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Comedy. F. Hugh Herbert. 3 men, 1 woman. 1 Interior, 1 Exterior A very charming and innocently frank young girl, Patty O'Neill,
meets a young architect, Don Gresham, on the top of the Empire State
Building. The result of this casual meeting is that she goes to his
apartment, where she becomes embroiled in a whole series of amusing
situations. He has invited her out to dinner, but instead she determines
to cook the meal for him, and the two get along swimmingly until
it turns out that Don has until the day before been more or less
satisfactorily engaged to the daughter of his friend and neighbor,
David Slater. Slater arrives at Don's apartment, is attracted to
Patty, and when he gets too friendly Don shows unmistakable signs
of purely masculine jealousy. The situation becomes increasingly
involved, reaching a climax when ,Pattys father, an irate and Puritanical
policeman, turns up and, suspecting the worst,, gives Don a black
eye. Ultimately,. however, it turns out that Don is not the wolf
that Patty's father imagined, and at the very end, when the scene
reverts to the top of the Empire State Building, all ends satisfactorily. John Steinbeck : Drama 17M 3F 2 Interior sets Set in an unknown town that has just been occupied by a small regiment
of enemy soldiers, the Mayor of the town agrees to meet with the
enemy to try to work out a plan for peaceful coexistence between
the soldiers and townspeople before the impending war goes much further.
The enemy establishes a command base in his residence, making life
for the Mayor rather difficult as the townspeople suspect his allegiance
has changed. As the invasion and eventual occupation develops, the
soldiers grapple with loneliness, spite and the hate directed at
them which begins to wear down their emotions. When all else fails,
the soldiers look to the Mayor, who has secretly emerged as a leader
of the resistance group in town, as a last hope for them to win their
war and sway the townspeople towards their side. Although at first
unwilling, the Mayor accepts his execution at the hands of the enemy,
knowing he will give incentive to his people to keep fighting for
freedom. Play. Bruce Graham. 2 men, 2 women. Interior. Miriam Lipsky, unmarried and living with her thirteen-year-old daughter,
Amanda, works as a waitress to pay the bills, but it is her painting
that really matters to her. Good subjects are scarce in the drab
Pennsylvania coal town where they live, so Miriam dons a miner's
lamp and paints at night, whenmoonlight softens and transforms the
stark landscape. Miriam is also desirous of male companionship, a
need which the precocious Amanda (she has an IQ of 160) has discouraged
by driving away suitor after suitor with her barbed comments. Amanda,
compensating for the lack of a father, has also created an imaginary
friend, Randolph, who appears (only to her) in a resplendent white
suit and provides mischievous advice and guidance. Matters come to
a head when Miriam brings home Warren Zimmerman, a rather unprepossessing,
somewhat paunchy mailman who, at first, appears to be a perfect target
for Amandâs (and RandolpEs) caustic remarks and demeaning intelligence
tests. Until, that is, he quietly' but firmly beats Amanda at her
own game. In fact it is the surprisingly resourceful Warren who is
able, at last, to wean Amanda away from her dependence on Randolph
and into reality - and who, in time, may also be the one able to
fill the aching needs of both Amanda and her lonely mother. Play. Harold Pinter Andy is a civil servant who lies dying in his bed. Desperate for consolation from his family, he spends his time railing against his long-suffering wife Bea. They remember their past, in particular their friendship with Maria, with whom they both had affairs. Alongside them, Andy's unemployed sons act out a series of fiercely high-powered mind-games, while daughter Bridget hovers over the action, subtly suggesting that she was the victim of some terrible childhood wrong. Drama. Harold Pinter. 4 men, 2 women, 1 girl. Interior. In a dark space you can't measure, a once visceral father lies on
his deathbed, looking over his life, his youth, loves, lusts and
betrayals of his wife. At the same time, in another bedroom, somewhere
in the same space, the man's two sons intellectually, clinically,
and conspiratorially speak of their relationship with their father.
Side-stepping their estrangement from him, they rationalize their
love-hate relationship with him and defend the distance they are
incapable of closing, even when their mother calls them home. In
contrast to these closed sons, is the man's daughter, the baby sister,
who refuses the dourness, and bridges the space between the light
and dark, youth and age, and death and life. Romantic Comedy David Grae. 3 men, 2 women, flexible casting. Unit Set. The play föllows the romance of Betsy and Michael, a pair of
twenties/early thirties, bright, ambitious downtowners who meet at
a play and experience instant, overwhelming chemistry - the magic
and misery of the wound that can only be healed by the sword that
inflicted it. We not only watch the romantic heroes interact, but
their thoughts are revealed as well - their insecurities, fears,
and dreams about relationships. Betsy and Michael each have confidants,
Josie and Lonnie, who advise them on how to "play the game" with
the opposite sex and how to gain the tactical advantage in the relationship.
Josie and Lonnie draw on sports and war analogies to make their points.
We track the relationship from first meeting to first phone call
to first date to first kiss to first time making love to falling
in love to moving in together to problems and the horror of "routine" to
marriage proposal to breakup. Moose Mating will make you think
twice before entering the moose-jammed forest of a modern-day relationship. Play. Emlyn Williams Set in the London of 1940, this poignant and touchingly sentimental play tells the story of how one family comes to terms with the harsh realities of war. Yet they rise above it all: as one character says, buildings can burn and 'our lives can crash before our eyes, there'll be that we can be sure of, for ever- our love and trust, and courage - as long as we stick together and fight'. Play. Sylvia Regan. 8 men, 5 women. Interior. Becky Felderman has brought her four children to America so they
might have a better life than they would in Russia. She flings herself
into her new life and says, "Everybody can be somebody, and only
good can come to us." One daughter works in a factory, another marries
a young songwriter, who later goes into pictures while one dies in
a factory fire. While domestic unhappiness threatens to overwhelm
one daughter and her husband, somehow the good sense of the mother
finds a way. The young school teacher who is ambitious; the older
woman who is doing her best to learn American history; the exasperatingly
amusing Brownstien who sputters implications against capitalism and
the bourgeois - these are only a few of the many entertaining and
truly drawn characters that pass the stage of "Morning Star." The
World War comes, takes its toll, and passes, bringing us up almost
to today; and throughout the whole family history we are presented
in the most entertaining and vivid fashion with the ups and downs,
minor tragedy or broad comedy that go to make up the day-today life
of this essentially healthy and sane family of ex-emigrants. Play. Stephen Mulrine, adapted from the novel Moscow to Petushki by
Venedikt Yerofeev On a Moscow railway platform, Venya, an alcoholic wanderer, regales us with details - funny, shocking and sad - about his fascinating, complicated and ultimately hopeless life. Painting a darkly comic but despairing picture of Russia under Brezhnev, this rambling and random memoir is lyrical and moving, and provides a bravura role for a versatile actor. The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told Comedy; Paul Rudnick : 4 men, 5 women. Unit Set A stage manager, headset and prompt book at hand, brings the house
lights to half, then dark, and cues the creation of the world. Throughout
the play, she's in control of everything. In other words, she's either
God, or she thinks she is. Act One recounts the major episodes of
the Old Testament but from a gay perspective: there's the Garden
of Eden, the Flood, the Exodus and finally even the Nativity. Instead
of Adam and Eve, our lead characters are Adam and Steve, and Jane
and Mabel, a lesbian couple with whom they decide to start civilization
(procreation proves to be a provocative challenge). Along the way,
Mabel and Adam invent God, but Jane and Steve are sceptical. This
brings about the Flood, during which Steve has a brief affair with
a rhinoceros and invents infidelity. No longer blissful, Adam and
Steve break up only to be reunited as two of the wise men at the
Nativity. Act Two jumps to modern day Manhattan. Adam and Steve are
together again, and Steve is HIV positive. It's Christmas Eve, and
Jane is nine months pregnant even though she always thought of herself
as the butch one. The two women want to marry and want Adam and Steve
to join them in the ceremony. A wheelchair-bound, Jewish lesbian
rabbi from cable access TV arrives to officiate. The ceremony is
interrupted as Jane gives birth, and Steve confides to Adam that
his medication isn't working and that he'll probably not survive
much longer. Bound by their long life together, and the miracle of
birth they've just witnessed, the two men comfort each other even
though they. know their remaining time together will be short. Play. Bertolt Brecht. Translated by Steve Gooch, music by Harms
Eisler Pelagea Vlassova is drawn by her son Pavel into the revolutionary movement. Though hostile to it at first, she refuses to let him distribute leaflets, preferring to run the risk herself. She takes part in a peaceful demonstration, where Pavel is arrested; she learns to read, helps striking peasants, and works an illegal press. Pavel escapes from Siberia, but is caught and shot. Pelagea is beaten up for protesting against the 1914 war and finishes by carrying the red flag in a huge anti-war demonstration in the winter of 1916. Mother Courage and her Children Chronicle play. Bertolt Brecht John Willett For years through the terrible Thirty Years War Mother Courage has followed the Swedish armies with her mobile canteen, and her three children (each by a different man). Life during war is reduced simply to a series of business transactions: soldiers rob peasants and steal from their own stores, peasants sell their last cherished possessions. Mother Courage's business and motherly instincts constantly betray her. Finally, alone, she hitches herself to her wagon and continues to follow the army. Period 1624-1636 Play. Alan Franks Premiered at the Greenwich Theatre in 1992 starring Prunella Scales
and Gwen Taylor. Dorothy, a snob in the grand colonial manner, goes
to stay with her daughter Harriet when Dorothy's Kensington home
is destroyed by fire. In the course of the next three weeks, Dorothy
works her way deep into the fabric of Harriet's life and family skeletons
come clattering out of cupboards on both sides. 'This is an absorbing,
entertaining, ingeniously-written play-apparently light, actually
dark.' Observer Drama. Lanford Wilson. 3 men, 4 women. Unit Set At an archeological dig in the midwest, a party of university scientists
are unearthing vestiges of a lost Indian civilization. Heading the
group is,Dr. Howe, accompanied by his wife and daughter, and by a
younger associate and his wife. They are all joined by Dr. Howes
sister, a famous, and jaded, novelist, who is "drying out" after
many years of dissipation, in remote parts, of the world. There is
also an outsider, the acquisitive son of a local landowner, who wants
the digging site to be turned into a commercialized tourist trap.
Interweaving past and present through the use of slides, the action
of the play probes into the lives - and conflicts - of these disparate
people. Their story evokes resonances which illuminate what we are
and will surely become, and which underscore the irony of our collective
blindness to the disturbing, lessons which a close study of the past
must inevitably reveal. Drama. Romulus Linney. 5 men, 3 women (flexible casting). Unit Set. The play follows the lives of a family of settlers in the Appalachian
Mountains. Father has found a plot of land which pleases him greatly,
despite the fact that it is on a mountain slope and not in the more
fertile farming land of the valley. Mother complains, but is devoted
to her husband. Daughter is willing to wait and see what comes. As
the family sets up their new home, a neighbour, Brother 1, enters.
He is a hard working, an ever struggling to get ahead man, unlike
Brother 2, who likes to take it easy. A Boy lives nearby and tries
to woo Daughter, who comes to love him, yet thinks he is too wild
and needs to mature. She will wait, but Boy must grow up: Brother
1 comes back several times with new business proposals each time.
First to buy Father's timber then to buy the mineral rights. Father
continues to refuse all offers, but Brother 2 comes in happily each
time to report on what on what a great deal he has obtained from
selling portions of his farm to Brother 1. In reality, however, Brother
2 is being driven of his land and is headed for disaster. Boy is
slowly maturing. He has fought in the Civil War and seen a great
deal of human nature, and Daughter is warming to him. Finally Brother
1 comes back looking to buy the land itself. He is part of a corporation
now that is looking to build a mountain resort and they want to buy
the land, or, he threatens, they will take Father to court with a
trumped-up claim of having an earlier deed to the land. Father is
caught. He does not want to give up the land but is afraid of losing
everything to this corporation. The family turns to the audience
for help. The play ends with the actors introducing themselves to
the audience and saying that they can do nothing to help this family. "Who
will help?" they ask. Mountain - The Journey of Justice Douglas Play. Douglas Scott. 2 men, 1 woman. Unit Set The action of the play occurs within the mind of a dying man. Playing
against the other two actors, who enact a multitude of memories (e.g.,
FDR, Nixon, Brandeis, his own parents, wives and children), Douglas
struggles to find the meaning of his life. With the nation now moving
in a direction antithetical to his own liberal passions, was his
life meaningless? Were the sacrifices - his fight against poverty
and sickness as a youth, his failures as husband and father - worth
making? How does one's public life balance against the private one?
The play ends with a passionate reaffirmation of the power of courage
over fear, of the individual over the technological State. Ray Cooney and John Chapman : Philip Markham, a publisher of children's books, is asked by his
business partner, Henry Lodge, if he can borrow the flat for the
evening to gallivant with his latest girlfriend. As Philip and his
wife will be out, he reluctantly agrees. At the same time, Joanna
Markham is being persuaded by Linda Lodge to let her borrow the empty
flat in order to entertain her lover. With some misgivings, Joanna
agrees. What nobody knows is that the interior designer who has been
decorating the flat for the past three months has decided that this
is the night that he and the au pair girl will try out the new oval
bed. When the Markham's evening out is cancelled, it is too late
to let any of the parties know and three sets of hopeful lovers all
converge on the bedroom at the same time. The situation is further
complicated by the arrival of Olive Harriet Smythe, a straightlaced
authoress of children's books. The frantic efforts of the Markhams
to hide the amorous goings-on and, at the same time sign up Miss
Smythe, lead to a hectic and hilarious evening. Play. Hugh Leonard It is 1957 and the Noone family is moving into a new house in Dublin.
Presiding over the event is the Removals Man, who steps in and out
of the action to explain the characters and their stories. The second
half of the play is set in 1987 and the same family, no older than
before, is moving into an even better house, their new relationships
reflecting the revolutions that have taken place in family life in
the intervening years. Comedy. Stanley Price Frank and Sarah Gladwin's two children have left home, and as the
house is now too large for just the parents, they decide to move.
The problems start when they can't sell their house and the date
for 'completion' looms ominously nearer. Disaster upon domestic disaster
seems to plague them; after physically and symbolically papering
over the cracks, the Gladwins eventually find a buyer in the Fearnleys
and are saved at the eleventh hour. |