Composers and their stage works 



 

Do Not Disturb

Comedy. Michael Pertwee
M I (middle-age) F4 (teenage, 20, 30, middle-age). A studio flat.

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.
ISBN 0 573 11513 3

Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe
9-29m 2f plus 7-9m/f, doubling. Classic drama. Simple set.

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.
ISBN 1854593358

Dog and Wolf

(in Czech Plays) : Daniela Fischerova. Trans AG. Brain
8m 5f, chorus. Historical drama. Simple set.

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.
ISBN 185459074X

Dog Eat Dog

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.
ISBN: 0-8222-0319-7

The Dog Sitters

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.
ISBN: 0-8222-0321-9

Dogbrain

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.
ISBN: 0-8222-1605-1

Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth.

Double bill. Tom Stoppard
Up to 20 characters, much doubling possible.

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.

A Doll's House

Play. Henrik Ibsen, in a new version by Christopher Hampton
M3 (late 30s, 40s) F4 (30s, 35, old), 1 boy 1 girl (optional). A flat.

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.

A Doll's House

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.
ISBN: 0-8222-1636-1

A Doll's House : Henrik Ibsen, Trans K. McLeish
3-4m 3-4f, 3 children. Classic drama. Single interior set.

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.
ISBN 185459236X

A Doll's House

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.
ISBN: 0-413-46340-3

Dolphins Rampant.

Comedy. Charlotte Hastings
M5 (25, 40s) F4 (young, 40s, 60s). A living-room.

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

Domestic Issues

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.
ISBN: 0-8222-0322-7