 |
|
Comedy/Thriller. Rick Johnston. 3 men, 2 women. Interior. The setting is Ken and Jan's apartment in a Manhattan high rise,
where Jan and her friend Lois are setting up for a dinner party before
attending a block association meeting on neighborhood crime - a subject
which has become an obsession with Lois' husband, Al. In fact, just
to show how vulnerable they all are, Al, impersonating a masked burglar,
breaks into the apartment via the terrace while the ladies cower
in fear. For this, and other offenses, there is a growing antagonism
between Al and Ken, and as dinner progresses so do the insults -
culminating in disaster when Ken fatally clobbers Al with an oversized
pepper mill. The problem then becomes what to do with the body, a
dilemma which is compounded when a suspicious security guard arrives
at the door and, being bent on blackmail, is also summarily dispatched.
Before the evening is over our concerned citizens find themselves
turned into expert, if accidental, criminals, as one of their victims
is killed twice and several bodies are deftly disposed of from the
terrace. Filled with witty dialogue and hilarious oneliners, the
play manages to maintain a farcical unreality while demonstrating
that things usually do get worse before they get better - and that
the vaunted dangers of street crime can pale beside the outrageous
mayhem which can ensue when four "good friends" get together for
a quiet dinner. Drama. Peter Feibleman. 2 men, 3 women. Unit set. Cakewalk follows the labyrinth of laughter and passion that
exists between any two people attracted to each other - especially
if one of them is 20 years younger and the other a famous femme
fatale. Lillian Heitman, the legendary, glamorous, glittering,
inscrutable playwright, comes to life again in this highly personal
love story, written for the theater by the man who lived it. Spanning
more than two decades, the relationship ricochets between bouts of
tenderness and rage, humor and woe, sex and death, the story is impelled
by the rhythms - the wash and backwash - of the human heart. (Accompanied
by the original music of Carly Simon.) Comedy. Neil Simon This four-part play is Neil Simon at his best. In Chicago two
couples go on vacation together, but wind up miserable and hating
each other. London concerns a British star who returns from
the Academy Awards ceremony without an Oscar. Philadelphia is
about a wife who arrives at the hotel suite before her husband can
get rid of the drunken hooker in his bed. In New York a magazine
writer is visited by her ex-husband. Drama with Comedy. Michael Shurtleff. 4 men, 2 women. Interior. As told by Oppenheimer: "An honest, moving and courageous drama
that holds your attention right up to its touching ending. It tells
the tale of two Columbia students rooming together in New York: Doug
is white, a young rebel, fearful of doing anything that will stamp
him with the mark of conformity; Paul is a Negro, attractive, a good
student ...Then a white girl falls in love with Doug ...There is
talk of marriage but when Paul reveals that he once loved the girl
for a brief period, there is a brutal battle in which Doug is badly
injured. The aftermath of this explosion, the shame of both of the
men, and the attempts of the girl to bring them together are explored
with devastating honesty ...Shurtleff endows his characters with
a sense of humor and the gift of laughter, they are highly individualized
and sensitively characterized." Play.
Pam Gems Beautiful Marguerite Gautier, seduced at the age of fifteen by her
Marquis employer, decides on a courtesan life. She meets Armand Duval,
son of the Marquis, and the two fall desperately in love. Aware that
she is in the initial stages of tuberculosis, Armand persuades her
to settle in the country with him, but Marguerite is threatened by
the Marquis and forced to return to Paris, dying and reviled by Armand.
Period 1840s Paris Play. Tennessee Williams Aptly described both as an 'expressionist phantasmagoria' and 'an apocalyptic vision of the contemporary world', the play is set in a walled town in a police state from which various characters try to escape. Among the fictional people are famous literary and historical characters such as Don Quixote, Marguerite Gautier, Casanova and the mythical American Kilroy who 'was here'; they converse with one another in cryptic and soulful conversation in the midst of various extraordinary events happening around them. Play. Brian Clark Philip Turner, chief architect of Feltonly New Town, is disillusioned in the realization of what he has destroyed in planning and developing the town's sterile, inhuman tower and office blocks. He decides to plan nothing at all, to opt for spontaneity even in his private life. Margery, wife of his old friend, is willing to become his mistress, but Philip demurs. 'Can't you see you are just as ruthlessly planning spontaneity?' says his wife. Play.
Keith Dewhurst, from the book by Flora Thompson A sequel to Lark Rise, Candleford is also performed with
audience and players freely mingling, reenacting a meeting of the
local hunt in mid-winter. It concentrates on events in the Oxfordshire
village where Flora Thompson worked in the post office-cum-blacksmith,
includes music and song, and ends with a flash forward to her own
unhappy married life, after which Company and audience perform the
Grand Circle Dance. Period 1880s Candy & Shelley Go to the Desert Comedy. Paula Cizmar. 1 man, 2 women. Exterior. Heading west in search of romance and adventure, Candy and Shelley
suddenly find themselves stranded in the vast emptiness of a western
desert when their car boils over. Alone under the blazing sun, with
no recourse except to wait for another car to come along, the more
resilient Candy decides to relax and add to her suntan, while her
nervous (and ludicrously over-dressed) companion sneezes and recoils
from the lizards basking on the nearby rocks. Fantasizing about being
ravaged by a passing motorcycle gang, the girls are seized with terror
when a lone biker does indeed turn up, having strayed off course
in the trackless desert. While they try to fend him off with an orange
juice container (which explodes in the heat) he proves to be a harmless
sort who, is riding west to attend his cousin's wedding, and whose
chief concern. is undoing the jammed zipper of his leather jacket
before he dehydrates totally. In the end, despite their misadventures
and a momentary falling-out which occurs when Shelley admits to having
slept with Candy's boyfriend, their desert catastrophe proves more
redemptive. than harmful, and the two end up stronger friends than
before - although more than ready to bid farewell to the relentless
sun, dusty tumbleweeds and expiring lizards who litter the ground
around them. Chaucer made modern by Phil Woods. Music
by Chris Barnes Phil Woods has updated Chaucer to recreate for a modem audience the spectacle, humour and bawdiness of the fourteenth-century original. Set in the present the tales are told in the form of an annual 'Geoffrey Chaucer Canterbury Tales-telling Competition', with the audience invited on stage between tales. 'Colourful, boozy, good-spirited, compelling entertainment.' Stage and Television Today. Drama. Israel Horovitz, based on Rudyard Kipling's Caaptains and Courageous. Designed for a multi-racial cast of 14 or more actors playing multiple roles: 10 men, 2 women, 1 boy, 1 girl (flexible casting). Unit Set In Kípling's 19th century story, Harvey Cheyne, an obnoxious
rich boy, falls from the deck of a luxury liner and is rescued by
a fishing boat, the "We're Here," owned by a black captain, Disko
Troop. Aboard the "We're Here" Harvey learns about hard work, about
courage, and about life. In Horovitz's 20th century counterpart (the
two stories alternate in parallel development): Manny Shimma, a 16-year-old
homeless wise-guy, in trouble with the law, finds himself hiding
out on a tiny fishing boat, the "Sylvie the 2nd," captained by Ben
Cheyne, Harvey Cheynes great-great-great grandson, with a single
crewman, Roland Troop, Disko Troop's great-great-great grandson.
Aboard the
"Sylvie the 2nd," Manny, too, learns about hard work, courage, and
life. Modern and traditional sea shanteys are sung by cast and chorus
throughout the play. The Captivity of Pixie Shedman Play Romulus Linney. 4 men, 1 woman, 1 girl. Unit set Attempting a novel based on his late grandmother's diary, Bertram
Shedman, a struggling young writer, is bemused by her extravagant
tales and high-flown poetry. Trying to sort out the truth of this
remarkable and singular woman he conjures up the fleshly spirit of
Pixie herself - as she steps into the action of the play and attempts
to persuade this quizzical young man that the lurid events and twisted
relationships put down in her family history are indeed the stuff
of real life. Their confrontation brings forth other ghosts; his
domineering great-grandfather, who whisked Pixie off to Washington
after his election as a U.S. Senator; his hard-drinking physician
grandfather, who stole Pixie away from his father but looked for
solace in the arms of a local waitress; and his own unhappy father,
who led a life ordained by others and died of cancer while still
a young man. In the end these apparitions step back into the past
once more, but their legacy is now one of truth and a guide' to the
present descendant in reconciling the tangled strands of his own
life. |