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Play. Jonathan Bolt. The story is told from the standpoint of Charles de Lesseps, the
loyal, steadfast son of Ferdinand de Lesseps' first marriage. The
action of the play shifts back and forth between the courtroom where
de Lesseps and his associates are on trial for fraud and mismanagement
amid scenes of the events and missteps which led to their disastrous
decision to attempt construction of a canal across the Isthmus of
Panama. An honoured hero for his miraculous accomplishment in building
the Suez Canal, de Lesseps has married a young wife and is happily
tending his estate and siring a second family. Already over seventy,
his friends and family are wary when he is approached about undertaking
another monumental project, particularly in view of early reports
about rampant disease and the debilitating climate of the Central
American jungle. But, convinced that his powers are sufficient, de
Lesseps takes on the task, despite his need to delegate much of the
preliminary fact-finding to younger and less able men and the raising
of capital to unscrupulous speculators. Starting off in a blaze of
glory, the Panama Canal project gradually and inexorably falters
and fails, but not before it has accounted for the loss of more than
20,000 lives, the ruin of countless small investors, and the eventual
disgrace and bankruptcy of de Lesseps and his colleagues, including
his ever-faithful son, Charles. Eloquent testimony to the truth that "pride
goeth before a fall," the play is also a powerful and moving study
of what can happen when good, albeit with the best intentions, not
only fails in its quest for success and glory but also drags down
so many others into great loss and defeat. Play. Caryl Churchill This play for sixteen women characters was seen at London's Royal
Court Theatre. 'Ms Churchill's rich, ambitious play is a powerful
exposition of the way in which top girls, like top men, often achieve
success at the expense of their less able sisters.' Time Out.
' ... brilliantly conceived with considerable wit to illuminate the
underlying deep human seriousness of her theme. The play is feminist,
all right, but it is an entertaining, sometimes painful and often
funny play and not a mere tract.' Spectator Three plays. Harvey Fierstein. A smash-hit in New York, this trilogy had its British premiere at the Albery Theatre, London, in 1985, with Antony Sher portraying the alternately moving and hilarious life and loves of a drag queen. '[This play] must be the funniest as well as the most perceptive, exuberant and painful for years about sexuality, inversion and the disorders of modern love.' Daily Telegraph '... a remarkably bitchy, waspish and acerbically funny triptych on the nature of homosexuality.' Punch
Play. Christopher Hampton An intelligent treatment of the friendship between the poets Paul
Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, one of the most extraordinary relationships
in the history of literature. With considerable insight into the
bourgeois and artistic societies of the nineteenth century, and with
a moving understanding of homosexuality, Hampton charts the poets'
mutual need for each other as they move through and away from literary
life and from Verlaine's family. Comedy. Derek Benfield Having been encouraged to take up jogging by his wife Hilary, Brian
sees his girlfriend, Wendy, in his friend George's flat when he is
ostensibly running around the park. However, while Brian is visiting
Wendy, helpful George knows that his own affair will not be discovered
as the object of his affection is Brian's wife Hilary! It is all
plain sailing until George's wife Jessica returns too soon from a
business trip to America ... Play. Francis Durbridge When author Max Telligan's secretary, Liz, and his about-to-be ex-wife,
Harriet, read that he has been found dead in Munich, they are stunned.
When Max walks in, very much alive, they find that the murdered man
was Max's friend. Thus begins a sequence of events involving the
CID, CIA, security services and a terrorist organisation, all of
whom seem inordinately interested in Max. Comedy. Samuel Taylor Diana leaves her husband, Sandy, in Rome to make arrangements for
the transfer home of his father's body, killed in Italy in a car
crash. While wading through governmental red tape he meets Alison,
who is on a similar mission -her mother had died in the same accident.
It transpires that the parents' relationship was more than that of
co-tourists, and circumstances indicate that a parallel situation
will inevitably develop between Sandy and Alison. Drama. Eugene O'Neill. The time of the play is 1828; the setting is a tavern in a village
near Boston. The tavern is owned by a tempestuous Irishman, Con Melody,
who is as proud as he is ill-tempered. He had been born with wealth
in a castle. He had been a major with the Duke of Wellington at the
Battle of Talavera. And now he is determined to show his pride and
importance to the Yankee townsmen. He makes a great show of it, cantering
about on a blooded mare, quoting poetry at his majestic image in
a mirror, donning his splendid British uniform and celebrating each
anniversary of Talavera. But the show deludes only himself. He is
an Irishman of humble origin in a strange and unfriendly civilization.
He is totally in debt. His wife keeps the tavern going; unaccountably,
this long-suffering woman adores him. His spirited daughter, whom
he treats like a servant and berates as a slut, hates him. But his
arrogance continues until at last he is beaten by the Yankee enemy
- literally beaten into a coma. So now he kills himself with a duelling
pistol. Not by shooting himself, but by shooting his beloved mare,
his one great show piece. This deed means the death of the past,
the death of his pretensions, and the birth of a new Con Melody. Play. Agatha Christie The guests at Lady Tressilian's house-party include her nephew, Nevile, his second wife Kay, and his first wife Audrey. When Lady Tressilian is murdered, Nevile appears to have an alibi. The next suspect is Audrey, who stands to inherit some money and is thought to be murderously jealous of Nevile's second marriage. However, the police discover that it was actually Audrey who left Nevile and that Nevile committed the murder to assuage his insane vanity by bringing his unfaithful wife to the gallows. Mystery Agatha Christie. Adapted from Agatha Christie's book, Towards
Zero, by the author and Gerald Verner. The scene is a house-parry of a lovely old house on the coast of
Cornwall. Lady Tessilan has invited as guests Kay and Nevile Strange,
and Audrey, Nevile's former wife, whom Nevile deserted for the beautiful,
glamorous Kay. Also on hand, among others, is Mary Aldin, Lady Tressilian's
companion-secretary, a quiet, efficient and rather mysterious young
woman. Nevile hoped that Kay and Audrey, by being together, would
become friends, but that plan quickly goes awry and he finds himself
between two women who appear to dislike one another intensely. After
a short time in Audrey's company, Nevile asks Kay for a divorce -
he wants to marry Audrey again! Kay is furious and tells Nevile that
she'll see them both dead before she'll allow him to go back to Audrey.
The next morning Mary has apparently taken a sleeping pill and can't
be wakened - Audrey goes in to attend to Lady Tressilian and, to
her horror, finds she has been murdered. At first the police are
inclined to believe that Nevile is the murderer - but the evidence
seems too clearcut, if anything. Then they learn that Mary had seen
Lady Tressilian alive after Nevile had left the house that evening
- and they wonder who hates him so much that they want him to be
hanged for a murder he didn't commit. Then the evidence begins to
point to Audrey to the horror and disbelief of the entire party.
Only when Matthew Treves, the family lawyer, together with Superintendent
Battle, takes things in hand does the appalling truth come out in
a scene of tremendous excitement. The Tower (La Tour de Nesle), or Marguerite de Bourgogne Play. Alexandre Dumas (Père), in a new version by Charles
Wood Dumas (Père) was commissioned by Parisian theatre manager Harel to write The Tower in 1832, a tale of murder, sexual depravity and treachery among the French aristocracy - just what the public wanted. Popularly dubbed as 'anti-monarchist', it played for 800 performances during a French revolution in the 1830s. Over 160 years later, in less turbulent times, lovers of swashbuckling romantic melodrama will not be disappointed. Period 1314 Drama. Lillian Hellman. Two sisters living together in a small southern town dream of touring
Europe one day - but their plans are continually thwarted by the
need to bail their ne'er-do-well brother out of a series of misfortunes.
They are surprised then, and even oddly distressed, when the brother
suddenly turns up with a large sum of money, enough to pay off the
mortgage on the family homestead and to send his sisters on their
grand tour. As it happens, however, the brother's good fortune stems
from a plot devised by the spiteful wife of a local millionaire,
and when the brother's wife discovers this, and jealously tells all,
the scheme is shattered and the brother savagely beaten. In the end
the sisters regain the dependence of their brother - but at a price
far greater than they would have willingly chosen to pay. |