Composers and their stage works 



 

Seduced!

Play. Sam Shepard.
2 men, 2 women. Unit set

Henry Hackamore, reputed to be the richest man in the world, is now a bearded, aged recluse, who lives on the top floor of a Caribbean luxury hotel, attended by his bodyguard-nurse, Raul. Paranoid, desperately lonely and obsessed by a fear of germs, he is kept alive by drugs and infusions of blood from other geniuses. Aware that his life is ebbing away, and determined to have one last fling, he flies in two women whom he had known, and loved, in the past. But while they are still attractive and vigorous, his energies are so drained that they can only talk of other times and other places. Entrapped by his delusions, Hackamore is a burnt-out case, a parody of the American Dream who, despite his limitless wealth and power, cannot forestall the inevitable decline into futility, boredom and an agonizingly lonely death.
ISBN: 0-8222-1008-8

The Seducer's Diary

(in Hungarian Plays) - Andres Nagy. English version by Julian Garner
3m 3f. Drama. Flexible staging.

This is a simple but dark love story - loosely based on the writings and diary of the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard. It follows a young man who sets out to prove or disprove the existence of God by embarking upon a course of seduction. Unfortunately, he cannot live up to his desires and gradually diminishes from a romantic hero to the tragi-comic victim of his own intrigue. First staged 1992.
ISBN 1 85459 244 0

See How They Run!

Farce. Philip King
M6 (20-40, middle-age) F3 (18, 20, 30). A lounge-hall.

The Rev. Lionel Toop's wife, Penelope, is an ex-actress. While Lionel is away Clive, an actor, calls. He invites Penelope to dine in town which is out of bounds to servicemen. He dresses in Lionel's blacks. Miss Skillon, a parishioner, sees the couple repeating one of their theatrical scenes and draws the wrong conclusion. Matters become highly complicated when Lionel arrives, followed by the Bishop of Lax and a German POW disguised as a vicar! Period 1947
ISBN 0 573 01403 5

See the Jaguar

Drama: N. Richard Nash.
12 men, 3 women. Exterior

In a remote section of the West, Brad owns the sole gas station and store. He also owns a small zoo where he cages the occasional wildcat or whatever wildlife can be caught in the area. The cages are Brad's obsession - they remind him of mans supremacy over nature; they remind him that he is a master in this village where everybody is in debt to him. But he is not master over his daughter Janna, who has fallen in love with Brad's outspoken enemy, Dave Ricks. But if Brad's weapons are force, hatred and violence, Dave's are peace, love and gentleness. The two men battle over Wally Wilkins, an innocent boy of seventeen who was hidden away by his demented mother, and who is now free since his mother died. Because the boy is supposedly in possession of a large sum of money, Brad pursues Wally, whom Dave and Janna are escorting to safety. When Brad catches up them he realises that his pursuit of Wally has alienated him from his daughter. At the end of a night of wild drunkenness Brad imprisons Wally in a cage. To free Wally and Janna from her father's dominance, and to affirm the deeper strength of the gentle over the violent, Dave gives up his life.

Seeds of Doubt

Peter Gordon : Comedy
3M 3F Exterior set

Seeds of Doubt is set in the garden of Alan and Claire's suburban house. Alan attempts to tend his vegetable plot, but his peace of mind is lumbered not only with his impending fortieth birthday, but also because he harbours suspicions about Claire's fidelity. The sanctity of his garden is further upset by the constant squabbles of their next door neighbour Jill and her boyfriend Dave. When a secret message falls into the wrong hands, a chain reaction of events begins which takes in not only the two couples but also two other friends, the well meaning but inept Derek, and Sarah, recently separated from her husband. Alan's doubts are temporarily eased by a surprise birthday party, but the party only serves to throw the other relationships into turmoil. Events are sorted out the following day, but the seeds of doubt have been planted and the final outcome remains anything but certain.
ISBN: 0 85676 139 7

Self Catering (A Short History of the World)

Andrew Cullen : Light Drama
2M 3F Exterior set

A plane loaded with holiday-makers crash lands on a deserted island, somewhere en route to Majorca. The five survivors are forced not only to come to terms with the disaster, but also deal with the prospects of survival in an unforgiving atmosphere. The characters, an ill- ssorted lot, adopt the names of their favourite film stars, and gradually the personas of Henry (Fonda), Clint, Meryl, Bette and Marilyn begin to take over. The play, a modern day parable of The Lord of the Flies, explores the range of human behaviour as this society in miniature gradually disintegrates, leaving little except quotations from films as a means of communication and survival.
ISBN: 0 85676 170 2

Semi-Detached

Farcical Comedy. David Turner
M5 F4. Split set.

The characters are not naturalistic portraits but rather caricatures of contemporary types. As in the older comedies their names suggest their identities (Midway, Makepiece, Freeman, etc.). The model Midland householder, Fred Midway, sedulously climbing the business and social ladders, self-educated by correspondence courses, with his material yardstick, his oratory, self-knowledge and pathetic faith in himself, provides a brilliant centre to a highly entertaining and satirical play.
The Midways, spurred on by father Fred, are a family on the move. Thanks to his energetic success in selling insurance they have put their humble beginnings behind them and have established themselves as solid members of the burgeoning middle class - but greener pastures still lie ahead. Turning each new opportunity to his advantage Fred moves onward and upward, manoeuvers his youngest daughter into marriage with the insipid son of a wealthy family- but trouble erupts when April, the married daughter, announces that she intends to divorce her spineless husband because of a supposed indiscretion, and because of the fact that he stands to be disinherited by his rich uncle's impending marriage. Taking command, with wife Hilda as his trusting lieutenant, Fred plunges vehemently into the fray and, despite a few desperate moments when his Machiavellian cunning threatens to desert him, pulls all the chestnuts out of the fire with masterly, and unerring, self-concern. It all works out his way - or does it? As the play ends we sense that even Fred, that paragon of expediency, is beginning to wonder a bit about whether the real values in life might lie elsewhere than in the goals which he has been so furiously pursuing.
ISBN: 0-8222-1009-6 (US)
ISBN 0 573 11456 0 (UK)

A Sense of Guilt

Andrew Rosenthal : Drama
3M 5F Interior set

After fleeing from the tragic circumstances surrounding her husbands' death, Irene Carey decides to come back to her home in England following an absence of five very lonely and unsettled years. Back in the care of her two most treasured friends she is reunited with Sally, the daughter she left behind, and tries to pick up the pieces of her life to start anew. Irene is soon made aware that the past events have not ceased to haunt her family and friends, and she blames herself for the destruction of so many lives, including her own. Upon the revelation of a horrific truth, Irene realises that she has been deceived and the pain and suffering she has endured could have been avoided. With the anger and bitterness she now encounters, she must make the most important decision of her life.

A Sense of Place

Drama. Lanford Wilson.
3 men, 2 women. Unit Set.

Schuyler Browne and his friends, josh, Ann, and Mary, gather for the spring at Schuyler's family's Hampton home. Schuyler, a trust-fund kid from wealthy lineage, doesn't yet know what to do with his life. Josh, very into computers, is on the verge of making millions on a stock market deal done over the Internet. Ann, a would-be dancer, is turned down for a grant and is fearful of becoming a blue collar worker. Mary is a business manager about to open her own company, and the one to open the group to a new member, Chuck, a local carpenter working for her. As the spring passes, the friends begin to clash as all their problems and futures grow. Growing more neurotic, Ann spends her time cooking even as she continues her work in a nearby shop. Tempers fly when Schuyler insults Chuck, and Mary and Josh in turn chide Schuyler for being a snob. More time passes, and Josh, with some of his new money, makes a large contribution to the director of a dance troupe hoping Ann can have a featured role, but his kindness backfires when she is fired on opening night. Schuyler's feud with Chuck fizzles, but Schuyler's father informs them all they may no longer live in the house since, come September, he has rented it out. When the time comes to leave, the friends vow to hang onto their meager livings and to their family of friends, but no one really knows how. Schuyler wants to hurt his father and announces his intention to open a restaurant with Ann as the cook, but it is Josh who. rescues the group, with his vow to spend millions on a new house, where they all can, again, be together.
ISBN: 0-8222-1592-6

Separate Tables.

Two plays. Terence Rattigan
M3 F8. A dining-room, a lounge.

The typical South Coast Hotel Beauregarde is peopled by the old, the lonely and the indigent. The manageress, Miss Cooper, is unable to remain aloof from their troubles. In Table No. 1 she attempts to help John Malcolm and his ex-wife Ann, who have ruined each other, find salvation together. In Table No. 2 Major Pollock and Miss Railton-Bell are misfits and their despair draws them together. Miss Cooper gives them the courage to face life.
ISBN 0 573 01404 3

Separation

Play. Tom Kempinski
M1(40) F1 (20). Split set.

Joe Green is a fat, unsociable, unproductive, phobia-ridden writer whose one hit play is the subject of a transatlantic phone call from a New York actress, suffering from a paralysing disease, who wants to perform it. They become friends over the phone but when she arrives in London Joe's neurotic terrors almost, but not quite, kill the love affair completely. Funny, tender and completely captivating, the play was seen at Hampstead and the Comedy Theatres with David Suchet and Saskia Reeves.
ISBN 0 573 01677 1

September in the Rain

Play. John Godber
M 1 F 1. A bare stage.

This play, together with its companion, Happy Jack, is described by the author as 'autobiographical, but not in the strict sense. Both plays are about my grandparents and chronicle their lives. All the incidents are based on fact - they were the myths of my childhood.' Their marriage is explored with great pathos and humour and ' ... transmitted with a directness that touches the heart ...' Guardian

September Tide

Play. Daphne du Maurier. Revised version by Mark Rayment
M3 (20s, middle-age) F3 (20s, middle-age). A living-room.

In a Cornish house lives the widowed Stella, a woman of considerable gifts and beauty who regularly rejects proposals of marriage from her neighbour Robert Hanson. Cherry, Stella's daughter, brings home her artist husband Evan for the first time and Stella is shocked by the bohemian incompleteness of their marriage. She finds herself attracted to Evan and soon they are passionately in love: although much is left unspoken, Evan eventually compels Stella to admit her feelings. Period 1950s
ISBN 0 573 01905 3

Serenading Louie

Play. Lanford Wilson.
2 men, 2 women. Interior.

Two young suburban couples, friends of long standing, are suddenly aware of strains and pressures that have inexorably come into their lives. Adultery is one of these - a fact for one of the wives, an imminent possibility for one of the husbands - but ambitions, frustrated and potential, and a crying out for more meaningful personal involvement within their marriages are others. As they come together to examine their plight and to probe the genesis of their unhappiness the play moves deftly in and out of the frame of reality-with the characters talking sometimes to each other and sometimes directly to the audience. Ultimately, out of the fascinating mosaic of conversations, confessions, and reminiscences, a sense of deeper understanding begins to emerge, and, with it, the liberating knowledge of the loneliness which must exist within marriage and of the crucial commitment which individuals must make if they are truly and effectively to share their lives with others.
ISBN: 0-8222-1011-8

Serious Money.

City comedy. Caryl Churchill. Songs by Ian Dury, Micky Gallacher and Chas Jankel
M14 F6, may be played by M5 F3. Extras. Various simple interior and exterior settings.

Set post-Big Bang 1980s in the Square Mile, the action centres on a take-over bid led by the ruthless Billy Corman. When cartel member Jake Todd dies amidst the amassing of a fortune, his sister, Scilla, investigates his murder, initially from curiosity but later from greed. Churchill's witty dialogue is complemented by two songs with bawdily, satirical lyrics by Ian Dury. NB. This play contains explicit language.
ISBN 0 573 01711 5

The Serpent

Play. Jean-Claude van Itallie.
Approximately 16 performers: minimum of 7 men, 7 women. Open Stage.

While most of the work is choreographed movement, pantomime, human sounds and music made by bells, horns, whistles, tambourines and other hand-held instruments, there is an accompanying text from the Bible and a number of speeches with contemporary sentiments. From the beginning, man searches for happiness, for self-realisation and union with other men, seems to be the underlying theme. He is thwarted by violence, both from within himself and from other men. Eve is tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, yields, eats the forbidden apple, tempts Adam to eat, too - and man's eternal battle begins between self-gratification and obedience to external authority. There is a ritual enactment of the discovery of sexual love played by the group against the intoned recital of how the descendants of Adam begat the family of man that leaves little to the imagination. It is a passionate celebration of love. Passion gives way to maternal tenderness and the celebrants grow into doddering senility. They sink slowly to the floor and collapse into sleep. A hum starts and becomes a group song. `We were sailing along on moonlight bay...,' they sing, rising and moving into the aisles and up the stairs. They're smiling and their looks of love embrace the audience. They finish singing and stand there. The ceremony is completed.
ISBN: 0-8222-1012-6

The Servant of Two Masters

Comedy. Adapted by David Turner and Paul Lapworth from the original by Carlo Goldoni
M8 F3. Extras. A room.

Goldoni skilfully adapted the commedia dell'arte pattern to his own very funny plots, and the most famous is this play wherein the story concerns the terrible complications wrought by Truffaldino when he gets himself engaged as a servant by two different people at the same time. The plot sparkles with invention and this adaptation in the modern idiom brilliantly matches the spirit of the play.
ISBN 0 573 11412 9

Seven Nuns At Las Vegas

Farce. Natalie E. White.
2 men, 11 women (can be all women). Interior

When it snows on a May Day in Indiana, Sister Columba, an elderly rheumatic nun, asks St. Joseph to take her where the weather is warm. St. Joseph takes her, the convent, and six other nuns who happen to be in the convent at that moment, to the warm. sands of Nevada - just outside of Las Vegas. Las Vegas is a shock to the nuns and to St. Joseph - and the nuns and St. Joseph have a startling efect on Las Vegas. This bustling resort town gives up gambling and takes up contemplation; the Bible becomes a best seller; a mission priest is the rage of the nightclub crowd; three dancing girls from the Silver Dollar, Peaches, Boots, and Baby, decide to take the veil. BUT the nuns have their problems too. There is real estate difficulty; they own the convent, but not the ground; the younger nuns thumb rides to town; Peaches, Boots and Baby teach one of the sisters a dance routine; and finally the sister in charge finds herself offering to "place a small bet." St. Joseph and the nuns realise they had better go home, so St, Joseph returns the convent and its occupants to Indiana - the occupants at the moment including the proprietor of the Silver Dollar and the Board of Directors of the Amalgamated Night Clubs. "While the play is a farce, the nuns are not farcical characters, nor are they characters of saccharine pietistic tendencies. They are rather the ordinary, gracious, efficient American nuns.
ISBN: 0-8222-1013-4

Seven Nuns South of the Border

Farce. Natalie E. White. A sequel to Seven Nuns at Las Vegas.
4 men, 10 women, and Mexican townspeople. Interior.

Sister Columban asks St. Joseph to help her return a large picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Mexico for the Feast of Guadalupe, and he does. He takes her and the picture and the convent and six other nuns to Concepcion, Mexico, where, during the colourful fiesta which includes hymns to Our Lady and fireworks, the picture is returned to the townspeople.
ISBN: 0-8222-1014-2

Seven Sisters

Comedy. Edith Ellis.
6 men, 8 women. Interior

The Widow Gyurkovics is having trouble finding matrimonial catches for Katinka, Sari and Ella, the older of her seven daughters. Her problem is complicated by the fact that she is bound to the custom of marrying off her daughters in the order of their ages. Mitzi, the fourth daughter, aged 19, is the despair of her mother. Expelled from school for running away to attend a masque ball in the city, she returns home in disgrace. In order to advance her sisters' chances, she is promptly reduced to the age of 15, and compelled to dress and behave as such. Then Feri Horkoy, a dashing lieutenant she met at the ball, crosses her path. She reveals her plight and he wagers that within a year he will see that her older sisters are married off and Mitzi freed from the "nursery." But he makes a condition that when that happens he shall be rewarded by three kisses. They resort to hilarious intrigues in their plot to ensnare husbands for Katinka, Sari and Ella. But in promoting her sisters' happiness, Mitzi's own romance is threatened, but matters adjust themselves and at the fall of the curtain Horkoy reappears, and claims his reward.

Seven Times Monday

Play. Ernest Pendrell.
9 men, 4 women. Unit Set

A compelling drama which tells, with humanity and humour, how "big" most "little" people really are. The play deals with the problems of a factory worker who dreams of becoming a "cop," of replacing the drudgery of the machine shop with the thrill of riding along on a motorcycle. But there are family responsibilities to meet, and the problems of prejudice to be dealt with - which they are, in a most heart-warming and honest way.
ISBN: 0-8222-1016-9

The Seven Year Itch

George Axelrod : Comedy
5M 5F 1 boy Interior set

After seven years of marriage, the wife of Richard, a mild mannered publisher's assistant, has taken off to the country for the Summer, leaving Richard alone to contemplate his fate. When a flowerpot falls off a balcony and nearly kills him, Richard decides to live life to the fullest while he can. He takes up smoking and drinking, and invites the woman who lives on the floor above down for an evening of seduction. But this latter day casanova has, in addition to a nervous disposition, a conscience - which quite literally follows him around the apartment. What follows is a soul struggle of heroic and hilarious proportions in one of the comedy classics.
ISBN: 0 8222 1017 7

Sextet

(also known as Six of One). Play. Michael Pertwee
M4 (30s, 40s) F3 (young, 20s, 30s). A yacht.

Roger has invited Philip and his wife for a cruise on his luxury yacht-together with Denys, his employee, and his wife - in order to see whether Denys proves suitable for an important job abroad. Complications start, however, with the arrival of Roger's estranged wife Lisa. Then the philandering Philip turns up with his latest mistress instead of his wife. Soon every conceivable combination of twice three has been achieved before the final hilarious climax erupts.
ISBN 0 573 11419 6