It wouldn’t be the Gilbert Theater if it didn’t end the season with a bang. After a revival season, full of patron favorites and ghosts of Christmas past, Ivories, a Queer tale of horror with a splash of humor, is taking the stage as the final show of the season from April 26 to May 12, with shows Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.. Gilbert Theater is located at 116 Green Street, Downtown Fayetteville, above the Children’s Museum, where they plan to stay.
Ivories “True Horror Begins at Home” was written by the extraordinarily talented, internationally produced playwright, Riley Elton McCarthy, a Fayetteville childhood resident. The synopsis on the Gilbert’s website on Ivories reads, “Brought back to their childhood home to care for the grandmother who is riddled with severe dementia, young prodigal playwright Sloane and their botanist husband Gwyn are struggling to settle into a new routine after having their lives uprooted by tragedy. The longer Sloane stays in their grandmother’s home, the more secrets and childhood trauma begin to resurface, and the couple soon suspects something deeply sinister is afoot in this small, suburban New England estate. Good thing their best friend Beckham’s there to help sort out the estate… right?”
Described as a comedy-horror, Ivories is sure to take you on an emotional rollercoaster of fear, maybe some loathing, and some comedy to blend it all out.
“I find horror to be circumstantially funny,” McCarthy said of their choice to write Ivories as a horror-comedy.
This production has a full cast of seasoned Gilbert Theater regulars: Daniel Adams, Justin Gore Pike, and Michelle Rutherford. Kay Trojan is the stage manager and rounding out the group is Victoria Lloyd, co-director and technical director.
“I felt like we needed some Queer voices, even more so than we usually do at the Gilbert and I’m just really excited to be a part of this,” Lloyd shared of her choice to step in and up as Co-Director.
Ivories had been destined for greatness since its inception.
“I’ve been working on Ivories since 2021, I was a senior in college, getting my BFA in playwriting and acting and I had to write a thesis play, that was a full-length play. I pitched this idea of writing a play about a couple struggling with their sexuality while tending for a dying loved one…
"A friend of mine had really liked the pitch that I had done for that class and asked me to write a 30-page version of that play. 24 hours later, I wrote a 180-page draft instead of 30 and I said ‘hey, it’s not 30 pages, I wrote an entire play, could we do a midnight reading instead?’ So we scheduled the reading, we thought nobody would come, we cast 3 of my dearest friends in the world and we had 300 people come. It was online, in the middle of the night, all of us bored on Zoom watching a reading with elaborate artwork we created for every single room in the house and really embraced the horror of this piece. That was only in its first draft. It was largely successful,” McCarthy said.
Ivories was the first production to be performed in New York without masks at the Tank Theatre, a small off-broadway theater that has given the start to many careers, post-lockdown.
“We sold out within 24 hours of opening ticket sales,” McCarthy humbly stated about the first production success of their play.
While Ivories is a story of identity and loss, it is also a horror, a genre not commonly found on the stage, but one that when done well, provides the audience with a good time in the theater.
“People were really ecstatic to see horror on stage,” McCarthy said of the production at the Tank.
While some critics have not found the humor amongst the horror, Ivories continues to make waves worldwide. McCarthy recently signed a production contract to take Ivories to Dublin, Copenhagen, and Berlin. McCarthy, a military kid, grew up in Fayetteville and got their start in theater at the Gilbert. The production at the Gilbert Theater is truly a full-circle moment for the playwright.
For those patrons looking for an early bird scoop on next season, make sure opening night is on the calendar, as the Gilbert will be revealing next season’s lineup.

(Photo: The poster for the Gilbert Theater's production of Ivories. The show will close out the Gilbert's season. Courtesy of the Gilbert Theater and their Facebook page.)