In 1845, war with Mexico looms as the U.S. army wade ashore at Kinney’s Rancho, a seaside smugglers’ hamlet perched strategically on the Gulf of Mexico just south of the Nueces River—the disputed border between Texas and Mexico. Frontier bookworm Jesus Paine (J.P.) McBean, whose head is “as stuffed as poor old Don Quixote’s with marvelous notions of derring-do and legends of noble battles and romance,” yearns to become a heroic man of arms, yet finds his heart torn between two role models: his brash, gallant, but pro-slavery Texas Ranger brother Chance; and J.P.’s new friend, a soft-spoken 23-year-old, untested lieutenant named Ulysses Grant, a lovesick artist who decides to quit the army to become a math professor so he can marry his fiancée.

Performed by Steve Rizzo