The trouble starts, as it so often does in Vermont, with an egg. Warren Elmore goes out to procure some choice organic eggs so his wife, Sunny, can make a perfect omelette for the guests at the bed-and-breakfast they run. Instead, he gets bitten by a werechicken. By the time the dust settles, the innkeeper of the Hatchford Hotel is sprouting feathers, a game warden is on a mission to exterminate every werechicken in the county, and a corrupt bank manager is circling the property, hoping to force the Elmores to sell.
That is the premise of "Hatchford Hotel," a brand-new musical comedy with book and lyrics by Adam Rabin and Greg Skillman and music by Rabin. The Shelburne Players, the volunteer community theater company, will give the piece its first full staging with a complete cast, running October 2 through 10 at the Shelburne Town Center on Shelburne Road. It is not a touring production or a licensed warhorse. It is a homegrown Vermont musical, written by two local musicians, about a fictional Vermont town.
The show's own tagline puts it plainly: "Werechickens are real. And they are frickin' unpleasant!" The promotional copy promises something "dark, fast-paced, and laugh-out-loud funny," set in a "suspiciously familiar corner of Vermont," diving into local lore, strange traditions, and "the kind of characters you swear you've met before… or are trying to avoid." The warning line — "No experience with Vermont required. Survival instincts recommended" — is the kind of joke that lands harder if you have ever tried to buy eggs from a neighbor.
The origin story is as Vermont as the subject matter. Rabin and Skillman have been friends and musical partners for more than three decades. They played together in bands including the Burlington prog-rock outfit Elephants of Scotland. Rabin is the musical director for this production.
When the pandemic shut down live music in 2020, the two found themselves stuck at home with no gigs to play. "It started as a lockdown project for Greg and me," Rabin told Seven Days. "We took one of these crazy ideas we'd been talking about and actually ran with it." The crazy idea was a supernatural musical comedy about a couple from Burlington who flee the city for a Vermont town in the sticks to open a bed-and-breakfast, only to discover that Hatchford is a hub for werechickens — humans who morph into chickens and tend to leave chaos in their wake.
The first iteration of the show was staged as a workshop at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington in 2022. It played to a sold-out room and got a standing ovation, which led to a second booking. But a workshop is not a full production, and for several years that was as far as the werechickens got. Rabin and Skillman shopped the play around until the Shelburne Players, as Seven Days put it, "pecked" it up. The current production is the show's first proper run with a full cast, and Rabin has said the score has evolved with each staging — meaning audiences in Shelburne will hear a version of the musical that did not exist in 2022.
The Shelburne Players are an apt home for it. Founded in 1971, the company is committed to producing high-quality, entertaining, accessible theater for all, mounts two shows a year in the spring and fall, and is comprised entirely of volunteers. Its mission is to provide affordable, quality theatrical experiences to all, and the pricing for "Hatchford Hotel" reflects that: tickets run $15 to $25, a fraction of what a professional regional production would charge. The company has staged dozens of shows over its five-plus decades, including its 40th production, "The Somewhat True Tale of Robin Hood," and it regularly draws cast members from Shelburne, Ferrisburgh, Vergennes, Hinesburg, South Burlington and Burlington. It is, in other words, exactly the kind of organization that would take a chance on an unproduced musical about werechickens.
The production is directed by Jonah Hagans, with Rabin serving as musical director and KariAnn Assur choreographing. Producers are Jennifer Boucher Albers and Anne Groom. The cast features Isaac Besso as Warren Elmore and Kitana Hudgens as Sunny Elmore, alongside Bee Hershorin as Fletcher Fairlee, Maria Muller as Sharon, Carly Bennett as Georgia, Ellis Doktorski as Chester, Jenna Raynoha as Dr. Addison Wallingford, Jessica DeMink-Carthew as Chelsea, Kate Jarvis as Clarendon and Wiley Delisa as Charlotte. An ensemble rounds out the company: Donald Zwyer, Ted Assur, KariAnn Assur, Beth DuRona and Corrine Mertz. Kayla Gohm Webster designed the set and serves as creature costumer — a job title that tells you most of what you need to know about the show — while Carly Bennett handles human costumes and Barry Bolio manages props.
The characters' names carry their own quiet joke. Fletcher Fairlee, Clarendon, Charlotte, Addison — they read like a roll call of Vermont place names pressed into service as people. The lumberjill with a medical degree, the plucky couple from big-city Burlington, the dutiful game warden: these are types, but they are types that anyone who has spent time in a Vermont general store will recognize. The show is, at heart, a satire of the state's self-image — the maple syrup, the local lore, the strange traditions — delivered at a pace that its own marketing describes as "moving fast."
It is worth noting what the show is not. It is not family entertainment. The Shelburne Players bill it as adult content with parental discretion advised. The humor is dark, the chaos is deliberate, and the werechicken premise is played for laughs rather than scares. This is a musical that opens with a man getting bitten while running an errand and escalates from there.
Performances are Friday, October 2 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, October 3 at 7 p.m.; Sunday, October 4 at 2 p.m.; Friday, October 9 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, October 10 at 2 p.m.; and Saturday, October 10 at 7 p.m. All shows are at the Shelburne Town Center, 5420 Shelburne Road in Shelburne. Tickets and information are available through the Shelburne Players at shelburneplayers.com.
For a company that has spent more than fifty years mounting the familiar — Robin Hood, the standard community-theater repertoire — a first-run musical about a werechicken infestation is a genuine departure. It is also a bet on the idea that Vermont's own absurdities are worth singing about. Rabin and Skillman spent the lockdown years writing the thing, then spent several more shopping it around. Now it gets six performances, a full cast, an original score, and a creature costumer. The werechickens, at last, have somewhere to roost.