The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden is about a middle-aged couple and two of their three surviving children as they drive through New Jersey, from Newark to Camden, to visit their eldest daughter, who has recently suffered a tragedy. The journey is full of arguments, laughter, and joy in simple things like billboards, hot dogs and sunsets. It’s a journey where nothing happens, and yet everything happens.

Trenton native Saima Huq plays Ma Kirby, who is based on Wilder’s own mother. (The play’s working title was The Portrait of a Lady). Brian DiRaimondo plays Elmer “Pa” Kirby, her husband and the navigator of this journey. They are accompanied by their teenaged children, Arthur (John DeFilippo) and Caroline (Janina Salorio.) Noah Riley takes on the iconic Stage Manager role that Wilder made famous in Our Town. The Kirbys’ humble married daughter Beulah is played by Radha Singh.

The cast first performed the play on November 6, 2021 at the Producers Club in New York City. They are excited to perform in Trenton, NJ.

The play was first produced on November 25, 1931, at the Yale University Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, by the Yale Dramatic Association and the Vassar College Philalethis.

Wilder earned a Master of Fine Arts from Princeton University in 1926, and taught French at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, NJ from 1921 to 1928. He won three Pulitzer Prizes for his literary works.