You just sit back and relax, because Cindy’s going to be your guide in Harbor City Tonight! She’ll sing you through what it takes to survive the night in a place where informers lurk after nightly executions in the square… of a town… in a show… that just won’t stop as long as the audience, folks just like you, keep dreaming it into existence.
The Party officials of Harbor City keep the trains running and people entertained with a hangin’ every night in this little fun-hub. Officials like Commish, a mid-tier party man who assesses the local agents’ reports and decides who gets the noose each night. Officials like Stasia, a “nurse,” who tends to the cyanide hole, the room where the condemned wait to die.
They’re cold customers all right, but what about normal folk, just making it from day to day? Wholesome citizens like Irene, who runs the salon near the town square. Loved by the locals, Irene can’t help but feel like life has already passed her by, or at least that’s what she shows us. Isn’t a gal entitled to a secret or two? Doesn’t Irene play her part in The Show every night, shaving and grooming Commish before he takes the stage in front of the gallows? Anyway, she could never leave Cindy, her goddaughter. Irene and Cindy’s mom were best friends, worked in the shop together, until one day she disappeared. Some say escaped. In any case, Cindy ended up as the ward of her older cousin, Stasia. The one grace is that Irene charmed her into letting Cindy work in her shop, sweeping up, greeting, anything Irene can think of to keep her close.
Sure, come on in, meet more good folks like Jimmy, a sailor who’d give anything for Irene to take him home with her. She hasn’t yet, but that doesn’t stop him from spending every moment that he’s on dry land right there in Irene’s shop. And young folk like Cass, just conscripted into service. Damned if Cass doesn’t think he can take on life with energy alone.
Every night in Harbor City is another web of these six people, compelled to sing and play their parts in The Show. And every night at least one of the good folk of Harbor City dies, by poison or the noose. How will the web entangle them tonight? Can they even wake up in another life anymore, a life without The Show? Or are they wide awake already—and it’s the world itself that feels like an unending, violent dream? Pshaw, who knows anything? So come on in and sing along with the players in Harbor City Tonight!