This 1-to-1 Restaging of ‘The Nightman Cometh’ From ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Achieved What Charlie Couldn’t
Nobody just painstakingly recreates a community theater production from a cult-beloved TV show for no reason.
Out of all of the Gang’s many romantic advances throughout the history of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, one amorous moment stands out as the most moving and least felonious of the lot. Back in Season Four, one special, lovestruck and illiterate songbird named Charlie Kelly made the grandest of gestures in an attempt to win the hand of his longtime love and stalkee The Waitress as he staged an elaborate yet unintentionally nonconsensual musical called “The Nightman Cometh” with a surprise song and proposal at the end of the show.
Sadly, the spectacle of Charlie’s musical theater debut failed to woo his boo — but a recent regional theater revival of “The Nightman Cometh” just aced the assignment.
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Sixteen years after “The Nightman Cometh” failed to convince The Waitress to wed her most devoted and attentive admirer, one Australian Always Sunny fan took up Charlie’s charge and near-perfectly recreated the sets, costumes, choreography and melodies of “The Nightman Cometh” in order to convince the love of his life to join him in this thing called matrimony:
Twitch streamer Elisey Peach posted the above proposal video earlier this week in one of the most romantic flexes in the history of the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia fandom. “My partner told me he had booked us tickets to go and see The Mikado,” Elisey Peach explained in the video description. “We rocked up early, and got ushered into the front row. Then he said ‘brb gotta go pee’ and a couple minutes later I thought the pianist was just doing a sound-check, but it was actually the show beginning :)”
I don’t know what’s more impressive here — how Elisey Peach’s now-fiancé painted the exact back drop from “The Nightman Cometh” down to Hitler’s dog portrait, how he stitched/bought/commissioned the exact costumes that the Gang wore in the show, how he rented out an actual theater space for the performance and for the set load-in and breakdown, the way the blocking matches up exactly to the Always Sunny version or the fact that the soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs. Peach have at least six friends who would gladly devoted weeks of their lives to act, light and accompany such an elaborate fake musical.
But, ultimately, the real triumph of “The Nightman Down Undereth” is that Elisey Peach actually accepted the most effortful proposal in the history of TV comedy. Elisey Peach clearly understood what was happening within the first scene, and watching her break down in tears as the climactic final song approached almost makes up for how The Waitress rudely turned down the real Day Man during the original run of “The Nightman Cometh.”
This time around, the immense effort required to stage “The Nightman Cometh” was all worth it and a wedding is finally incoming, which should come as a relief the revival’s cast — I hear the director was a nightmare during the rehearsal process.
