Familiar story told with wit, comic edge

''I am the song that everybody wants to sing, but nobody knows the words, including me," says Ann Randolph in her off-Broadway hit ''Squeeze Box."

After the New York run, Randolph and ''Squeeze Box" are coming to Lowell for a month at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre.

With talks of a movie in the works as well as more nationwide performances, Randolph ''carved out a chunk of time to come out," said Charles Towers, artistic director for the theatre.

Now in his fifth season with the company, Towers has seen 35 productions there, five of them world premieres.

''It goes to show that you don't have to go down the 'old chestnut' road when doing plays," he said, adding that the general public does indeed have a penchant for wanting to see new material as opposed to a well-known, and sometimes cliched, production.

Randolph, an Ohio native, worked in a state mental hospital in the 1980s, and with mentally ill women in a homeless shelter from 1992 to 2003. During these times, she also was performing works she had penned.

''Squeeze Box" is a semi-autobiographical account of her adventures working in a homeless shelter while trying to woo Harold, her dreamboat accordion player.

She first staged the show in September 2001 and it soon came to the attention of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. With their advice, she rewrote the show, which opened off-Broadway in 2004. This year, Randolph has toured in Toronto, Edinburgh, and New York.

At the Merrimack, the show is directed by Alan Bailey, who said he was attracted to Randolph's story because of its feeling of female empowerment and honesty. ''Ann is telling a familiar story about love and about caregiving, but in a comedic and raw way that everyone will identify with," he said about the show.

''She will be doing a little more work on it creatively here at MRT," said Towers. ''She will be adding material and fleshing things out while performing here."

After her first solo piece, ''Down Home," was produced in 1993 by the Santa Fe Performing Arts Company, Randolph was cast in a television series called ''Lucky Luke," filmed in Santa Fe. This led her to audition and be accepted into the sketch comedy group The Groundlings. She has also written sketches for ''MADtv," and appearances on ''The Drew Carey Show" and ''Two Guys and a Girl."

In ''Squeeze Box," Randolph plays multiple characters, yet shares the stage with only a chair, banjo, and guitar. The show runs 90 minutes, without an intermission.

One of three League of Resident Theaters in Eastern Massachusetts (the other two being the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge), the Merrimack's budget is a fraction of the other two.