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Comedy. Peter Yeldham and Donald Churchill Two couples take their annual holidays together in Torremolinos,
but this year the men and women have decided (separately) they don't
want to go: the women because they are sick of it and the men because
there are two very attractive girls in East Croydon who would appreciate
their company. All suggest that plans are changed but as no-one wants
to divulge the true reason, complications inevitably ensue in this
fast and furious comedy! Drama Tom Donaghy. 3 men, 3 women. Interior. Evvy, in her 40s, was married to Jimmy, in his 70s. She has been
in mourning a year since he died and now her friends want her seclusion
to end. Sean, a local social worker, has been trying to woo her,
to no avail. Evvy's neighbor, Linny, seems to have a crush on her.
The only other people Evvy interacts with in this small lakeside
community are Peaches, the town handyman, and Roz, a big mouthed
co-worker of Evvy's who's been organizing the town to vote in favor
of a hotel-casino referendum. What shocks Evvy out of mourning is
the arrival of an attractive young man who says he's her late husband.
He knows details about their house, her favorite foods, even where
he stores his pipe tobacco. Unnerved by this new Jimmy's accuracy,
Evvy gives way to the stranger even though he's clearly disoriented
and possibly dangerous. But the chance to spend time with her husband
again is too good to pass up, even if it is only make-believe. When
Evvy's neighbors show up, Jimmy flees and isn't heard from again
until months later, on the night of the referendum. Upon his return,
he tells Evvy he's come from the local mental hospital and that her
late husband was an old and trusted coworker. With the mystery solved,
Jimmy leaves with the kitten, now a cat, that he gave Evvy when he
first showed up. Evvy settles down with Sean to watch the referendum
returns while news helicopters fly over her cabin. She sees the roof
of her own house on TV and realizes her perspective has been just
as detached as the young man who claimed to be her husband. She looks
at Sean and resolves to experience, at close range, what might be
next. Play. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur This extraordinary play was premiered in New York in 1928 and revived
by Michael Blakemore for the National Theatre in 1972 to great acclaim.
One of the most exciting, amusing and intelligent dramas of its period,
it centres on a prisoner's escape on the eve of his execution, his
concealment and final discovery in the press room, and a remarkable
reporter who, sick of his profession, tries to get away from it,
only to be pulled back by its irresistible lure. Mark O'Rowe FROM BOTH HIPS contains two alarming, but blackly comic, plays from the author of Howie and the Rookie. In the title play, Paul has been accidentally shot in the hip by a policeman. Back from hospital, he is bitter and self-pitying. He is also two-timing his wife. Then the policeman appears with an apology, a gun, and an extraordinary suggestion. Brenda and Sonia in THE ASPIDISTRA CODE are head over heels in debt. They fear the arrival of Drongo, a violent and unpredictable loan shark. But Brendan's brother Joe has hired protection in the person of Crazy Horse. Turns out the two hard men are old mates and then crisis seems averted - until Drongo's code of honour is called into question, and violence is threatened once more ... Mark O'Rowe is a young writer from Dublin. He won the prestigious
George Devine Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for
his London debut, Howie and the Rookie, seen also in Dublin
and Edinburgh.
Play by Bryony Lavery.: Cast: 2 F; 1 M One sunny evening, 10-year-old Rhona goes missing. Her mother , Nancy, retreats into a state of frozen hope. Agnetha, an American academic comes to England to research a thesis Serial Killing - a forgivable act? Then there's Ralph, a loner with a bit of 'previous' who's looking for some distraction... Drawn together by horrific circumstances, these three embark upon a long dark journey which finally curves upward into the light. Directed by Bill Alexander at the Birmingham Rep in 1998, Frozen won the TMA 'Best New Play Award' and Eileen Anderson Central Television Award for 'Best Play'. Play. Lope de Vega. Adapted by Adrian
Mitchell De Vega's seventeenth-century play takes its name from an Andalusian hill town whose oppressed inhabitants bravely rebelled in 1476, resulting in the killing of the tyrannical military overlord. Adrian Mitchell's adaptation, commissioned by the Royal National Theatre, was produced at the Cottesloe Theatre in 1989. 'It is hard to imagine a more gripping tale than the one that emerges in Adrian Mitchell's translation.' Time Out. (in Your
Turn to Clean the Stair & Fugue) : Rona Munro, A powerful and moving play set in a cottage in the Grampian Hills,
and then in a hospital ward. Kay, a 24 year-old secretary, encounters
her alter ego as she suffers an emotional breakdown. First staged
at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. Comedy/Drama. Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson.: 1F - Interior A play based on the life of Diana Vreeland, who stood at the center
of American style for five decades. As editor of Harper's Bazaar
and Vogue magazines, and as a member of the International Cafe Society,
she chronicled the extraordinary people and events of her time. Full
Gallop is a portrait of this remarkable woman at a turning point
in her life. Vreeland has just returned home to New York after four
months in Europe - a trip she took after being fired from Vogue magazine.
She throws an impromptu dinner party in the hope that a wealthy friend
who is invited will bankroll her in starting a magazine of her own.
Other friends, however, attempt to persuade her to take a job at
the famed Metropolitan Museum of Art. In her distinctive style, once
she decides in which direction her life will move, she goes at it "full
gallop." Play. Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller. 2 men, 3 women. Unit Set. The play is set in Omaha in 1980. Ric, in his late 20s, delivers
pizza, writes mangled poetry, drinks too much, and loves his wife.
His obsessive jealousy drives Beth to temporary refuge in her mother's
home, where he follows for a clumsy confrontation. Beth's last desperate
effort to touch Ric provokes him to awkward, befuddled violence.
Her mother finds her dead. But the play's focus is on the mother,
Rosie, a bookkeeper in her 50s. Once the victim of an alcoholic,
abusive marriage, she now carries on a liaison with Les, an affable
used car dealer who had helped her through hard times, joked her
out of depressions, but who won't divorce his wife. She dings to
religion, then numerology, groping for something to believe in. She
finds it in Beth's death, coming by degrees to an overwhelming faith
in Ric's innocence. Fabricating her own reality, she ejects Les,
gets herself fired, hires a lawyer for Ric and lies at the trial,
slandering her daughter to obtain his acquittal. Not even his blunt
statement of the facts can shake her belief. The ending is grotesquely
happy: a short epilogue sees a new job for Rosie, electronics school
for Ric, and the past erased. Comedy Norman Krasna. 2 men, 2 women. Interior Cathy and David are two young theatre hopefuls who, despite the
fact that neither thought they gave a good reading, have been cast
in a Broadway play. After rehearsing together, and then acting together,
they decide to live together as well - which is fine until Crystal,
another actress, tells Cathy that David is "playing around." At the
same time the question of who is paying for Cathy's apartment comes
up. It happens to be her father, an army colonel, but Cathy (who
is not miffed with David) lets him believe that she is being kept
by an older man, a rich toy manufacturer with an invalid wife. When
Cathy's father arrives unexpectedly the plot thickens hilariously:
David is bundled unceremoniously out of the apartment; he jealously
shadows them when they go off to the Rainbow Room; Cathy's father
grows suspicious; and Cathy, to her chagrin, finds out that David's
reputed
"affair" was actually a visit by his younger sister. In time each
of them figures out what the other is up to, but acts as if he (or
she) didn't, which keeps the laughs coming right up to the final
scene, in which love and good sense triumph, and marriage is the
happy outcome. Play. Reynolds Price. 4 men, 5 women. Unit Set By the light of a full moon, Kerney has just received a marriage proposal from Kip, who swears his love for Kerney over and over as he has done so many times. But before Kerney will marry him, he must swear off seeing Ora Lee, the daughter of Kip's maid, Sarah, who raised Kip since his mother died. When Kerney's own mother died, when she was very young, the butler in her house, Walter, took to watching over Kerney and likes the idea of marriage with Kip. Even her father, John, seems to be in favor of the idea. But Kerney must still contend with her own fears and the thought of leaving the safety of her home. Her father, John, in admitting to Kerney he would be just as happy if she lived out her life with him, tugs at her heart; but John tries to show her that life has stages and he is willing to be there for her in this new stage if she does not abandon him. Not having her mother around while growing up, Kerney also feels the loss in learning what it means to be happy as a wife, so when her mother comes to her in a dream and seems to push her toward starting a new life with Kip, Walter encourages her to interpret the dream as her mother's wish. Kip, acting on what he knows he must do, tells Ora Lee he can no longer see her. Ora Lee reacts with venom, but both begin to bury a love that, were it not inter-racial, might have blossomed for life. Kerney finally accepts Kip, willing to believe his love and Kip accepts Kerney with all her fears as the moon again sheds light on their embrace. Play. Joe Orton : M4 F 1. Pringle has called in Caulfield to investigate his wife, who is having an affair with McCorquodale, although Tessa insists she is only giving him blanket baths. According to his religion it would be best if Pringle murders Tessa, although she will in fact live with her patient, who has already killed his wife, Tessa's friend. This is true black comedy in best Orton style, with bogus religion, a severed hand, and a corpse in the cellar. Comedy. Ray Cooney : M6 F2. A living-room. Good friends Betty and Vic arrive for Henry's birthday dinner and
Jean is frantic because Henry is late. When he eventually arrives
he wants to emigrate immediately, and with good reason: the briefcase
he accidentally picked up on the Underground is stuffed with £735,000!
When two police inspectors call, Henry, Vic, Betty and a bemused
(and tipsy) Jean are forced into a frantic game of cat and mouse.
Hilarious innuendo and cruelly funny turns of fate ensue as the two
couples assume various identities in their battle to keep the money. Comedy. Mike Harding This hilarious play concerns the wedding of Deirdre and Mark. The
fun begins on the stag night when an inebriated Mark is chained to
a lamppost with a blow-up rubber doll. The wedding itself is quite
high spirited too with half the guests, including the priest, suffering
blinding hangovers. The play ends in comic chaos when Father Molloy,
paralytically drunk, stumbles into the reception clad only in his
ecclesiastical underwear, brandishing the blow-up doll! |