Synopsis.
It's Complicated is a drawing-room farce set in a large, expensive Chicago apartment in the spring of 1924. The evening begins when Elise, witty, amoral, and entirely ungovernable, arrives at the penthouse of William, the architect who owns and designed it. She has a key. She has a room. She has also brought Leo, a young man she has been entertaining who does not know she is engaged to someone else.
William has his own plans for the evening, a dinner with Iris, a woman who is genuinely interested in his architecture and possibly in him. The apartment fills rapidly. Elise hides Leo. William hides Iris. Roger, Elise's fiance, arrives looking for her. Margaret, William's mother, arrives uninvited, trailed by her own secret, Philippe, her driver and lover. By the end of the first act, every character is concealing at least one other character, the apartment has become a theater of closing doors, and a large decorative bush in the corner has become a hiding place.
The second act accelerates the machinery. Elise and William have made a bet. He will bed Iris while she entertains Leo, and she will leave. The bet falls apart in every direction. Iris turns out to have her own connections to Leo. Roger, who has been hiding in the bush the entire second act, emerges at the worst possible moment and delivers a comprehensive accounting of everything he witnessed. Margaret's secret surfaces. William wins a bet he cannot collect on.
The play ends where it began: Elise and William alone, a drink between them, neither willing to say what is obvious. She stays. He lets her. The comedy is over and the actual subject of the play, which is love, specifically the kind neither of them can admit to, has been present in every scene without either of them naming it.
Thematic Core.
It's Complicated is a play about two people who have constructed elaborate social arrangements to avoid the most ordinary thing in the world. The farce is not decorative, it is structural. The more complicated their evening becomes, the clearer it is that they are two people who should simply say something true to each other. The comedy is in the delay. The play's purpose is in what the delay costs.
Tone and Register.
The play is indebted to Wilde and Coward. Wit as armor, language as seduction and deflection simultaneously. Elise and William are both too intelligent for the situations they have created and too attached to those situations to escape them. The comedy is dry and fast. The emotional register underneath it is genuine.
Character Breakdown.
Eight roles. Four women, four men. No doubling required.
ELISE30s. The most dangerous person in any room she enters, not through malice but through complete indifference to consequences. She is charming, dishonest, and deeply attached to William in a way she would never admit. The role requires comic timing, genuine warmth beneath the armor, and the ability to make lies seem like acts of generosity. This is the play's center of gravity.
WILLIAM30s. An architect who has designed himself a life with no rough edges and is surprised to find himself bored. Dry, controlled, genuinely witty. His love for Elise is the one thing in his life he cannot architect his way around. He knows this. He does nothing about it.
IRISLate 20s-30s. A genuine person who has wandered into a room full of people for whom sincerity is a social liability. She is the play's moral compass, not preachy, just honest, which makes her the most disruptive presence in the room. Her exit in Act Two is the play's most quietly devastating moment.
ROGER30s. Elise's fiance. Deeply, sincerely, almost heroically oblivious. The most likeable person in the play. His final monologue from inside the bush, a comprehensive, accurate, and furious accounting of the evening, is the play's structural release valve.
MARGARET50s-60s. William's mother. Formidable, impossible, and hiding exactly the same kind of attachment she would condemn in her son. Her relationship with Philippe is the play's darkest comic mirror.
LEO20s. Young, pretty, not particularly bright, and more resilient than he appears. His cheerful willingness to go along with escalating absurdity makes him essential to the machinery of Act Two.
PHILIPPE40s-50s. Margaret's driver. The only character in the play who knows exactly what he wants and has no interest in pretending otherwise. His one extended scene is the play's most unexpected moment of moral clarity.
JANINEVariable. A brief role in Act One. Can be doubled with stage management if production requires.
Production Requirements.
A single location: a large, expensive Chicago penthouse apartment. Multiple doors, two bedrooms, kitchen, closet, powder room, balcony, and a large decorative bush downstage right. The set should feel expensive and slightly impersonal, a space designed to impress rather than to live in.
Eight actors total. Four women, four men. No doubling required. Janine's role is brief and can be cut in smaller productions.
Running time approximately 100 to 110 minutes. There is no intermission.
Chicago, 1924. Stock period costumes, no specialty items required. Roger's second-act plant disguise requires a simple construction, a coat of attached greenery is sufficient.
No flies required. No special effects. Period-appropriate recorded music cued at two moments. Lighting is standard interior. Sound is minimal: the record player, door knocks, a telephone.
Rights.
World premiere available. The play has not been produced. Readings and workshops have occurred. The playwright retains all rights. Available for development, festival production, or full production. For the complete manuscript: mikebouchard@gmail.com