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Play. Sharman Macdonald In 1950s Glasgow, Pearl, a widow, is getting ready to go to a dinner dance with a gentleman friend she hopes will propose to her. Her ten-year-old son, Alan, helps her to prepare. At the end of the dinner dance, her partner, Callum, declares his love but Pearl cannot stop the past intruding as she reminisces about her dead husband. Returning home, Pearl's incipient loneliness is further underlined by Alan who is beginning to grow up and grow away. Drama. Paul Vincent Carroll. The play deals with the Catholic Church in Ireland. Its theme lies
in the ramifications of faith as practised by the Church's various
constituents - faith that, for all its sincerity, has drifted from
its deepest moorings. The manner in which a true, steadfast, innocent,
and unselfish believer, a young girl, brings the contentious others,
through the uncorrupted purity and simplicity of her own faith, back
to first principles. The straw out of which Carroll has fabricated
his bricks and built his play is of a superior quality, and his dramatic
structure, as a consequence, mounts aloft with eloquence and power. Elizabeth Addyman : Drama A small Yorkshire town in the late 1950s has resented the arrival
of a young parson from London, full of new ideas of religious faith.
His only successful 'convert' has been a young orphan, ostracized
from the community because of the circumstances surrounding her birth.
But when an American arrives to show is wife where he spent his GI
days in the war, her newfound faith is put to the test as the ghosts
of her past collide head-on with the shadows of the present. Play. William Nicholson Nicholson's stage adaptation of his award-winning TV play relates
the story of shy Oxford don and children's author C. S. Lewis and
poet Joy Davidman in academic Oxford in the 1950s. Their relationship
starts as an exchange of literary correspondence. When Joy arrives
in Oxford her intellectual assertiveness delights Lewis but appals
his condescending fellow academics, who are further shocked when
Lewis goes through a marriage of convenience with her for immigration
purposes. John Godber and Jane Thornton Every town has its local trendy cocktail bar where everyone wants
to be seen, from the local check-out girls to the chinless wonders,
from the yuppies to the local lads tittering at the thought of a
'long comfortable screw'. We are given a wickedly funny glimpse of
this world by the four long-suffering waitresses who work there.
Rushed off their feet, underpaid and overworked, they try to smile
and help the difficult customers whilst coping with their own personal
problems. A fascinating and often hilarious view of the reality which
lurks behind the plastic palms and the pina coladas. Play. John Godber and Jane Thornton. In a not-so-chic London bar called Shakers, we meet Carol, Adele,
Nicky and Mel, four friends who have taken to waitressing in desperation
but who also have wit and resilience enough to never let any of the
colorful characters they come across escape their satire unscathed.
In theatrically heightened moments, the women play the roles of men
and women alike, covering not only their nights at Shakers, but also
the lives of four other working women in London. Always at the source
of their satire are the men who take them for granted or, worse,
abuse them. Against this backdrop of post-modern London life are
kaleidoscopic scenes of hilarity and depravity. In intertwining plot
threads we follow the waitresses as they confront a possible new
owner for the bar and at the same time we follow four shopgirls getting
ready for a night on the town. Tart-tongued and irreverent, the lives
of all of these women are put in painful perspective by the doubling
of their roles which draws attention to the economic and social prejudices
affecting all women, not just the fighters we meet at Shakers. An all-new, and expanded version of the ever-popular play. Peter Whelan : Comedy The play is set on Midsummer's Eve in present day Stratford upon
Avon. American Country and Western singer Billy Shake has arrived
in town looking for the connection which will authenticate his claim
to being the true descendant of William Shakespeare, but having gambled
away all his money en route, he relies on the good nature of those
whose paths he crosses to help him locate Shakespeare's famed oak
tree and the proof he seeks - two leading actors from the current
RSC production who are set to be married the following day but each
harbouring doubts; a Japanese businessman from a pharmaceutical company
test-marketing a new "feel-good"
tablet; a New-Age traveller and a host of other odd and unusual characters
who all conspire in one way or another to make it an evening to remember.
When the tablets mischievously end up in the wrong hands, the scene
is set for confusion and mistaken identities in this fast-paced comedy
of reconciliation, a modern-day updating of A Midsummer Night's
Dream. Christopher Luscombe & Malcolm McKee An enchanting collection of witty music and skits about the Bard.
Devised for and first performed at the RSC, this show has been a
hit with audiences all over the world, and includes songs and sketches
by Noel Coward, Stephen Sondheim, Fry & Laurie, Victoria Wood
and many more. 'Absolute bliss' Barry Took, The Times. Drama. Joe Calarco. Four young prep school students, tired of going through the usual
drill of conjugating Latin and other tedious school routines, decide
to vary their very governed lives. After school, one breaks out a
copy of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and they all
take turns reading the play aloud. The Bard's words and the story
itself are thrilling to the boys and they become swept away, enmeshed
in the emotion so much so that they break school rules in order to
continue their readings. The rigidity of their lives begins to parallel
the lives of the characters in the play: roles in the family, roles
in society and the roles played by men and women soon seem to make
all the sense in the world, and then, suddenly, they seem to make
no sense at all. Although they had been taking turns playing all
the parts, two eventually emerge playing Romeo and Juliet exclusively,
bringing a whole new dimension to the proceedings. Perceptions and
understanding are turned upside down as the fun of play acting turns
serious and the words and meanings begin to hit home and universal
truths emerge. Play. Barbara Lebow. The setting of the play is the stylish Manhattan apartment of Rose
Weiss, the time 1946. Although born in Poland, Rose, now in her 20s
went to the United States with her father, Mordechai, at the age
of 4, and is now completely Americanised. The plan had been for Rose's
mother and sister to join the others, but the sister fell ill with
scarlet fever, the mother stayed on to care for her, and soon the
rise of the Nazis cut off their escape. Their ordeal in the concentration
camps, which only the sister survived, has brought a burden of guilt
to the aging Mordechai, and deeply mixed feelings as he awaits the
arrival of his elder daughter, Lusia, who has, at last, found her
way to America. With her halting English and old world ways Luisa
is a striking contrast to Rose, who is somewhat embarrassed by her
rediscovered sister's presence, and fearful that it will threaten
her own hard-won independence. Distraught, and concerned that she
may never be reunited with her young husband, Lusia embraces a series
of memories and fantasies which make real the joys and horrors of
her life before the war, from which her father and sister were spared.
But when Mordechai gives Rose a letter from her mother - a letter
left many years earlier with a non-Jewish Polish friend - a
"proof" of family is somehow restored, and old barriers and griefs
give way to a renewed sense of hope and mutual dependence - and the
conviction that a better future may yet arise from the bitter ashes
of the troubled past. Comedy. Oliver Goldsmith Mr Hardcastle and Sir Charles Marlow have arranged a match between
Miss Kate Hardcastle and young Marlow. The fun arises when Marlow
is directed to the Hardcastles' house rather than a neighbouring
inn, and mistakes Hardcastle for the landlord and Kate for one of
the servants. Period 1700s. She Was Only an Admiral's Daughter Comedy. Harold Brooke and Kay Bannerman When Polly borrows her brother's friend's flat to meet prospective
bridegrooms from a marriage bureau, she has little idea what she
is letting herself in for. With a mixture of mistaken and assumed
identities the result is a morning of chaos -but also a bridegroom
for Polly. Not the least important character is the laundry chute
which swallows both clothing and human beings with noisy and indiscriminate
satisfaction. Michael Pertwee : Farce Take a gambler with debts and a pregnant wife. Take a parson with
a pregnant wife who has mislaid £200 of church money. Take a
bookie, also with a pregnant wife who is about to collect the gambler's
debts. Put them all together and the wives produce five babies between
them. Put a few heads together, then claim that one of the wives
produced all five babies. Result; an imaginary set of quins and a
fortune in money, or not, as the case may be. |