Tickets are selling like mad to Third Rail Repertory’s production of Shining City, which we reviewed here.Third Rail is handily one of the best companies in town—but you’ve already seen the show, or aren’t in a position to drop $25 on a ticket, this one’s for you: On Sunday Third Rail presents a free staged reading of David Gieselmann’s Mr. Kolpert, featuring Valerie Stevens and Tim True, two of my favorite local actors. I’m not familiar with the play, so I’ll let their press release do the talking:

Ralf and Sarah invite Edith and Bastian over for dinner and a nice bit
of conversation. When Ralf suddenly announces that Edith and Sarah’s
boss, Mr. Kolpert, is dead and locked in a trunk in the middle of the
living room, their world of pre-packaged assimilation starts showing
VW-sized chinks. Is Ralf telling the truth? Was Edith hiding an affair
with Mr. Kolpert? Why does Sarah have a Post-It note on her forehead?
Will Bastian’s head explode from too many questions? Will the Pizza
Man ever make another delivery?

One part Albee, one part Hitchcock, one part Tarantino, “Mr. Kolpert”
is the blackest of comedies and has been one of Third Rail’s guilty
pleasures since day one.

Variety called the play “a wicked treat for the morbidly inclined — a
bonbon filled with arsenic.” Richard Hornby of The Hudson Review
called “Mr. Kolpert” “one of the most shocking plays I have ever
seen,” but with “a strange poetic force and deep moral insight.”

Sunday, 7 pm, Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, 5340 N.
Interstate, free (first come, first served!)