shows to sold-out crowds—tucked away in a charming, Americana village—the Gristmill Playhouse is every actor’s summer dream.

But when a fellow intern mysteriously vanishes after a cryptic warning, Betty Rose struggles to separate truth from make-believe even as she rises toward stardom. Is her growing terror and dementia a form of self-sabotage, or is the Gristmill grooming her for a final curtain call?

The Gristmill Playhouse. There’s no business like it.