THE GREAT PERSUADER is a merrily busy song and dance trip on a workaday steamboat named the Merry-Gold when the human atmosphere along America's inland rivers was a vibrant mix of Victorian prudery and frontier democracy, which often collided.

Jenny, a pretty dancehall girl, is aboard hoping that before the boat completes its several days' journey, she can convince the handsome, buoyant Gary, also aboard, that she would make him a better wife than the Louisiana girl he's traveling to marry. Jenny is being pursued by the bumbling Jared who plans to take advantage of being her only friend when she is left rejected and alone in an unfamiliar city.

They each are quickly impelled to seek the assistance of another passenger, Abner Elm, who early-on resolves an abrupt on-board difficulty, thus justifying his claim to being The Great Persuader, one who makes his way helping to solve other people's problems (naturally at some advantage to himself).

Though attracted to Jenny himself, Abner agrees to risk broaching her case to Gary who makes it plain he is very much enthralled by his Louisiana love, Sylvia Maria.

Then, they all learn that the boat's Captain Berdat deeply appreciates the aesthetic beauty of the river while simultaneously holding strict views about moral behavior and harshly enforces rigid rules--particularly Rule #5 that any unwed persons found in flagrante will be summarily set ashore at some lonely spot, or forced to be wed on the spot, by the captain. Impatiently, and independently, Jared and Jenny scheme to be so discovered by the Captain with the objects of their affections.

Both try to entice the assistance of the boat's young, accommodating but cautiously ambitious purser, Slater, who refuses Jared's approach, but cannot resist Jenny's. So the schemes get tangled and the Captain, insisting on wedding or abandoning those two very incompatible people, Jenny and Jared, finds himself in a song and dance battle with the other passengers, led by an elderly yet feisty lady, Mrs Markey. This group of passengers assert their democratic right to set their own rules for the voyage, and won't settle for the Captain being both accuser and judge. This imbroglio Abner guides into an impromptu on-board trial of the matter, during which for his own purposes he interposes on the side of the Captain. The judicial process itself goes on trial as there is a clash of deep enthusiasms that results in a resolution satisfactory to all.

This aspect of the story was suggested by four similar separate events recorded in the newspapers of the times, from Nashville, to Cincinnati, to Louisville, to Omaha.

A fuller narrative and six sample songs can be heard on our demonstration CD, available through the contact information listed below.

The play has a single set, the boat's passenger salon, a kind of hotel lobby where passengers who are renting staterooms can congregate. One side has a doorway to an outside promenade from which boarding passengers enter the salon.

At one of the end of the salon (which would be to the boat's fore) are the entrances to two passageways, one to the boat's Dining Area, the other to the Men's Staterooms. At opposition on the set two other passageways lead to the Ladies Rooms and to the Family Rooms, in front of which are a few sturdy childrens' toys and a trash receptacle. A chandelier would not be out of place, nor-- room providing--an upright piano. The lighting fixtures on the walls, in mimed use in Act Two, would be of gas or oil varieties. Act One is by day, Act Two at night.

To set the set in perspective, the Merry-Gold is a sternwheeler (a single paddlewheel at its stern). Its machinery, cargo, and any deck passengers would be on the main, or cargo, deck. The staterooms and salon would be on the second deck, known as the boiler deck, surrounded by an roofed outer walkway, or promenade. An open area above that was known has the hurricane deck from which rose the pilot house. Some boats had a short extension of the pilot house that was known as the texas (small "t") deck. Other hidden details of steamboat construction and operation are mentioned in the dialogue.

There are four women's parts, five men's, all singing. The Captain and young Slater, the porter, will be in modest uniform. The passengers will be in presentable 19th century traveling clothes in Act One. In Act Two the female characters will be in presentable sleeping clothes and robes, the men more haphazardly so. Different directors might want to give different spins to characters themselves, but here they are as envisioned by the authors.