Comedy. Michael Pertwee Jay wants to leave his past behind and start a new life. When he
moves into his new flat his only wish is solitude, but the girl next
door plagues him with her suicide threats, his ex-wife insists on
leading him to Jesus, and his secretary declares her undying passion.
Jay's women pursue, attack, seduce and harrass him and he only wants
to be alone - or does he? A very funny, witty play with fast and
well-timed comic action. Christopher Marlowe The classic story of the learned Doctor Faustus, who grows bored
with conventional scholarship so turns to magic in his search for
ultimate knowledge. He makes a pact with Mephistopheles, agent of
the Devil, that Mephistopheles will do Faustus's bidding for twenty
four years, at the end of which Faustus will be carried down to Hell.
Faustus fails to discover any ultimate truths as he is manipulated
by Mephistopheles' persuasive tricks. Utterly unfulfilled and damned
Faustus remains painfully aware of the presence of Divine mercy,
but is finally unable to save his soul. First performed in 1594. (in Czech Plays) : Daniela Fischerova.
Trans AG. Brain A recreation of the trial of the 15th-century French poet François
Villon for murder. The author - the leading female Czech playwright
- weaves together several moments in time so that the trial is attended
both by the murdered man and by present day reporters. Play. Mary Gallagher. 4 men, 4 women, 1 boy, 2 girls. Unit Set The place is an affluent suburb in a mid-sized American city, the
time the "possible future," when the national economy has slid from
recession into depression and even worse. The action of the play
follows the plight of some representative families as they face conditions
never before imagined: job lost, businesses collapsing, the country
club besieged by squatters, and their friends and neighbours turning
into hoarders, cadgers and thieves. Their attempts to survive while
all is tumbling down are sometimes hilarious and sometimes genuinely
moving as they turn curtains into clothes, dream up new ways to make
zucchini appetizing and fight over jobs they would have spurned in
better days. But while told in broad, comic strokes, their story
is also a moral tale, for while the times are out of joint the resourcefulness
and resiliency of the people remains strong - and, with this, the
conviction that if the spirit is undaunted, renewal and recovery
are sure to come in time. Comedy. Mary Chase. 5 men, 5 women, 2 boys, 2 girls, 3 poodles. Interior To Mademoiselle Barbizon (formerly Barschberger), people run a poor
second to poodles and in her manorlike Versailles Kennels she has
spared no expense in seeing to it that her prize charges are given
the best of everything. They are also watched over by their zealous
guardian even after being sold to those chosen few who qualify as
poodle owners. As the play begins, Miss Barbizon is icily rejecting
the demands of an irate customer whose poodle has been summarily
repossessed. As the rebuffed owner storms off to obtain a search
warrant, Mademoiselle prepares for the arrival of the prize-winning
Linville whose owner, Allegra de Graffe, wishes to board him for
two weeks while she goes off yachting with her rich suitor. But Linville,
when he arrives, is not happy about staying and Mademoiselle, after
reading his "vibrations" (she can talk to poodles), announces that
he wants to go on the cruise too. The crisis is resolved by the appearance
of Christine and Beverly, two youngsters selling Girl Scout cookies,
to whom Linville responds immediately. They are engaged to play with
him each day - which works well until Miss Barbizon discovers that
the girls really don't like dogs at all. She decides to teach them
a lesson, but in the wild escapades which follow she is the one who
ends up learning the most, not only about poodles but about people
as well. Children's Play Michael Weiler. 2 men, 1 woman, 2 boys (flexible casting). Unit Set Six-year-old Nicholas gets into hot water when he invents a non-existent
creature called Dogbrain to blame for his bad behavior. When Dogbrain
materializes (visible only to Nicholas) and wreaks havoc on his family,
Nick and his little brother are forced into the night-time streets
of the city where they encounter a huge dog, a bag person, and finally,
a rescuer, straight out of Nicholas' imagination - the same imagination
that conjured up his dark side as the creature Dogbrain. Thus does
Nicholas learn how he has within him bad and good, and the power
to keep them under his own control. Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth. Double bill. Tom Stoppard Tom Stoppard explains that the comma between the two titles serves to unite the plays: 'the first is hardly a play at all without the second which cannot be performed without the first'. Dogg's Hamlet is a reworking of Dogg's Our Pet, an exercise in nonsense language which leads on to The Fifteen Minute Hamlet (published separately by Samuel French) which takes the most well-known lines from Hamlet and condenses them into 13 minutes. Cahoots Macbeth ingeniously abbreviates Shakespeare and combines it with linguistic jokes, political comment and farce. Play. Henrik Ibsen, in a new version by
Christopher Hampton Ibsen's classic play tells the story of Nora, beautiful, fragile wife of Torvald Helmer. Nora had secretly borrowed money for her husband by forging her father's signature. Krogstad, her creditor, threatens to ruin Helmer by exposing Nora's fraud. When Helmer finds out, he is not prepared to sacrifice his reputation to protect Nora; she realizes that she must close the door on her marriage and her husband to retain her self-respect. Drama. Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Frank McGuinness. 4 men, 4 women, 2 boys. Interior Nora Helmer is a vibrant young housewife who nonetheless suffers
from. a crippling dependency on her husband of eight years. He, Torvald,
has always done the thinking for the both of them. In order to save
Torvald from a debt, and to spare his masculine pride, Nora arranges
a loan without his knowledge, and does so by forging a signature.
The inevitable revelation of the crime results in an unexpected reaction
from Torvald: rather than being grateful to Nora, he is incapable
of accepting the pride and self-sufficiency she demonstrated in taking
care of him and he accuses her of damaging his good name. The illusions
behind their marriage are exposed and Nora wakes to feelings of self
awareness for the first time in her life. Torvald is not the man
she thought she knew. They are husband and wife, yes; but they are
strangers as well. And in one of the most famous, and scandalous,
climaxes in all of 19th Century drama, Nora leaves her husband and
children, determined to forge a new identity from the one she has
always known. A
Doll's House : Henrik Ibsen, Trans K. McLeish Ibsen's revolutionary tale of Nora's awakening to her need for a
life of her own. First performed in 1879, and in this translation
by the English Touring Theatre in 1994. Drama. Henrik Ibsen, translated by Michael Meyer. 3 men, 3 women. Unit set. In the Norway of the late 1870s Nora Helmer, a beautiful young mother
of two, is a precious unworldly plaything for her lawyerhusband,
Torvald. Childish and immature, she has in the past been foolish
enough to sign her father's name on a note to obtain money for Torvald
to take a trip to Italy for his health. Although she works secretly
to pay off the debt, the incriminating note is held by Nils Krogstad,
who has just been sacked by her husband as dishonest. Krogstad threatens
to expose her unless she uses her influence to have him reinstated.
Nora is under the delusion that her husband will understand her `crime'
was an act of love for his welfare, but upon hearing about the deed
he reacts with panic stricken selfishness and only relents his attitude
to her when Krogstad has a change of heart and returns the forged
IOU. Totally disheartened by her husband's cowardly and hypocritical
stance she refuses to forgive him, realizing that she has been no
more than an amusing doll in his house. She takes her children and
leaves to find her own way to maturity. Comedy. Charlotte Hastings George Dolphin, a rich, well-bred man, is so obsessed with making money that he fails to notice his wife's devotion to him or his daughter's serious feelings towards his young assistant. With the unexpected arrival from the States of his mother, a cheerful, generous and irrepressible humanist, his world is turned completely upside down. Period 1960s Play. Corinne Jacket. 3 men, 3 women. Interior. Having been granted amnesty through the efforts of his wealthy and
politically well-connected older brother, Larry, Stephen Porter .is
writing a book about his years as a violent radical activist. As
he sorts through the events of his revolutionary past he is disturbed
by the recurring appearance of a spectral figure - a fellow cell
member who was killed when a bomb that Stephen was building accidentally
detonated. He is also shaken by the unexpected arrival of his estranged
wife, Ellen, who is still a hunted terrorist and who is determined
to win back both Stephen's affection and his allegiance to the cause.
Her appearance is particularly distressing to Larry and his wife,
Susan, who importune Stephen to settle down and join the family business,
putting his radical days behind him. The resulting conflicts form
the dramatic heart of the play, as Stephen struggles to come to terms
with the ideological and emotional compulsions which beset him -
his conviction as to the justness of the cause he has served, and
the guilt he feels about the destructive acts which this has led
to. In the end there are no easy answers, but, instead, a sort of
tentative accommodation with the changed reality, both political
and personal, of which an older and wiser Stephen, with the passage
of time, has inevitably become aware. |