The following synopsis reflects the present working draft and should be treated as developmental rather than definitive.

ACT I

The musical opens inside the mythology of the Sunrise Hotel & Casino, a legendary resort created by entertainment mogul Desmond Millstone. Through casino sounds, projected history, and a company prologue, Millstone explains that the most profitable games are not played openly at the tables but beneath them.

Before leaving town, Millstone prepares to name Benny Brookes as his successor. He also confronts Anton “Ace” Oliver, the Sunrise’s celebrated headliner and Millstone’s first protégé, over years of theft and betrayal. Millstone tricks Ace into signing away his claim to the casino and conceals his revised will somewhere inside the resort.

When Millstone discovers his fifth wife, Philomena, with her much younger lover Beau, he steps onto the penthouse balcony. Philomena pushes him, and he falls nine stories. His body subsequently disappears.

Fifteen days later, the Sunrise is preparing to close. Ace announces that the resort has been purchased by Howard Hughes and will be demolished following one final “Grand Sunset Celebration.” Benny remains convinced that Millstone left behind a will naming another successor and begins searching for the hotel’s hidden vaults.

Clara Hebdon, Millstone’s first wife, former partner, financier, and chairwoman of the Sunrise board, knows more than she is willing to reveal. She confirms that a labyrinth exists beneath the hotel and gives Benny enough information to begin his search, while warning that not everything hidden there should be recovered.

Meanwhile, the Tobson twins—Elvira and Isaac, the original architect and designer of the Sunrise—learn of the demolition and return from Utah. They have come not to save the building but to destroy a dangerous secret they concealed inside it. Their return places them back among the casino machines from which Elvira has struggled to separate herself.

Benny’s brother Bobby arrives with his wife, Liza, and their three children: Janine, Tank, and Marbles. Benny has paid for the trip, presenting it as a family vacation, but his actual purpose is to convince Bobby to assume responsibility for their ailing and estranged father.

The Brookes family enters the Sunrise with conflicting expectations. Liza and the children want an extravagant vacation; Bobby wants rest, financial stability, and as little family conflict as possible. Their room contains only one bed, but the children soon discover a key hidden inside the room safe. The key is marked with the number 458.

The children postpone investigating the mystery long enough to search repeatedly for the resort’s swimming pool. They instead wander into the Zion Theatre, where Ace performs his lounge act. When Ace realizes that they may possess a key connected to the hidden vaults, he recruits and then threatens them.

The children escape after destroying much of his performance space.

Across the resort, Liza urges Bobby to enjoy himself and stop measuring every action by its financial consequences. Elvira rationalizes a return to gambling as necessary to complete her mission. Philomena and Beau search hotel rooms for Millstone’s remains, his will, or any other path toward the fortune she believes she deserves.

These overlapping pursuits become a musical resort sequence in which nearly every character attempts to excuse a private compromise by insisting that there is no sin in winning.

Benny enters the hotel’s service corridors disguised as a janitor. Ace finds Benny’s distinctive clothing and realizes that his former rival is inside the building searching for the vaults.

The Brookes children follow the key to Room 458 and discover that the hotel contains more than the advertised guest floors. Their exploration draws them toward the Sunrise’s hidden infrastructure and the community living beneath it.

Bobby and Benny finally confront one another about their father. Benny believes Bobby should take responsibility for the old man; Bobby resents Benny’s ability to perform generosity without accepting the daily labor of care. Their disagreement exposes the different personas the brothers have built to survive the same family.

The casino’s farewell celebration grows increasingly frantic. Each character believes the final night offers one last chance to secure a future:

• Benny wants Millstone’s will.

• Ace wants complete ownership of the Sunrise.

• Philomena wants her husband’s fortune and legal death.

• Elvira and Isaac want to destroy what they once concealed.

• Clara wants to protect the casino’s legacy.

• Liza wants to recover the joy disappearing from her marriage.

• Bobby wants enough security to keep his family from falling apart.

• The children want the pool.

At Disco Bowling Night, the separate searches collide. Elvira and Isaac interrupt the festivities and accuse Philomena of killing Clara.

The first act ends with the Sunrise’s glittering farewell transformed into a public crime scene.

ACT II

The second act opens with a theatrical retelling of the Howard Hughes–Melvin Dummar legend.

Presented as a Las Vegas variety show featuring impersonations of figures such as Wayne Newton, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Donny and Marie Osmond, the sequence recounts the disputed story of Hughes being rescued in the Nevada desert and leaving a handwritten will to Dummar.

Within the musical’s mythology, Elvira and Isaac had once worked as “fixers” connected to Hughes. Their involvement with his eccentric projects eventually led them to conceal two objects within the future Sunrise: the disputed will and an experimental gelatin product of extraordinary—and absurd—power.

Back in the present, the Sunrise’s closure has become secondary to a struggle for control of its secrets.

The Brookes children descend into the hidden spaces beneath the resort. There they encounter Boogie, Mai-Thai, and other residents of an underground community composed of people forgotten, expelled, or consumed by the casino above. What appeared to be an empty network of vaults is revealed as another Las Vegas: one built from service corridors, scavenged objects, labor, and survival.

Bobby and Marbles search for the rest of the family. Bobby, who has spent much of the musical immobilized by anxiety and self-doubt, is forced into action when Liza is abducted by the Concierge. With Marbles on his shoulders, he races through the casino and confronts the captor in an extravagant action-movie parody.

The danger gives Bobby and Liza an opportunity to articulate the dissatisfaction beneath their comic marriage. Liza does not simply want entertainment; she wants her husband to become emotionally present again. Bobby fears that every risk will expose how little he can provide. Their reconciliation requires neither sudden wealth nor perfect confidence, but the decision to face uncertainty together.

Elvira and Isaac continue searching for the material they hid years earlier. Their Christian faith, history with gambling, and affection for the Sunrise remain in conflict. The twins must decide whether protecting people requires destroying the building’s secrets or trusting others with them.

Ace, Philomena, Benny, and the Concierge converge upon the vaults. Each has constructed a different story about what lies below: an inheritance, evidence, revenge, ownership, absolution, or a legendary fortune.

The search culminates when Desmond Millstone appears alive.

Millstone reveals that his disappearance was part survival, part scheme, and part retreat from the people and responsibilities he had spent a lifetime manipulating. He is also revealed to be Bobby and Benny’s estranged father.

For Benny, the discovery complicates his lifelong devotion to Millstone. The glamorous mentor and the absent parent are the same man. For Bobby, the casino legend is reduced to the father whose abandonment shaped his fear of failure.

Millstone offers to repay the Brookes family’s losses and forgive their debts. He then asks whether Bobby can forgive his absence. Bobby does not immediately embrace him but offers his hand and says, “It’s nice to meet you, Dad.”

Ace demands to know what everyone has been pursuing if the legendary will is not the treasure inside the vaults

Elvira and Isaac reveal the truth.

Before building the Sunrise, they assisted Howard Hughes with the development of an indestructible bunker snack. After fifteen failed prototypes, they created JELL-P, a gelatin product so satisfying that Hughes became dangerously addicted to it. Ordered to destroy both the product and the will created under its influence, the twins instead hid JELL-P inside the Sunrise.

The substance can only be safely consumed by someone with an empty stomach and a generous heart. Every character looks toward Tank, whose hunger has been a running concern throughout the musical.

Tank accepts the challenge.

The revelation transforms the supposed treasure from a conventional fortune into an object of communal absurdity: a miracle snack created through faith, addiction, American industry, Mormon folklore, and the most childish appetites of the Brookes family.

As the final ownership of the Sunrise is reconsidered, the characters confront what they had hoped the vaults would provide. The casino cannot permanently free them from debt, grief, addiction, aging, family responsibility, or mortality. It can, however, become a place whose value lies in the people gathered within it rather than the legend of the man who built it.

The musical concludes by reversing the Sunrise’s “closing” into an opening. Its future remains uncertain, but its community survives long enough to imagine a different game—one in which winning does not require someone else to disappear beneath the table.

CASTING

The musical is written with an ensemble in mind featuring a large company of singers, dancers, musicians, guests, gamblers, dealers, hotel employees, sewer residents, historical figures, and Las Vegas entertainers. The show, however, can be staged with a cast sixteen performers filling the primary roles, and making up ensemble roles when possible through minimalist theatrical conventions.

The roles of Janine, Tank, and Marbles need not be played by children. Adult actors may portray the Brookes children through a deliberate theatrical convention. Additionally, a female-presenting performer can play Tank while keeping the character male; male-presenting performers can play Janine and/or Liza while keeping the characters female. 

Elvira and Isaac should not be portrayed as missionaries or official representatives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their faith should inform their histories and choices without reducing them to stereotypes.

HISTORY

The Sunrise Hotel & Casino is an original musical currently undergoing substantial redevelopment. The project is available for private evaluation, dramaturgical collaboration, developmental readings, music workshops, and future production consideration. All public performance and distribution rights are reserved.

NATHAN HOLLEY (BOOK, MUSIC, AND LYRICS)