Composers and their stage works 



 

Cider with Rosie

Laurie Lee. Adapted for the stage by James Roose-Evans
24 roles, may be played by M5 F4. Various simple settings.

Poet Laurie Lee was born in 1914 in a small Cotswold village and grew up during a time of change when the rural traditions of past centuries were being swept aside in the path of twentiethcentury progress. His autobiography Cider with Rosie, a poetic evocation of his childhood has become a modern classic both in the United Kingdom and in America and is here imaginatively adapted for the stage by James Roose-Evans.
ISBN 0 573 01735 2

Cinzano

(in Cinzano) : Ludmila Petrushevskaya. Trans S. Mulrine
3m. One-act drama Simple set.

Three young men drink themselves into a stupor to escape their drab lives and family responsibilities. But their humanity shines through ... It can be performed with its companion piece for women, Smirnova's Birthday. The collection of plays in Cinzano have earned the author the accolade: "female Chekhov".
ISBN 1854591061

The Circle.

Comedy. W. Somerset Maugham
M6 (young, 35, 60s, elderly) F3 (20s, 40, 50s). A drawing-room.

Arnold Champion-Cheney has never forgotten or ceased to resent his mother's elopement. He is a politician with a beautiful young wife- Elizabeth - in whom he has a proprietary pride. Home from their long exile come his mother, Lady Kitty, and her lover. With Arnold's father living nearby, the visit seems fraught with embarrassment, but instead becomes extremely amusing ...
ISBN 0 573 01071 4

City Sugar.

Play. Stephen Poliakoff
M4 (17, young, 30s, middle-age) F3 (young). A sound studio, a supermarket, a bedroom.

Leonard, a disc jockey, is becoming increasingly disgusted with the soul-destroying falsity of his job as he manipulates the fantasies of his teenage listeners. He tries to force Nicola, a contestant in an imbecilic competition, into a realisation of the stupidity of the whole set-up. Nicola's fantasy world is shattered. Our last glimpse of her hints at the viciousness in which the inducement of such false dreams may result.
ISBN 0 573 11072 7

Clandestine On the Morning Line

Play. Josh Greenfeld. 5 men, 2 women. Interior.

Clandestine… is a play with a strongly written central character, a middle-aged, thrice-married woman who operates a cheap lunchroom with a bachelor brother. While she is reuniting a pregnant young woman with the young man responsible, she is charmingly passing out her ignorant notions about history and geography. But what she may lack in facts, she makes up in amazing intuition about life. It's obvious that with her involved, everything had to end happily.
ISBN: 0-8222-0214-X

Class Enemy

Play. Nigel Williams
M7 (16, older). A schoolroom.

In a decrepit, thoroughly vandalised, South London schoolroom a group of foul-mouthed boys are awaiting the arrival of a teacher who never seems likely to appear. A sort of tribal ritual is self-imposed by the group, forming a natural hierarchy, and events culminate in a fierce fight which is interrupted by the arrival of a master. NB. The play contains explicit language.

The Clearing

Helen Edmundson
5m 3f. Historical drama. Flexible staging.

In the 17th century Cromwell moved English troops into a war-weary Ireland forcing the local inhabitants onto barren land as the English gentry took over their homes. The cruelty of this racial persecution is brought into sharp focus through the tragic love of an Englishman for a local Irish woman. 'A finely written play, full of sharp observation' Independent on Sunday.
ISBN 1854592815

A Clearing In the Woods

Drama. Arthur Laurents. 5 men, 4 women, 1 small girl. Unit Set.

The play is, in a sense, a fantasy - in which a multitude of times and experiences are telescoped into a single moment. The entire life of a young woman is shown during the course of the play. Atkinson, in the NY Times, describes the heroine of the play: "She is Virginia, the afflicted woman, who cannot make peace with life, and is tormented with memories of the past. She is trying to find a clearing in the woods; she is trying to find peace in her past and find the place where the pain began. In the persons of other actors. Mr. Laurents shows Virginia at various stages in her career, beginning with childhood, and including the several men in her life, beginning with her father. They are phantoms from the past. Until the final scene of release, they weave in and out of her mind in various phases of conflict, failure and misunderstanding." In some of the finest writing he has done, Mr. Laments takes Virginia through her entire emotional life until, through her own courage and the understanding love of a young scientist, she arrives at knowledge and acceptance of her own nature.
ISBN: 0-8222-0215-8

Clerical Errors

Comedy. Georgina Reid
M3 (16, 30, 50) F5 (17, 27, middle-age, 65). A disused Methodist Chapel.

James Martin's moral upbringing is suddenly shattered by the encampment of the Briggs family in his now disused Methodist chapel. Uncharacteristically James decides to try their way of life by moving in with them. However, his attempts to solve the Briggs' problems have unexpected and often hilarious results! Young Julie Briggs' honest if unconventional, appraisal of James' congregation forces him to reconsider his own career. A highly entertaining comedy, rich with comic pathos.
ISBN 0 573 01608 9

Clever Dicks

Mystery/Farce. Charles Marowitz. 6 men, 3 women. Interior.

The action begins at a stately home in rural England, where Colonel Calvarley, the lord of the manor, suddenly expires (or seems to) after sipping a glass of (apparently poisoned) Sauterne. His body is discovered by Hannah, the housekeeper and Harold, the houseboy, which leads to the arrival of Inspector Farcus of Scotland Yard and his assistant, Poets, two working-class types who have little sympathy for the decadent life styles of the landed gentry. After putting the Colonel in the freezer for safekeeping, the Inspector sets about investigating the circumstances of his death, which brings into suspicion all the others at the manor. There is Alan Hobbiss, the Colonel's business partner (who stands to inherit their equestrian outfitting business); his wife, Berenice (played by a male actor, and smitten with Harold, the houseboy); Charles Appley, the Colonel's legal advisor (who is carrying on with Lady Calvarley); and Lady Calvarley herself (who is hardly dismayed by the Colonel's apparent demise). As their investigation progresses, Farcus and Potts are surprised to find that the Colonel was given to whipping Harold (to their mutual pleasure) and that Harold, despite his cockney accent, is actually a well-born son of privilege trying to escape his upper-class background. And, as it turns out, the Colonel is not actually dead, although, in the second act, after his shocking reappearance, he does manage to expire for real, after a sip of (this time) properly poisoned brandy. The second investigation doesn't fare much better than the first as Inspector Farcus' credentials are called into question; Charles and Lady Calvarley decamp for Spain; Potts takes up with Harold, who decides to accept his inheritance after all; and Farcus himself is persuaded to stay on at the manor by Hannah - who turns out to be the Colonel's possible murderer, his secret lover, and, ironically, his heir as well.
ISBN: 0-8222-0216-6