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Drama. Laurence Fishburne. It's Halloween night, Mike, ("20/20") and his half brother, Billy,
("Torch"), have retreated to an abandoned crack den on the Lower
East Side and in the aftermath of a drug heist gone sour. Torch has
just killed one of the henchmen of the neighborhood's reigning drug
lord. Having planned no means of escape, Mike summons his former
colleague, Tony ("The Tiger"), to help them out of this jam. What
follows is a continuing three-way confrontation in which guns are
drawn, allegiances are shifted, and secrets are uncovered. Themes
of lost brotherhood and friendship are evident, while the bleakness
of each of the characters' lives is chillingly suggested. The jittery
Torch recounts the fight that led to the killing of the small-time
punk with a harrowing, perplexed sense of detachment. Mike recounts
a heavy-breathing date with a woman so hot she would look good even "if
you dressed her up in garbage bags and put TV dinners on her head." As
the play races towards its climax, Tony recites a flashy, epic jailhouse
poem that is both cynical and romantically heroic, and it touches
the very heart of each of the characters' shared sense of delusion. The Right and Honourable Gentleman Play Michael Dyne. The Right and Honourable Gentleman is, in fact, a certain Sir Charles
Dilke, a Liberal Member of Parliament in the Victorian era who, had
he not got his beard caught in the wringer, might have become the
successor to Gladstone as Prime Minister. The circumstances leading
to his destruction, his private affairs as opposed to those of the
Empire, form the background. The proceedings introduce Dilke in his
finest hour, and obvious choice for the new cabinet, who is not,
at first, perturbed by a number of anonymous letters suggesting that
he has been having an affair with a certain young Mrs. Crawford.
But then Mr. Crawford sues for divorce, naming Dilke as co-respondent,
and giving as evidence his wife's
"confession" that she had been the mistress of Sir Charles for some
time. Furthermore, a maid in his household had also been party to
their indiscretions. The emphasis of the drama is skillfully balanced
between Dilke's avowal of complete innocence, solemnly sworn to privately
for the benefit of his fiancée, and the insistence of Mrs.
Crawford, supplemented by dates and facts, that he was indeed guilty
for her "ruin" almost immediately following her marriage. There are
many other spicey adjuncts to the case. The revelation that Sir Charles
had engaged in a prolonged and serious liaison with Mrs. Crawford's
mother, and that Mrs. Crawford was wildly in love and had been carrying
on a torrid relationship with a certain Army officer, Capt. Forster,
which may have been a reason for inventing her charges against the
unhappy Dilke. It is a fascinating enigma. Play. Kevin Heelan. To Bernie, a tendentious, chauvinistic air-conditioning salesman
who has lived on New York's Upper West Side for most of his life,
the city - and the country - are headed for big trouble. He laments
the growing incivility and violence of urban life and looks back
fondly on the virtues and self-effacing heroism personified by his
hero, General Robert E. Lee. His theories are put to the test when
his friend Frankie, the third generation owner of Sammy's Barber
Shop, on Columbus Avenue, is told he can name his price if he will
sell out to a computer-fed pharmaceutical supply consortium who claim
that they want to be near the many fashionable bars and restaurants
frequented by the neighbourhood's resident yuppies. Actually, as
Bernie suspects, the eager would-be buyers are drug dealers, and
Bernie makes it his crusade to save Frankie from becoming a pawn
of the forces of evil. This leads to a series of quirky, arresting
and often antically funny scenes. But, while Bernie ultimately persuades
Frankie to fight back by remodeling his barber shop into a trendy "Old-Time
Barber Shoppe Cafe," his
"victory" is hardly complete, as the very people he seeks to discourage
come pouring in anyway, unleashing a high-tech drug operation so
sophisticated that, ironically, it becomes virtually unstoppable. Lanford Wilson : Drama The story itself is simple; a man has been murdered and the mystery
concerns the identity of the man who murdered him and the circumstances.
In order to solve it, the playwright looks at the outside and inside
of his tiny, mid-western town Eldritch. He looks at a middle- ged
woman who falls in love with the young man who comes to work in her
cafe. He looks at a coarse, nasty woman mistreating her senile mother,
who is obsessed with visions of Eldritch being evil. He looks at
a tender relationship between a young man and a dreamy, crippled
girl. But Wilson sees far more than this - He is grasping the very
fabric of Bible-Belt America, with its catchword morality and its
capability for the vicious. He senses the rhythm of its life and
the cruelty it can impose. By the end of the play, the portrait of
Eldritch has been fully painted and the truth of its revelations
will be pondered long after the stage lights have dimmed and the
play has ended. Play. Jean Anouilh. Adapted by Christopher Fry Christopher Fry calls this play 'A Charade with Music'. The same
actor plays the twins Hugo and Frederic. Hugo, fascinating and heartless,
sets the charade in motion. He has invited Isabelle, a ballet dancer,
to the ball that evening, intending that she should make diffident
Frederic love her and leave the beautiful Diana. The would-be puppet
master is overruled by his aunt, who arranges for the four young
people to be happy. Comedy Jean Anouilh, adapted by Christopher Fry. To make his points about love the author has invented a fable about
twin brothers - Frederic, who is shy and sensitive, and Hugo, who
is heartless and aggressive. Frederic is in love with a hussy who
is in love with Hugo. To save Frederic from an unhappy marriage,
Hugo tries to distract him by bringing to a ball a beautiful dancer
who masquerades as a mysterious personage and becomes the triumph
of the occasion. She is a susceptible maiden in her own right. She
not only breaks up all the cynical romances that have been going
on before she arrived, but loses her own heart as well. Comedy. Charles Laurence Silva Ring is a world-famous singer with a severe hangup about her
age so when an interviewer reveals it she resorts to increasingly
desperate measures to prove him wrong. Aided by her housekeeper she
pretends to be her own sister Iris, who is tough. Lola Wales, an
old singer, is brought in to be her aunt and Fred, a petty forger,
is persuaded to attempt to destroy her files at the Family Record
Centre. But Silva wins through and emerges stronger than ever. Comedy. Will Greene. Katie Delaney, an upright, hard-working widow, struggles to keep
her three grown sons from falling into the clutches of
"designing women." The sons, all members of the New York City police
force, are far from pleased by this parental tyranny, but filial
duty (and their mother's good cooking) conspire to keep them in line
- at least to all outward appearances. But natural impulses and the
urgings of their various fiancées begin to tell. It turns
out that one son has already married his sweetheart in a secret,
civil ceremony, and while he has been fearful of revealing this fact
to his rigidly Catholic mother, his wife's approaching motherhood
soon forces the issue. When the truth is known Katie orders her son
from the house and, despite the fact that her first grandchild is
born soon after, refuses to acknowledge his existence. Before long
another of the impatient girls threatens to accept a rival proposal
and, to add to the growing confusion, a Puerto Rican urchin becomes
embroiled in Katie's increasingly tangled affairs.. Despite her dislike
for his kind Katie is drawn to the boy and in her zeal to help him
soon finds herself of all things, in trouble with the police. For
the widow of a policeman this is a disturbing turn of events, but
beneficial too in the happy transformation it works in Katie. She
adopts the boy, forgives her son, and starts life over with, a lighter
heart. The Rise and Fall of Little Voice Play. Jim Cartwright Little Voice (LV) lives alone with her mother Mari whose sole purpose
is to find another man. Mari's imposing presence drives the shy LV
into spending her time in her bedroom listening to her late, beloved
father's records. When small-time impresario Ray Say hears LV's faultless
impersonation of famous singers, he recognises the gold in her voice
and determines to exploit it, but the whirlwind rush for success
breaks LV Later, however, she learns to sing in her own voice ... Play Peter Parnell. As the play begins the protagonists are 12 year-old sixth graders.
One of them, Daniel Rocket, is firmly convinced that he can fly,
a belief which causes him to be shunned and ridiculed by his schoolmates
- including the girl he adores and for whose regard he is driven
to prove himself. Oddly enough, however, it turns out that Daniel
can fly, although, initially he does so in secret. When, at last,
he demonstrates his talent to the others, he straps on wings (although
he doesn't need them) in deference to their stubborn disbelief. From
then on, Daniel soars to fame and fortune. In the second half of
the play, which takes place twenty years later, Daniel returns home
a renowned celebrity. But he has also become, in a sense, the symbol
of the exceptional person, the genius who has out-distanced those
around him and, in so doing, has isolated himself not only from his
childhood but from the simple joys and tender emotions shared by
those whom he has left behind. Torn by growing uncertainty, Daniel
finds his gift waning and, in the climax of the play, he suffers
a fatal crash - victim both of his distrusted uniqueness and of the
unwitting need of others to bring down what they cannot understand
or emulate. Comedy. Edward Taylor Sir Clive Partridge hopes to be president of European Community, but he needs the support of puritanical elder statesman Jacques Berri. So it's bad news for Partridge when Berri calls on a day that he is trapped in a luxurious Paris flat where he is beset by glamorous young women he can't account for, plus an angry wife and an exploding boiler. Wild mishaps and comic confusion abound right up to the hilarious climax in this sharp satire. Play. Norman Corwin. The Lincoln/Douglas debates took place in seven Congressional districts and totaled thirty-hours in length. They were conducted in a fever of partisanship as the nation listened. Brass bands played, the press vilified or glorified the opponents, depending on which side they took. Douglas, cocky and brisk, fought for the rights of the separate states to make their own choice on the question of slavery; Abraham Lincoln, modest, yet as brisk, fought for equality of human beings and the conviction that the nation could not endure half slave, half free. Mrs. Douglas, who accompanied her husband on the tour, serves as both performer and narrator of the play. It is she who puts the whole in perspective. There are some charming encounters between Mrs. Douglas and Lincoln, as she begins to lose her distrust for her husband's opponent, and throughout the play the personal issues, as well as the political ones, are magnificently developed. Comedy. R. Brinsley Sheridan Captain Absolute, heir to a tidy fortune, has disguised himself
as penniless Ensign Beverley, all because his lady-love, Lydia Languish,
is determined to marry a man who despises wealth and who will marry
her despite the fact that the disapproval of her tough old aunt,
Mrs Malaprop, will cost Miss Languish her immense fortune. Another
pair of lovers, Julia and Falkland, have their own peculiar difficulties
... Richard Brinsley Sheridan Lydia Languish, a young woman from a good family, holds on to an
impossible romantic ideal of love, and resolves only to marry a pauper.
Thus the hero, Jack Absolute, pretends to be a poor soldier in order
to win her hand. Meanwhile, Jack's father is attempting to procure
the match through the proper channel of Lydia's guardian, and Jack
becomes a rival to himself, before he is finally challenged to duels
by rival suitors in both his identities ... First performed in 1775. |