A musical celebration. Book and lyrics
by David Wood and Dave and Toni Arthur. Music by Dave and Toni
Arthur
M6 (20s, 50s, 80) F4 (20s-40s). 3 children, 1 dog. A gypsy encampment.
In a gypsy encampment, a series of Jack tales and songs (from Little
Jack Homer, through Jack and the Beanstalk to Spring Heeled Jack)
is performed by the gypsies, with singing and dancing, a mumming
play, a shadow-mime and puppetry, to celebrate the eightieth birthday
of their senior member, Jack the Lad. Vocal score sold separately.
ISBN 0 573 01801 4
Musical reconstruction. Ron Pember
and Denis de Marne
M8 (young, middle-age) F8 (young). Extras. Equally suitable for small
drama societies as well as musical societies. Composite standing
set: a music hall, a pub, London streets.
The play is a musical reconstruction of the East End murders which
took place in 1888, an atmospheric commentary rather than an historical
re-enactment, shifting between reality and artificiality, with characters
representing 'real' people as well as members of the music hall audience
and players. Period late Victorian
ISBN 0 573 08042 9
Jackie Lantern's Hallowe'en Revenge
Play. Burton Cohen. 3 men, 2 women. Exterior.
It's Hallowe'en night and trouble's brewing on the porch of a
"typical" American farmhouse, where a jack-o'-lantern named
"Jackie" glows and flickers diabolically. Mother and Father, daughter
Betsy, and son Tom, are getting ready for a local masquerade party
when the Sheriff arrives with bad news. He's been sent to the farmhouse
to find out "whodunnit,"
even though he isn't sure what it is the culprit "dun." The family
is immediately wracked with, guilt, certain that one of them has
committed a heinous crime. Mother and Father suspect that Tom is
the guilty party, and attempt to drown him. Then Mother tries to
wing Betsy with a shotgun. And Father, aping the investigations he's
seen in the movies, persuades the others into making lurid confessions,
including, finally, Mother's tortured admission that "I did it and
I'm glad!" What she did, it turns out, was to find Betsy and Tom
in a sack at the train station many years before, and to claim that
they were her own children. Her revelation throws the family into
a frenzy of remorse and regret that ends only when the Sheriff receives
word that he's at the wrong farmhouse, and that no one here "duni
anything after all. Relieved that their ordeal is over, the family
heads off at last for the masquerade party, with Betsy dressed as
a pregnant prom queen, and Tom decked out in high heels and a dress
- while "Jackie" glows ever more brightly (and maniacally) in the
descending darkness.
ISBN; 0-8222-0587-4
Play. Barbara Graham. 3 men, 2 women. Interior
The action of the play takes place in the storefront studio/flat
of Leona, a budding young San Francisco painter whose estranged husband,
Will, has gone off and left her with the responsibility of raising
their tenyear-old son, Jacob. Now Will, an itinerant geologist, has
suddenly returned, claiming that he is a changed man who wants to
reunite his family and take them off to Mexico. But, in Will's absence,
Leona has begun to create a new life: her career is beginning to
build; and she has a new boyfriend, peter, who is as sensitive and
thoughtful as Will is selfish and irresponsible. Yet Leona is still
drawn to the handsome Will, resulting in a tug of war in which Jacob
becomes the innocent pawn with the most, to lose. Retreating to his
loft bed (Jacob's ladder) the boy ponders his situation, while his
mother reluctantly accepts the truth that divorce is the only way
to protect what she has struggled to achieve. In the end Jacob, moved
by his father's pleas, decides to go off with him to Mexico - at
least for a trial period - leaving Leona, once again, to grapple
with the task of building a stable life out of the discord created
by the unfortunate behavior of others.
ISBN: 0-8222-0586-6
Play. Willis Hall, adapted from the novel
by Charlotte Brontë
M4 F8, with doubling. Various simple settings.
Whilst retaining all the familiar passionate qualities of Charlotte
Brontë's novel, Willis Hall successfully transposes the nineteenth-century
world of Jane Eyre to the stage with simply staged short interconnected
scenes and intimate locations. With the passages of direct narration
broken up and shared out amongst the Company, a fictional tale of
a penniless, plain girl becomes a work of great emotional force in
the most complete stage adaptation of the classic novel.
ISBN 0 573 01802 2
Drama. Helen Jerome. Dramatised from Charlotte
Brontë's novel
M7 (20s, 30s, elderly) F9 (18, 20s, 30s, middle-age, elderly). 1
girl (7). A library, a living-room.
Literature has not duplicated such a love story as follows between
the embittered, tragically lonely Rochester, landed proprietor and
Jane's employer, and Jane 'untouched and innocent but intellectually
his equal'. We meet Rochester's mad wife; follow Jane through her
frustrated marriage and flight; her happy association with Diana
and St John Rivers; her coming into her fortune; and the happy ending.
ISBN 0 573 01207 5
Play. Charlotte Brontë. Adapted by
Charles Vance
M4 (30s) F6 (young, 18, 20s, middle age, elderly) (F5 with doubling),
1 child. A library and passageway.
Focusing on the love story between Jane and Rochester, the play
begins as Jane arrives in 1846 to take up the post of governess to
Rochester's ward, Adèle, at Thornfield Hall. Jane and Rochester
fall in love but their happiness is jeopardised with the discovery
of the terrible secret from Rochester's past, resolved by the dramatic
fire which maims Rochester. The action, contained in a single setting
with one small inset scene, makes for exciting theatre.
ISBN 0 573 01803 0
Polly Teale
3m 5f min, doubling. Drama. Minimal set.
This new adaptation by Polly Teale for Shared Experience Theatre
Company first seen at the Young Vic follows their success with Anna
Karenina, War and Peace and The Mill on the Floss. 'Puts
the interior life of the book on the stage as well as its narrative.
Adaptations of this quality can't be dismissed as a poor second to
reading the book' Time Out.
ISBN 185459 329 3
Comedy. Samson Raphaelson. 7 men, 4 women. Interior
Jason Otis is a drama critic, whose convictions on life and art are set. He marries Lisa, a charming woman. But Jason's life is ruffled by the entrance of a temperamental young playwright, Mike Ambler. Mike's talents and joy of living are quite the opposite of Jason's. Furthermore, Mike is attracted to Lisa. Jason is angry, and this grows ache realizes that Lisa is also attracted to Mike. Then begins Jason's education. He, too, finds some-. thing in Mike's vitality that is attractive. The grave critic is gradually transformed into an understanding human being, and what promised to be an affair between Lisa and Mike is broken off when Lisa realizes that Jason is more of a man than she had thought him. Jason's attempts to enjoy life and other people under Mike's guidance forms the comedy of the play. The climax is reached when Jason, fearing the loss of his wife, has to review Mike's new play. His first impulse is to praise it; his second to damn it. He then reveals the completeness of his spiritual education, and he realizes all the good that is in the young genius.
Comedy. Paul Rudnick. 7 men, 1 woman. Unit Set
Jeffrey, a gay actor/waiter, has sworn off sex after too many bouts
with his partners about what is "safe" and what is not. In gay New
York, though, sex is not something you can avoid. Whether catering
a ditzy socialite's "Hoe-down for AIDS" or cruising at a funeral,
at the gym or in the back rooms of an anonymous sex club; at the
annual Gay Pride Parade, or in the libidinous hands of a father-confessor,
Jeffrey finds the pursuit of love and just plain old physical gratification
to be the number one preoccupation of his times - and the source
of plenty of hilarity. Suddenly, just after he's reconciled himself
to celibacy, Jeffrey's flamboyant. friends introduce him to the man
of his dreams, who also happens to be HIV positive. What follows
is an audacious and moving romantic comedy with a difference - one
in which the quest for love and really fabulous clothes meet, and
where unflagging humour prevails even when tragedy might be just
around the corner.
ISBN: 0-8222-1402-4
Play by Keith Waterhouse,
based on the life and writings of Jeffrey Bernard
M1. M2 F2 playing at least 22 parts. A pub.
Gambler, journalist, fervent alcoholic and four-times married Jeffrey
Bernard writes the weekly 'Low Life' column for the Spectator magazine,
chronicling Soho life as well as offering a very personal philosophy
on vodka, women and racecourses. From this, Keith Waterhouse has
brilliantly constructed a play which is set in the saloon bar of
Bernard's favourite Soho pub, the Coach and Horses.
ISBN 0 573 01804 9
Play. Leonard H. Caddy, based on the novel Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
M4 (40, middle-age, 60) F4 (young, 20s, 30). Extra 1 child. A parlour
and part of the adjoining laboratory.
Dr Jekyll is on the brink of discovering the key to man's inner
reality. He experiments on himself, and finds to his delight that
his formula works. Unfortunately, his 'real' self turns out to be
the monster Edward Hyde. When Hyde brutally murders one of the young
maids he realises there is only one course of action open to him
... Period 1851
ISBN 0 573 11186 3