 |
|
Murder Mystery: Michael Sutton and Anthony Fingleton. Hard times have fallen on the Murder League. Trevor Foyle, Dora
Winslow, and Bartie Cruickshank, now in their 70s, are the only surviving
founders of this very proper British club that once counted Agatha
Christie and John Dickson Carr among its ranks. Over the years, they've
watched in dismay as their eccentric detectives, murders in locked
rooms and arcane clues have gone out of fashion. Thanks to television,
people now know how real murder is committed and have seen that it
is far from the elegant, stylish affairs they used to write about.
Taunted by a younger colleague - a writer of violent, sexually-graphic
crime stories - the three elderly members of the League concoct a
plan to revitalise interest in their kind of murder. by committing
one themselves! Of course,they plan to be caught - how else is everyone
to know how brilliant their crime was unless it is solved? And after
all, at their ages, life imprisonment seems a small price to pay
for the resurrection of their beloved mystery story. What they fail
to take into account is that murder as it was done in their books
was always a rather strenuous affair and that, in real life, things
don't always happen like clockwork - especially when there are recalcitrant
chandeliers, malfunctioning rifles and corpses in gorilla suits to
deal with. At first, things go disastrously wrong for the would-be
killers, then - in a breathtakingly unexpected first act climax -
spectacularly right! But they are not out of the woods yet, for the
inspector refuses to believe it was murder (he thinks it was suicide)
and the homicidal trio must point him in the right direction without
tipping their hand. There is one last, deadly, unanticipated fly
in the ointment, however - a real-life killer in their midst; one
who has decided our three heroes know too much. (in South Africa Plays) Paul Slabolepszy Set in a rugby dressing room in the Transvaal, South Africa, in
the mid-1980s, this three hander uses the metaphor of sport dramatically
to question the white middle class and its hypocritical attitudes
to apartheid. Over the River and Through the Woods Comedy Joe Di Pietro : 3 men, 3 women. Unit set Nick is a single, Italian-American guy from New Jersey. His parents
retired and moved to Florida. That doesn't mean his family isn't
still in Jersey. In fact, he sees both sets of his grandparents every
Sunday for dinner. This is routine until he has to tell them that
he's been offered a dream job. The job he's been waiting for - marketing
executive - would take him away from his beloved, but annoying, grandparents.
He tells them. The news doesn't sit so well. Thus begins a series
of schemes to keep Nick around. How could he betray his family's
love to move to Seattle, for a job, wonder his grandparents? Well,
Frank, Aida, Nunzio and Emma do their level best, and that includes
bringing to dinner the lovely - and single - Caitlin O'Hare as bait.
.. we won't give the ending away here. Comedy. Ruth Gordon. Polly Wharton, sophisticated and successful writer, and her husband, Max, live in a small bungalow next to a flying field in Florida. Max is a brilliant journalist but is having difficulty in getting through his army studies. Since he is over the age considered best for soldiers he is discouraged. But Polly helps him pass his tests. This is the mere undercurrent of a play which is told in terms of high comedy involving, among other things, the attempt on the part of Max's boss to get him out of the Air Force and back to work. A good part of the plot has to do with the comic efforts of the Whartons to get Max transferred to a pleasant camp where Polly can be near her husband. But due to a misunderstanding Max is sent to what is considered as the least desirable of all camps. But Polly goes through with it and at the very end, in spite of everything, she follows Max. Play A.R. Gurney. Overtime begins where Shakespeare's The
Merchant of Venice ends, but now we are in contemporary times
and Venice feels very much like America. Portia, a once-rich society girl, is about to celebrate her victory
in the recent trial and her marriage to Bassanio. As the party is
beginning, however, she is reminded of her own financial difficulties
by her accountant, Salerio, who is secretly in love with her. She
shrugs off his warnings, but her wedding reception begins to fall
apart on its own. Antonio, who turns out to be gay, is knocked down
by Bassanio, who blames his impulsiveness on his Irish background.
Gratiano, who is African-American, and Nerissa, who is Latina, become
impatient playing subservient roles and seek out the company of their
own people. Lorenzo discovers that his attraction to Jessica is based
on a kind of reverse stereotyping, while Jessica decides to liberate
herself from her traditional upbringing. Shylock arrives with some
surprises of his own. He persuades Portia to try to put the community
back together and, after a number of twists and turns, the evening
ends with a tentative attempt to celebrate a new kind of Venice on
a more open and diverse basis. Jean McConnell : Comedy A behind-the-cover glimpse at the trials and tribulations of working for a magazine. Avril Banstead, the ambitious editor of a woman's magazine, is hoping to move ahead onto bigger and better projects. In order to do so, she collaborates with a TV interviewer on a programme scheduled to present three 'ordinary' women in a 'before and after' situation in front of a live studio audience, re- reating their make-up, hair-styles and clothes. Unfortunately, as she immerses herself in her career and becomes obsessed with proving herself to her contemporaries through the programme, her family feel increasingly neglected and will stop at nothing to get the attention they feel they deserve. When the TV show proves disastrous, Avril feels disgraced and ashamed. And even when she is offered the career opportunity she has long desired, she decides that sharing her life with her family is a far more fulfilling prospect. A touching and funny play. Comedy. Bill Manhoff Doris storms into the apartment of F. Sherman, would-be writer,
and states that because his report to the landlord got her evicted
for taking paying gentlemen callers, she is now going to camp in
his apartment. She says she is a prostitute but not promiscuous,
and is hurt when Sherman questions her respectability. He is a self-advertising
intellectual whose counterfeit emotions are reflected in his unsuccessful
writing. Their exchanges are turbulent and very funny. |