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Satire. Doug Lucie | 4m 4f One interior set, one exterior set. The action is all set on an estate deep in the English countryside,
the home of Ruth Hartstone, whose sister, Grace, is said to have
died in miraculous circumstances. But Ruth, who has lost what faith
she once possessed, is on her uppers and has reluctantly decided
to sell the place to an American religious outfit with plans to turn
it into a Christian leisure and satellite broadcasting complex with
an eye on the new markets in Eastern Europe. Lucie's script captures
the smug sanctimony and robotic cheerfulness of the Reverend Neal
Hoffman and his followers who have turned religion into big business
and regard their Mercedes stretch limo as just another sign of God's
favour. Premiered at Hampstead Theatre with Anna Massey as Ruth.
'A first-rate comedy ... A thundering good play' Guardian. Play. Timberlake Wertenbaker. 5 men, 3 women, plus several bit parts. Unit Set. Mary Traverse, the pretty, carefully schooled daughter of a wealthy
London merchant, chafes at her pampered existence and hungers for
knowledge and experience of the outside world. Leaving her father's
protection she is, at first, shocked by the unbridled, dissolute
life which she encounters in the teeming streets of 18th century
London, but under the corrupt tutelage of an embittered servant,
Mrs. Temptwell, Mary is soon drawn into this new and fearsome world,
first losing her virginity and then, in time, becoming a prostitute
herself. Along the way she invades such staunchly male preserves
as gambling dens, taverns and cockfights, and encounters a wide array
of bizarre characters, culminating in a sexual episode with her own
father - who, because Mary is by now so changed, does not recognize
his own daughter. Fast paced and comprised of series of heightened
scenes, the play alternates earthy humour with moments of great poignancy
but, in the end, yields both a sense of optimism and a parallel for
our own time as Mary comes to realise that only through wisdom and
self-knowledge can she, as a woman, transcend the unhappiness and
despair which worldly experience has brought her, and progress (or
traverse) toward the true freedom and sense of purpose which she
so desperately seeks. Play. Samuel Adamson | M3 (20s, 34) F3 (30s, 67). A living/dining-room. When Grace decides to leave her sheltered accommodation and return to her old home, her children start to worry. Only Ellie, her daughter-in-law, seems to understand her need to dwell on the past and her passion for the Australian soprano Joan Sutherland. The family gather round to protect their inheritance, but behind the mask of genteel senility is cunning: Grace has plans of her own. Comedy. John Cecil Holm. 6 men, 6 women. Interior Most people have inherited property, but we never heard of anyone
inheriting a ghost. Nancy Willard did. This attractive girl, who
works for a publisher, is engaged to Parker Burnett. When Amelia
Bullock, Nancy's landlady and owner of a delightful old house, dies
at the age of 103, Nancy learns that she has been left something
named Nathaniel Coombes. Nathaniel is a young and handsome Revolutionary
soldier who had been ambushed and killed in 1776 and is now doomed
to an earth-bound existence as a ghost in the neighbourhood of Nancys
apartment. He cannot get into heaven because he has failed to deliver
a message to George Washington. It was all the fault of a pretty
barmaid who caused him to forget his duty. Nancy, incidentally, is
the only living being who can see Nathaniel. When Charley Stewart,
an attractive young newspaperman, comes to Nancy's apartment seeking
data on the late Miss Bullock, Nancy finds her life even more complicated,
since there are now three young men (if we include Nathaniel) interested
in her. It is Charley, of course, who learns how to exorcise the
ghost and win Nancy away from Parker. But it is Nathaniel who ultimately
enables Nancy to choose the right husband, and on his accomplishing
this he gains admittance to heaven at long last. Play. Eduardo de Filippo. Translated by
Carlo Ardito In this masterly black comedy the illusionist Otto gives his best performance ever. When Mama offers herself as victim in his disappearing act and takes the opportunity of running off with her lover, Otto convinces her husband, Calogero, that if he truly believes in his wife's fidelity she will reappear when he opens a certain Japanese box; if he does not truly believe and opens the box, she will be lost forever. Calogero suffers four years of indecision and his denial of reality is so complete that when Marta returns of her own accord he does not recognise her. He is condemned to the solitude of his illusory world. Comedy. Ronald Alexander. 6 men, 3 women. Interior The story tells about a private secretary, Lu Cotton, employed by
and constantly trying to discourage the amorous advances of her attractive,
charming millionaire boss, Mr. Robert Meredith. Lu's life becomes
humorously complicated when Mr. Meredith forces her to appear on
a TV show and she wins the grand prize: the right to be her boss'
boss for 24 hours. Meredith arrives at her one room walk-up apartment
and suggests that he start working for her as soon as possible. Outraged
by this invasion of her privacy, yet attracted to him, she turns
the tables and forces her boss to become her domestic. She makes
him rinse her laundry, wash her dishes, and shouts orders at him
as though she were a five-star general. Meredith vows vengeance and
the basic poor girl, rich man conflict is established, then further
involved and heightened with laughter by the advent of Lu's bright,
beautiful girlfriend, Kate Wilson, who loves men, and the entrance
of Lu's ad-man fiancé who hates Brooks Brothers clothes. From
this point in the first act the play takes off on a hilarious spoof
of everything and everybody, including: television, romance, psychoanalysis,
the advertising business and amateur songwriters. After three acts
of merriment it concludes happily for all concerned. Play David Wiltse. 4 men, 4 women. Divided Interior. The place is the Nebraska home of Susan and Robert Atwater. Robert
has left his wife and gone off to California with a younger woman,
and Susan has taken in her aged, increasingly cantankerous mother,
Harriet, who has recently suffered a stroke. As the play begins,
Susan is nervously awaiting Robert's unexpected return, hoping that
he will, at last, be able to return the love (and desire) which she
still feels for him. But while it turns out that Robert is willing
to come back to her, it is quickly evident that he is motivated by
a sense of guilt and responsibility, rather than passion, and that
his heart still belongs to his lover in California. Paralleling this
present day action are "dream sequences" which reveal the story of
Harriet and her family. her stern, unyielding father, who treated
her and her gentle, loving mother like servants; her first doomed
romance with a young doctor deemed unsuitable by her father; being
packed off to normal school to be trained as a teacher; her mother's
agonizing death; a loveless marriage of convenience; and, at last,
a moment of true, redeeming passion with the man she had continued
to desire all through her life. As the play ends the lessons of the
present and the past come together and, somehow, clarify the future,
as mother and daughter find a depth of mutual respect and understanding
they have not known before and Susan, aware now that she must not
settle for less than the "grand romance" she has always hoped for,
releases Robert to return to the woman he really loves. Play. Elmer Rice. Nell Valentine is a no longer young, school teacher who, for the first time in her sheltered life, falls desperately in love during the course of a summer tour through Europe. Nell has planned this trip as a climax to long years of hope and preparation. But Ray Brinton, who has fallen in love with her and hopes to marry her, must tell her that not only he is already married but he is a fugitive from justice having stolen money from his own bank. Nell is ready to marry him in spite of everything until Ray's wife appears on the scene and shows she is still deeply attached to him. Only then does Nell see that the romance must end. Nell insists Ray return to his family and offers all she has to help him keep out of jail. Then she quietly steps out of the picture, leaving Ray and his wife together, and goes on to finish her trip, alone. The last scene is the classroom at Nell's school. She presents an illustrated travelogue to her students describing her trip. Beneath the superficialities of her comments, emerges the undertones of her experience. This has not embittered her, and in her closing words she emerges as a more mature and understanding woman than when she set forth. 6 men, 3 women. Interior/Exterior John Steinback, adapted by Frank Galati : Drama 18M 4F Flexible staging Steinbeck's story of the Joad family and their tragic flight from
the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California in search of the promised land
is powerfully realised in Frank Galati's stage adaptation. Thrown
off their land and lured by promises of unlimited work and prosperity,
the Joads pack their worldly possessions onto a ramshackle truck
and head west, only to find their hopes and dreams shattered in the
face of oppression and persecution. Play. Mary Orr. 2 men, 4 women. Interior. The scene is a comfortable apartment on lower Fifth Avenue, in New
York City, which is shared by two divorcees. They are awaiting the
arrival of a third "bachelor lady" to join them in dividing their
living expenses. Their new roommate turns out to be a recent divorcee
from Texas, formerly married to a rich oil man, and a bit unsettled
by another divorcee who lives across the hall - a Ph.D. who also
happens to be not quite white in skin color. But the four soon hit
it off well, and their confidences to each other reveal the sometimes
sad, sometimes funny occurrences which have brought them to the present
situation. Tension mounts with the unexpected visit of the son of
one divorcee and the ex-husband of another but, ultimately, the action
of the play comes to bear on the central problem which confronts
them all: the need to learn from past mistakes, and to replace the
loneliness and frustration of their present existence with something
stronger and more solid than what they had before. Play. Lloyd Gold : 7 men, 2 women. Interior. The time is Mardi Gras; the place, a New Orleans funeral parlour.
As the action begins, in a wildly farcical scene a bereaved family,
accompanied by a young priest, is reviled and driven away by the
irate funeral director - a man who, while dealing with death, can
only regard it with ridicule and disdain. As it happens the funeral
director, a widower, has a young daughter who, born with a damaged
heart, is doomed to an early death and his apparent brusqueness is
the only, and best, way he knows how to prepare her for her fate.
Moved by her plight the novice priest attempts to offer spiritual
guidance to the frail girl and a gentle, romantic attachment grows
between them, despite the father's objections. Eventually the girl,
accompanied by the priest and her father's best friend, an alcoholic
doctor, realises her dream of going out into the world - and to Mardi
Gras. It is, for her, a crowning happiness. But it is also a final
one - a journey away from death and yet to death and to a release
which all who cared for her may now share. |