Four Playlets. John Mortimer The characters in all four plays are in their twenties to forties
and can either be played by the same four artists or by separate
casts. The first, Mill Hill, calls for 2 Men and 1 Woman, the remainder, Bermondsey,
Gloucester Road and Marble Arch, call for 2 Men and
2 Women each. These four plays are linked by their themes of sexual
entanglements and by their central or suburban London settings. Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Comedy-drama.
Ed Graczyck In a small-town dime store in West Texas, the Disciples of James
Dean, now middle-aged, gather for their twentieth reunion. The ladies'
reminiscences mingle with flash-backs to their youth; then the arrival
of a momentarily unrecognised woman sets off a series of upsetting
and revelatory confrontations. The action takes place in 1975 and,
in recall, 1955. Come Back for Light Refreshments After the Service. Play.
Julie Day Beth is in the kitchen preparing food for her father's wake - real
sandwiches, cakes, etc., that the audience are invited to partake
of as they become the visiting mourners. After nursing her father
for five years before he died, she plans to sell the house and go
back-packing despite the disapproval of others. This play about relationships
and understanding garnered rave reviews and an Edinburgh Fringe Award
for excellence. Comedy. Neil Simon Harry Baker should be a happy man, but his sons are a daily trial.
Alan is a playboy with a penchant for beautiful girls and now Buddy,
formerly so timid and obedient, has joined his brother in dissipation,
unsuccessfully experimenting with the fair sex while his parents
become more mystified and irate. Alan suddenly redeems himself by
settling down, and Buddy, having learned how to handle women, determines
to take over Alan's role as the family playboy. Drama. Kia Corthron. 3 women, 1 girl, 1 boy. Interior. Skoolie lives in a clean, tiny shack at the top of the big hill,
across from the small grocer. She doesrA have the use of her legs
and uses a cart built close to the ground to get to the store, and
around the house where her appliances are cut close to the floor.
Her sister, Tee, is living with her, again, with her three small
children. Though Tee is welcome, it is a hardship to support everyone
on Skoolies income from plaiting hair and occasionally performing
abortions. As time goes on, it grows increasingly difficult for Skoolie
to handle the extra people; last time Tee came to live, two of her
children died from lack of food. Tee is very simple in the way she
looks at the world, sometimes too much so, which causes a familiar
family antagonism between the women - a caring, but at-odds view
on how to better their lives. When Skoolie discovers that Tee is
again pregnant, she tries to convince her to give up the baby. Tee
loves her children and though at first does not want to think about
it, knows that she doesn't want to jeopardize the three living ones
to possibly bury another. Bink, Skoolies life long girlfriend, comes
to visit and get her hair done. She also asks Skoolie to perform
an abortion; she and her husband are not ready for children. She
follows Skoolie's advice, does not eat, does as she's told and the
abortion is clean. Tee tries harder to be in charge of her life and
her children's lives. When she notices a mark on her daughter's arm,
put there by a neg. ligent teacher, she wants to confront the teacher
herself, but Skoolie, knowing Tee's social skills are not good, confronts
the teacher for her, winning a small victory for them all, but making
Tee feel more inadequate. Failing at taking care of her children,
Tee tries to take care of her own abortion, but tragically fails
at that too. Skoolie comes home in the afternoon to find her sister
dying. While she tries in vain to keep Tee from slipping away, Skoolie
knows she must again bear the burden of taking on and taking care
of a loving but sorrow-filled family. Drama. Norman Rosten. Subtitled "A portrait of Emily Dickinson" 5 men, 2 women. Open stage with platforms. The story is of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), that strange New England
lady who hid from the world and wrote her passionate, glorious poetry
in secret. The play opens shortly after her death. Her sister Lavinia
has discovered her poems in a bureau drawer: small packers of paper
tied neatly together with ordinary sewing thread. With the help of
Mr. Higginson, a literary critic of the time who had earlier befriended
Emily, the poems and letters she left behind are used to reveal this
contradictory woman whose life on the surface appeared to be one
of puritanical denial, yet whose writing showed a human being hungry
for love and personal fulfillment. The play is a search. We weigh
clues in her poems and letters, and in the memories of Lavinia and
brother Austin, as we reconstruct Emilys life. We see he as a carefree
girl at home, and as a young lady in growing conflict with her father;
we witness her meeting with the minister who was to have such a crucial
influence upon her. We follow the torment of her love for this man
who was unattainable and watch her slow withdrawal from the world
It becomes clear that Emily was a creature before her time, subject
to her day's social conventions but rebelling against them; cherishing
an impossible romance but refusing to settle for less; and, more
important, pouring her joy and anguish into her poetry. That poetry
is . embedded in the narrative as jewels within a crown. The play
is an unsolved mystery, and at the same time a portrait - tantalizing
and unique - of a woman who lived by her own rules, and left her
wisdom to puzzle and delight posterity. Play.
Trevor Griffiths The setting is a schoolroom near Manchester where an evening class of budding comics congregate for a final briefing from their tutor before facing an agent's man from London. Telling jokes for money offers an escape from the building site or the milk round. But the humour is a deadly serious business that also involves anger, pain and truth. How and why are laughter engineered? What dark secrets within us trigger mirthful responses to shaped remarks about sex, ethnic groups and physical disabilities'? Comedy. Mike Harding It's Christmas. Relatives you hardly ever see and who are now very
different from you arrive at your house for the festivities. No-one
receives a present that is at all appropriate. Culinary disasters
abound. Long-buried resentments rear their ugly heads as the alcohol
flows and tongues are loosened. Comfort and Joy, Mike Harding's
comedy, is painfully - but always amusingly - familiar. Drama. Speed Lamkin. 8 men, 5 women. Unit Set The central issue is the dour fate of an unhappy small-town family,
which had once been rich but has lost everything through the husband's
weakness. His wife is embittered and contemptuous; he is lost in
a drunken attempt at forgetfulness; his young son treats the father
with scorn, and they are counting on the pretty daughter to restore
their fortunes by marrying wealth. A pleasant but unambitious youth
is rejected and the richest young man in town becomes engaged to
the daughter. The young man reveals himself as an unpleasant character,
but it's not until he really goes wild that the mother is willing
to admit that her daughter shouldn't marry him. The daughter goes
off to marry the man she really loves, and the mother is left behind
to pin her saddened hopes on her son. Play. Albert Innaurato. 4 men, 1 woman, 2 boys. Interior. The scene is a loft in the Soho section of Manhattan, where a blocked
writer named Bartholomew Dante (but called Beatrice) has fled to
escape his wife of fourteen years and to come to terms with his art
and his homosexuality. But his eagerly sought tranquility is interrupted
by a series of unexpected visitors: first a young runaway, Di, who
is escaping from prep school and uptight family; then an astonishingly
precocious teenager with a German accent (Puer) who informs Beatrice
that he is his son by a German terrorist with whom Beatrice had a
brief but intense fling; and finally his estranged wife, Patricia,
a Mafia-connected lawyer who is running for Congress and wants Beatrice
back so as not to lose the Catholic vote. Caught in a sometimes poignant,
sometimes hilarious crossfire of temptations and demands, Beatrice
struggles to sort things out, for himself and the others, arriving,
in the end, at a resolution which is filled with wisdom, rich with
humor, and touched with nobility - all at the same time. Drama. Keith Glover. 7 men, 1 woman. Unit Set Upon the still smouldering ground ravaged by the Civil War stands
Crixus, fabled survivor of countless boxing matches-to-the-death
during slavery. Now middle age and a newly freed man, Crixus works
as a store clerk in a small general store in Maryland, but he faces
an uncertain future, unprepared for a life of freedom and haunted
by restless phantoms of his past. Crixus desires only to provide
as best he can for his young wife Kazarah who is close to delivering
their first child. Crixus' inarticulateness concerning his feelings
towards Kazarah threatens to drive her into the arms of Cayman, a
dashing immigrant Jamaican Boxer, who is younger and more prosperous.
Cayman is on the eve of challenging John "the Hurricane" Blaine to
a bare knuckle boxing match. "The Hurricane" is an ex-confederate
soldier who has sworn to retrace the paths of famous battles of the
Civil War fighting against opponents at the battle sites themselves.
The projected fight between Cayman and the Hurricane is delayed enabling
Cayman to challenge Crixus to a match. Crixus refuses at first but
is ultimately swayed by pressure from Kazarah, who believes the money
from fighting will do wonders for the future of their child. Crixus
accepts, not knowing Cayman intends to throw the fight and make a
killing on bets at the contest. The fight goes on as planned and
Crixus wins. His future looks bright as he is able to buy the store
where he works, but soon the store is burned to the ground by vandals.
An enraged Crixus sells himself for money to challenge "the Hurricane" to
a fight at Antietam with everything at stake. Play. Simon Gray The story begins at Cambridge University, where a group of talented
undergraduates decide to start a high-minded literary magazine to
be called The Common Pursuit, in honor of their mentor ER. Leavis,
a famed professor of English. Stuart, the initiator of the project,
is to become editor, aided by his inamorata (and future wife) Marigold,
while the others will contribute their literary or management skills.
The action of the play then moves ahead, in a series of deftly constructed
scenes, to follow ; the fates of the characters over the next twenty
years, as the magazine falters and, one by one, they compromise their
integrity to the pursuit of success and fall victim to the disillusionment
which comes when youthful a ideas prove hollow. Their stories encompass
sexual torment, adultery, treachery, deceit, success, failure and
death, but all told with such dazzling wit and compassionate understanding
that, in the end, the play leaves us not only enlightened and entertained,
but also moved and saddened by the hard choices which life in our
time can force upon even the most promising among us. |