Characters: 8 male, 2 female Acclaimed playwright Matt Pelfrey's adaptation of John Ball's In the Heat of the Night based on the award-winning book that inspired the Oscar-winning film and the Emmy-winning television series. It's 1962. A hot August night lies heavy over the small town of Argo, Alabama. A dead white man is discovered and the local police arrest a black stranger named Virgil Tibbs. The police discover that their prime suspect is in fact a homicide detective from California. As it happens, Tibbs becomes the racially-tense community's single hope in solving a brutal murder that is turning up no witnesses, no motives, and no clues. A tight and timely thriller! -Theatermania.com. It's eminently stageworthy...a tense and exciting story that follows the book's basic plot but offers viewers a distinctly new and different In the Heat of the Night -CurtainUp. The play is taut and startlingly resonant, even as it deals with events taking place nearly 50 years ago. Pelfrey's work is economical and uncompromising...suspenseful, thrilling, and stunningly theatrical. -Nytheatre.com.