by Suzanne Daub
Early this spring, a board member from the Nantucket Performing Arts Center (NPAC) approached director Mark Shanahan during intermission of Theatre People, or The Angel Next Door in the Westport Country Playhouse, and the conversations and collaborations that followed brought this theater production to our island in record time. “He came to me and said ‘I think this would be great on Nantucket,’” Shanahan recalls. What typically takes a year to plan became a summer reality, part of an new chapter in Nantucket’s theater scene.
For the Nantucket production, Shanahan brought his original design team but recast entirely with seasoned professionals. “The cast are all Broadway veterans and tv and film regulars…you’ll probably recognize some,” he said. “It’s always a pleasure to re-explore a play… this time I have a different cast, so I’ve made some changes. It’s great to see how different actors react to a play”
“What still surprises me is how often the most powerful moments in a production come from something completely unplanned. You try to prepare as best you can before you start, but then in rehearsal, someone tries something new, or a mistake turns into something brilliant. And suddenly, there’s the unexpected laugh you didn’t know would be there, or that moment that makes the audience hold its breath. If you stay open to those discoveries, they often become the heart of the show — the moments audiences remember long after they leave the theatre. We’ve found a lot of heart in Theatre People. A lot of laughter- and a lot of sweet, tender moments, too.”
Casting this play by Paul Slade Smith correctly, Shanahan commented was key: “The first thing is get a fantastic cast that love what they do and can land every joke without overplaying it. They must play it as it matters to them. This play has to keep moving quickly and not let the audience get ahead of it. The entrances and exits must happen lightning-fast. Timing is everything in landing the comedy and letting the audience enjoy it.”
The production is on the NPAC stage August 1-14. “Theatre People, or The Angel Next Door seems tailor-made for Nantucket audiences…it’s perfect for a Nantucket summer night,” Shanahan commented, “an old-fashioned comedy with a quick pace: sweet and genteel and smart and witty and very funny. It’s about eccentrically funny Broadway types at a seaside hotel.” The play’s setting and themes resonate deeply with the island experience. “Audiences on-island can relate to a weekend of romance and misunderstandings,” Shanahan added. “The set is elegant—they’ll want to move in and live there, and the costumes are great! In many ways, it feels more Nantucket than anything.”
The intimate setting of NPAC’s stage enhances the production’s appeal. Shanahan explained: “the intimacy of the Nantucket Performing Arts Center theater is great — it always has been — when we have actors of this caliber, and they are right there with you, and they are having this much fun… it feels like you’re sitting right there in the room with them.”
Actor, director, and playwright Mark Shanahan is not new to Nantucket or to Nantucket theater. “I’ve been coming here since I was two. Our family has a home here, and I feel lucky to be here,” he explained. “My involvement in island theater goes back decades to my work in college with the Actor’s Theatre when it was at the Methodist Church and the Gordon Folger Hotel…In recent years, I worked at the White Heron Theatre, directing Private Lives, Hound of the Baskervilles, Dial M for Murder, The 39 Steps, See Monsters of the Deep, which I also directed for the NHA at the Whaling Museum last year.”
Shanahan has appeared on and off Broadway and has worked at many regional stages across the country and abroad. During the pandemic, he adapted and directed stories from Blue Baillett’s book Nantucket Ghosts, 44 True Accounts for a fabulous series called White Heron Radio Theatre’s Ghost Light Series.
Plays he has written include A Sherlock Carol, a New York Times Critic’s Pick that was performed off-Broadway and in London and beyond. And his adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, written in conjunction with the Christie estate, has been produced across the US and overseas.
NPAC acquired the theater property at 5 North Water Street in April of 2025 with the goal of transforming it into a year-round performing arts campus. According to summer resident Chris Bierly, “We look forward to developing the Nantucket Performing Arts Center as a home for Nantucket’s rich arts scene…We aspire to be a great partner to island arts and cultural organizations, to develop and stage high quality theatrical productions, and to be a hub of creativity and connection for generations to come.”
In this, its inaugural season, NPAC and ACK Theatre Company, its resident theatre company, has presented What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck, A Night for Swifties, and the Stand Up & Learn Kid’s Comedy Showcase. Theatre People, or The Angel Next Door opens this week, and on August 19, Seth Meyers will grace the NPAC stage for a night of stand-up.
As a member of NPAC’s artistic advisory committee, Shanahan sees the August production he is directing as part of a larger vision: “I’m so pleased it happened… that it will still be a theater,” he said.
“Some of us [on the advisory committee] have deep ties to the theater, and we have careers in the theater. We are all very close, and we are all very excited to continue to plant the seeds to make NPAC grow,” Shanahan explains. “I’m already excited to think about what plays I can bring here.”
Shanahan also highlighted the island’s flourishing and cooperative arts scene. “I want people to recognize that the arts are flourishing here on-island. There are so many great arts organizations: Theatre Workshop, The Dreamland… and there’s the Book Festival, the Film Festival, the Comedy Festival… arts and creativity thrive here! It’s our hope that NPAC and ACK Theatre Company will be a part of it.”
In turbulent times, Shanahan sees theater’s role as essential. “Theatre People offers something fundamental: a reminder of why we gather in theaters, why we tell stories, and why we need the promise that things will get better…When the world is so crazy and so troubling: this is what we really need right now…to sit in an audience and laugh together and enjoy an evening. The cast talks about how a good play can really move people, and why we need happy endings… [happy endings are] a promise that things will get better.”
Mark Shanahan hopes for his audiences are straightforward: “I want them to laugh. I want them to have a great time. They’re in good hands with good actors…and laughter is such good medicine.”
