Composers and their stage works 



 

Dr. Cook's Garden

Melodrama. Ira Levin. 3 men, 2 women. Interior

As Richard Watts Jr. outlined "...in the Vermont village of Greenfield Center, there is a genial, benevolent and greatly loved old physician who is very proud of his community. It is peopled with fine, wholesome folk, and it appears that Heaven rewards the civic virtue by seeing to it that mostly only those who are wicked at heart die. And the good Dr. Cook, who is willing to go out on sick calls at any hour of the day or night, is determined it should stay in that fortunate condition. When a young physician, who had known and loved Dr. Cook for years, returns to the village for a visit, he is delighted to see his venerable friend and benefactor again. Then a problem of medical ethics arises to haunt him. It may, he concedes, be excusable for a doctor to kill off incurable patients and the hopelessly deformed. But he thinks it is going too far to do away with disagreeable people who happen to be a blot on the fair community." And it is his attempt to make his mentor see reason on this point which brings on the gripping climax of the play, in which the two doctors, young and old, are pitted against each other in a scene of unforgettable, breath-stopping suspense and high drama.
ISBN: 0-8222-0328-6

Dr. Hero

A Vaudeville. Israel Horovitz. 4 men, 3 women, flexible casting. Open Stage.

The hero, who is named Hero, is born onstage. Thereafter come scenes of childhood, education, army service, and then marriage - as Hero becomes Dr. Hero (PhD) and begins to assume the "greatness" which he knows is destined to be his: As he moves forward (including his especially hilarious entry into the advertising business) his charisma - and ego - grow apace, and even old age fails to dim the surging spirit which, through a long and turbulent life, has won and sustained for him the singular title of "The World's Greatest Man.
ISBN: 0-8222-0329-4

Dracula

Play. Crane Johnson. Freely adapted from the novel by Beam Stoker. 3 men, 4 women. Interior.

Everyone is familiar with the dark tale of Dr. Seward, his fiancee Lury, and their mysterious neighbour, Count Dracula, but here the events take on intensified effect through the heightened action and simplified staging of this fast-moving new version. Lury is suffering from a strange malady; much to the concern of her aunt, Mrs. Harker, and her intended, the scholarly Dr. Seward, and matters are hardly helped by the disconcerting. presence o£ Renfield, whose bizarre behavior (he eats flies and birds) is being observed by the doctor for scientific purposes. Sensing that Lucy's illness may also be rooted in some undefined and perhaps unnatural phenomena, Dr. Seward has summoned the renowned metaphysician, Dr. Van Helsing (here portrayed as a female character), to join them. Under her astute questioning the very odd facts of Luey's case begin to emerge, and when their neighbour from Carfax Hall, Count Dracula, pays a call, Van Helsing begins to suspect the horrible truth. Thereafter it is a desperate race to save Lury, and the others, from Draculâs evil clutches - and, once and for all, to find and destroy the vampire in his secret hiding place.
ISBN: 0-8222-0326-X

Dracula

Charles McKeown : Thriller 5M 2F (plus vampiresses!) Interior Set

An exciting new version of this classic tale. The play opens just after the mysterious death of Doctor Seward's fiancée, Lucy. Before long, his neighbour, Count Dracula, has paid a visit and clearly has his eyes on Mina, Dr Seward's sister. When Mina begins to display the same symptoms as Lucy leading up to her death, there is much cause for concern and the rest of the play becomes a desperate race to save Mina from Dracula'. evil clutches. A ver,, lively and highly amusing adaptation of this ever-popular story.
ISBN: 0 85676 018 8

Dracula

Bram Stoker, adapted by Jane Thornton and John Godber : Thriller 6M 3F Flexible staging

A new adaptation of the most chilling story of all time. True to Stoker's original novel, Dracula is a fast-moving multi-layered masterpiece of fear. As a sudden and mysterious storm whips the coast of England, a young woman sleepwalks along the edge of a cliff. In the teeth of the gale, a ship crashes through the harbour entrance, abandoned except for an immense dog and fifty boxes of grave dust. The Transylvanian Count Dracula has arrived in England. Immortal only as long as he is able to drink the blood of the living, he pursues his victims with brutally devastating effect. From the remote wilderness of Yorkshire to a vast ruined castle near to London whose windows omit no light, the race to end.
ISBN: 0856762164

Dracula

Drama. Steven Dietz. 6 men, 4 women, flexible casting. Unit Set

"I want your fear. For your fear, like a current, rushes through your body. Your fear makes your heart pound, it renders your veins rich and full. Your fear hemorrhages deliciously within you." This new adaptation restores the suspense and seduction of Brain Stoker's classic novel to the stage. As Count Dracula begins to exert his will upon the residents of London, they try to piece together the clues of his appearances - in a valiant attempt to save themselves from a hideous fate. Rich with both humour and horror, this play paints a wickedly theatrical picture of Stoker's famous vampire.
ISBN: 0-8222-1549-7

The Dragon's Tail.

Play. Douglas Watkinson
M2 (20, 40) F2 (17, 40). A Welsh lakeside.

The play enjoyed a successful run in London with Penelope Keith and Mark Kingston. Mary, the insensitive, harsh-talking but vulnerable 'dragon' of the title is touring Wales with her lover, Frank. They inadvertently back their van over a tent. Fearing the worst they are relieved to find the tent empty. The young owners return, not to apologies, but to a stream of Mary's invective. The interaction of these four diverse personalities provides a constant flow of highly-charged entertainment.
ISBN 0 573 01638 0

Dragonwings

Children's drama. Laurence Yep. A Chinese parable play
4 men, 3 women, flexible casting; unit.

At the turn of the century, a young boy living in China with his mother, travels to San Francisco, California, "Land of the Golden Mountain," to be with his father, Windrider, a kite maker who immigrated there a few years earlier to take advantage of the West Coast's booming expansionism. Now a laundryman, Windrider hopes to save enough money to bring his entire family over to the United States, but as his son Moon Shadow discovers, Windrider's heart really lies in his dream of building a flying machine like that of the Wright brothers. Spurred on by the conviction that he was once a dragon in a former incarnation, Windrider tinkers in his makeshift workshop, building model after model of seemingly magical flying machines, much to the wonderment of Moon Shadow. Surviving in the western world, however, demands that more crucial lessons be learned. There are racists attacks by angry San Francisco natives who resent the ever increasing presence of the Chinese; there are tensions between Moon Shadow and the father he hardly knows; and eventually, father and son will face the devastation of the 1906 earthquake which destroys their home and forces even more gruelling trials upon them. Through it all, and with the help of two Americans who believe in them, Windrider and Moon Shadow do build their flying machine and forge a deeper relationship. The results of their labour, though, will ultimately force Windrider to make a courageous decision about his and his family's future in the West.

The Dream Coat

Play John Steppling. 6 men, 2 women. Unit Set

The play begins in the grubby Los Angeles apartment of Wilson, an ageing landlord who was once involved in the motion picture industry but is now considering setting fire to his decrepit building for the insurance money. Wilson, a closet homosexual who is haunted by ethos of his young wife's voice, takes in Weldon, the drifter son of a friend from his studio days who has arrived in town broke and jobless. Also on hand are Marliss, a young prostitute, strung out on drugs, who has abandoned her son to head west with Weldon; a hard-bitten hustler named Drew, who once collected rents for Wilson and who now pushes his wife aside to take up with Marliss; and a transvestite, Penny, who lives with a greasy auto mechanic, Bill. Told in a series of elliptical, but inter-related scenes, involving two or three of the characters in various combinations, the action of the play has a cumulative effect as it probes into their self-destructive lives and attitudes, and follows their irreversible descent into the pit of hopelessness and numbing futility.
ISBN. 0-8222-0330-8

The Dreamer Examines His Pillow; a Heterosexual Homily

John Patrick Shanley. 2 men, 1 woman. Unit Set

The first scene of the play is a conversation between two lovers, Tommy and Donna, who broke up some time earlier but who are obviously still attracted to each other. Donna is enraged because Tommy, a would-be artist, is now having an affair with her younger sister, but Tommy, stretched out on his recliner (which, apart from a refrigerator full of beer, comprises the entire furnishings of his spartan apartment), is seemingly unmoved by her harangue. In the second scene Donna visits her father, a once successful artist who stopped painting at the death of his wife, whom he had bullied and betrayed despite his professed love far her. Combative and complex (but also very funny) the father sits and drinks and eventually gives in to his daughter's demand that he force Tommy to marry. her or beat him úp. Then, in the third and final scene, the father and Tommy confront each other, with results which are sometimes men acing, sometimes antic, as a lively discussion about art and women leads eventually to a sort of tenuous truce - and a grudging recognition of the responsibility which love, in its various guises, imposes.
ISBN: 0-8222-0331-6

Dreaming.

Play. Peter Barnes
Large cast may be played by M11 F4. Various simple settings.

In the bloody aftermath of the Wars of the Roses, Captain John Mallory leads a band of renegades across a war-torn landscape on a breathtaking quest in search of a dream-a dream of home. An apocalyptic vision packed with ravishing images, Dreaming is a haunting and brutally funny story of heroism and human values. Period 1471