Composers and their stage works 



 

Gint

Drama. Romulus Linney - a retelling of Henrik Ibsen's poetic drama, Peer Gynt now set in Appalachia. 4 men, 5 women. Unit Set

Gint unfolds like a strange dream, beginning with Pete Gint, a ragged young man in the Appalachian Mountains in 1917, who spends most of his time lying, drinking and getting into trouble. Gint is determined to become "something great grand and glorious," but he's not sure just what that is. The first act follows Gint's sexual misadventures with a married woman and a woman who turns out to be a razorback hog, but Gint's true love is Sally Vicks. At first Sally disdains Gint, finding him rough and loud, but slowly he wins her over. As they move into a humble mountain cabin, however, the hog woman shows up with Gint's bastard son. Not wanting Sally to be hurt or disgraced by "this nastiness," Gint decides to leave Appalachia and travel far away. Years pass, and the second act finds Gint at 75 and a billionaire. He has called together several other powerful billionaires for he has a dream of founding a new country based solely on corporations. The billionaires have other plans, however. They have secretly taken over Gint's companies and he is cast out and goes back into the wilderness. Gint then begins a nightmarish journey home, battling lunatics and devils until he arrives back in the arms of Sally Vicks, who accepts him and all his past history.
ISBN: 0-8222-1711-2

The Gioconda Smile

Play. Aldous Huxley | M5 (45, 55, elderly) F5 (22, 35, 45). Interiors.

Emily Hutton has been a complaining chronic invalid and her husband, Henry, a rich and still comparatively young man, has found consolation elsewhere. For years, he has shared his intellectual and artistic interests with Janet Spence, valuing her Gioconda-like inscrutability, but Janet's surface calm hides an intense passion for Henry and she poisons Emily. When, after several months' separation, she finds Henry has married someone else she determines to wreak havoc on their lives.
ISBN 0 573 01159 1

A Girl Can Tell

Comedy. E Hugh Herbert. 8 men, 5 women. Interiors.

Jennifer Goodall's fifteen-year-old daughter, Nancy, is curious about her mother's romantic life before her marriage. Together they look through Jennifer's old scrapbook, and Nancy asks her mother how a girl can tell when she meets the right man. Jennifer tells Nancy about some of the men who were in love with her seventeen years ago, when she was nineteen. There were six altogether, ranging from a Harvard boy to the middle-aged head of an advertising agency, and, for a while, Jennifer was completely puzzled as to which of her six pursuers she really loved. Her coquettish adventures lead her parents, her suitor and herself a merry chase, but at last she is able to decide, and in an epilogue full of delightful suspense, her choice in finally revealed - and of course it's the right one.
ISBN: 0-8222-0446-0

Girl Gone

Drama. Jacquelyn Reingold. 3 men, 5 women. Exterior

Tish is a young woman who dances in a topless bar. When her best friend is brutally murdered, Tish becomes obsessed with who killed her friend and why. The action moves rapidly from the past to the present, in and out of Tish's mind from a topless bar, to a hustler's apartment, to the middle of the street, as she tries to put together a fractured world where the pieces no longer fit. Tish finds her suspect playing the saxophone in a jazz club and risks her own life by coercing him into a re-enactment of the crime. In a shocking turnaround, Tish finds what she's looking for.
ISBN: 0-8222-1471-7

Girls' Night Out

Dave Simpson with Paul Farrah | Comedy 4M 4F Interior set

Why has Tony recently been spending lots of time in his room, playing Rod Stewart hits at top volume? His mum Ivy doesn't see anything strange in this, at least until Ivy organises a hen night for the heavily pregnant Jane, Tony's fiancée Nicole and the worldly Sara at the 'Feast of Flesh' male strip club, where all - or nearly all - is soon revealed. It turns out to be a hen night Jane will never forget, as during the course of the evening secrets as well as flesh arc exposed by the men and women alike. And how will the prim Nicole react to her discovery of Tony's new career as a male stripper? When mothers, wives, sisters and fiancées are confronted with revelations of an altogether different kind, can their lives ever be the same again? And will Jane still be having a wedding in the morning? The laughter, energy and friendship of the characters creates a vibrancy that adds a touching poignancy to the tears, confusions and painful honesty the night reveals, but as the heat is turned upon the 'Feast of Flesh' finale, audiences will be joining Ivy, Jane, Nicole and Sara in shouting out for more!
ISBN: 0 85676 248 2

Girls' Night Out in Ibiza

Dave Simpson with Paul Farrah : Comedy 4M 4F Flexible staging

The hilarious sequel to Girls' Night Out finds Tony and Pete in Ibiza, where Tony is organising a male strip show for the girls of Ibiza. Jane had thrown Pete out back home and he's arrived looking for work. He soon convinces Tony to allow him in the dance group alongside Nick and Carlos, and the foursome begin work on the 'Fiesta of Flesh' floor show. Unbeknownst to them, Ivy has won a holiday competition to Ibiza and she's joined by Nicole, Jane and Sara on a week of sun, sand and whatever else might come along! Four girls in search of a good time. Four lads who reveal all ... well, almost all. Unfortunately nothing goes to plan for anyone, and soon mistaken identities, disguises and unexpected close encounters cause mayhem. Will Tony and Nicole's wedding still go ahead, and will Jane take Pete back? How does Sara know Carlos? And most importantly, when it comes time for the floor show finale, can the men still rise to the occasion?
ISBN: 0 85676 240 7

Give Me Your Answer, Do! 

Play. Brian Friel: M4 (30s, 50s-60s) F5 (20s, 40s-60s). Composite set: a living-room, a lawn/garden.

David Knight is staying in Donegal with novelist Tom Connolly and his wife, Daisy. He has been assessing Tom's papers, which he may purchase. Also visiting are novelist Garret Fitzmaurice and his wife whose marriage may break up, and Daisy's father and arthritic mother who may be soon in a wheelchair. Absent but casting a dark shadow is the Connolly daughter, institutionalised since she was a child. Everybody is waiting for an answer which may - or may not - come.

The Glass Menagerie

Play. Tennessee Williams | M2 (young) F2 (young, middle-age). A living-room.

In a St Louis slum apartment lives Amanda Wingfeld who clings frantically to another time and place when she was a southern belle with a myriad of 'gentlemen callers'. With her lives her son Tom and crippled daughter Laura. Tom spends every spare moment losing himself at the movies while Laura's separation from reality increases until she is like one of her glass collection, too fragile to move from the shelf. Period 1945

The Glass Menagerie

Drama. Tennessee Williams. 2 men, 2 women. Composite interior

Amanda Wingfield is a faded tragic remnant of Southern gentility who lives in poverty in a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son Tom and her daughter Laura. Amanda strives to give meaning and direction to her life and the lives of her children, though her methods are ineffective and irr"-rating. Tom is driven nearly to distraction by his mother's nagging, and seeks escape in alcohol and the unrealistic world of the movies. Laura also lives in her own illusions. She is crippled and this defect, intensified by her mother's anxiety to see her married, has driven her more and more into herself. The crux of the action comes when Tom invites a young man of his acquaintance to take dinner with the family. Jim, the caller, is a nice ordinary fellow who is at once pounced upon by Amanda as a possible husband for Laura. In spite of her crude and obvious efforts to entrap the young man, he and Laura manage to get along very nicely, and momentarily Laura is lifted out of herself into a new world. But this crashes when, toward the end, Jim explains that he is already engaged. The world of illusion which Amanda and Laura have striven to create in order to make life bearable collapses about them. Tom, too, at the end of his tether, at last leaves home.
ISBN: 0-8222-0450-9

Glengarry Glen Ross

Play. David Mamet: M7 (40s, 50s). A restaurant, an office.

The scene is a real estate office in America - a fly-by-night operation selling tracts of underdeveloped land in Arizona to gullible Chicagoans. A sales contest is near its end; the winner will get a Cadillac, the second a set of knives, the bottom two get fired. This is the background to Mamet's seedy morality play filled with the spiralling obscenity and comic bluster of the salesmen. 'The dialogue becomes mesmerising ... rich seam of humour and pathos ... ' New Statesman

 

Glutt

Play. Gladden Schrock.2 men, 1 woman. Interior.

For unspecified crimes against a futuristic collective state, Glutt, a one time poet, revolutionary, woodsman and loner, has been imprisoned. Using an elaborate sound console for sense stimuli, he is obliged to work with memory "through his web of guilt," settling upon a personal peace before his extermination. What follows is a soaring virtuoso exploration of Modern Man, ranging from explosively caustic to gently poignant ironies, and the ultimate realization by Glutt of his own complicity with the ways of the world that he abhors. A dazzling inventive banquet of passion and language, Elizabeth in stature, modern in spirit; something of a dramatic monument erected in memory of the Humanities. A command performances with strong humanizing impact.