Phantom of Center Stage

   Clarise and Daphne Montague have just inherited the Center Stage Theatre which their uncle founded years ago. It closed three years earlier but they plan a grand reopening by restaging the first play ever performed there, a funny but cheesy melodrama. The sisters have contracted a famous acting couple for the starring roles while local talent fleshes out the cast.

   The players quickly learn the Center Stage Theatre has a reputation of being haunted by a Phantom. Most folks think it is the ghost of a young actress who disappeared decades ago during intermission of a performance of the very play they’re doing. Strange noises, items missing, and things falling have been experienced by earlier casts, but no one is particularly concerned as rehearsals begin.

   Unfortunately, Tempest Storm, owner of a big-box store, wants to buy the theatre so she can tear it down and build a parking garage for her customers. The sisters will have none of it, but that’s when the Phantom begins to cause enough chaos that the celebrity couple, used to Broadway stages, becomes desperate to quit the production.

   To help save the theatre while it is being “appraised,” some of the cast act as representatives of a historical preservation society to point out the building’s splendid features. When the sisters refuse Tempest Storm’s low purchase offer, she threatens a bulldozer will show up Monday morning. The actors, including the celebrity couple who have come to recapture the joy of working in a small theatre, devise a plan to permanently derail any parking garage. In doing so the mystery of the Phantom is solved and the show will go on!