 |
|
Play. Roger Hedden. 3 men, 3 women. Unit set Been Taken opens on the campus of an all-women's college
where John, a student at another university, meets Margaret, a student
photographer, at a dance: The couple return to Margaret's room where
they make love. A few days later, John opens the door to Steve, Margaret's
boyfriend who coincidentally lives in the same dormitory, and who
accuses John of having sex with Margaret against her will. John defends
himself, knowing the accusation is false, and assuring Steve he didn't
know Margaret even had a boyfriend. The scene gets ugly, but the
fight is broken up just in time. Years later, John and Steve again
cross paths when they are forced by circumstances to be the agents
of a business deal together. John meets Steve, and his wife Jill,
for a business dinner that ultimately settles old scores and jealousies. Drama. Cheryl L. West. 4 men, 5 women, 1 boy. Wendal, a jazz musician who has never managed to make it big, has
just been diagnosed with having the AIDS virus. To a string of questioning
doctors, he indignantly denies having had any sexual relations with
others but by the end of the first act we see him in two simultaneous
bedroom scenes, one between him and his fiancée, Simone, who
is pregnant, and one between him and his male lover, Douglas, who
is actually a married man and father. In these combined scenes, Wendal's
denial and-confusion are painfully obvious as he tries to hide the
truth about his health from both of his partners; he seems especially
intent to hide from Douglas the extent of his undisclosed promiscuity.
In the second act, Wendal has drifted away from both Simone and Douglas,
unable to sustain the lies that had been keeping his two worlds apart
and in balance. He returns home to his mother and father, but upon
confiding the truth to them, he is abandoned by his mother who, in
a wrathful explosion of raw emotion, indicts Wendal for immorality
and takes with her his teenage son from a previous marriage. Wendal's
father, however, overcomes his facade of masculine pride and takes
up caring for Wendal in his final days, eventually enacting a tentative
reconciliation between the family members only in time for Wendal
to die. The final image of the play lingers as Simone reappears,
her own health and the life of her unborn child in question. Beggars In the House of Plenty Play. John Patrick Shanley. 3 men, 3 women. Interior. Johnny is the youngest and most sensitive of three siblings stranded
in a surreal Irish Catholic household lorded over by their father,
a butcher from the Bronx, and their mother, a chipper, hope-mongering
wreck of a woman who can only grant chill advice, not comfort. Their
daughter Sheila flees her family through marriage while Joey, a high
school dropout, opts for a career in the navy and eventually returns
from Vietnam. Alone, Johnny takes solace in pyromania and writing
about his family. As Johnny matures, he becomes increasingly perceptive,
revealing with more and more sympathy the underlying causes of so
much family misery. In between Johnny's musings are raucous scenes
of catastrophic violence barely held in check by each character's
submerged but instinctual need for the love of one another. In the
play's final scenes, part memory, part hallucination and part truth,
Ma is seen through Johnny's eyes as she once was: innocent and flirtatious
(even with Johnny), and painfully unprepared for her ultimate destination
with Pop. The father is also transfigured in Johnny's imagination:
broken, remorseful and unable to identify with the mantle of fatherhood
that his own traditional upbringing inflicted upon him. As the forgiving
vision begins, Pop and Ma dance to "Danny Boy," the song to which
they used to force their children to dance, but when Joey interrupts
he is struck dead by his father. Johnny ends the play by lighting
more matches, looking back upon his vision of Joey's death but unable
to outrun it. Play. Brian J. Burton Susan is particularly looking forward to her usual holiday in a
rented cottage in France as she is recovering from a nervous breakdown.
John leaves her to go to the local shop and a stranger turn up purporting
to be John and thus begins a series of confusing and terrifying events
for Susan. transpires that Susan will inherit her father's money
if she is 'of sound mind' but John, and Judy her sister, wish to
prevent her from doing so. John Van Druten Comedy 3 Acts : 3 men, 2 women, Interior Gillian Holroyd, her aunt Miss Holroyd and Tony Henderson all live
in the same house in different flats. Tony has had quite enough of
finding Miss Holroyd in his flat and fiddling with the phone so he
complains to Gillian. He also wonders how she could have got into
his flat without a key; little does he know that both Gillian and
her aunt are witches. Gillian has taken a liking to Tony and decides
to use her feminine charms to ensnare him. However, when she finds
out he is engaged to her childhood enemy Merle Kittredge she `magics'
him with the help of her cat Pyewacket to fall in love with her.
The spell works, Tony cancels his engagement and for two weeks they
are happy together, even though if Gillian were truly to fall in
love she would be able to cry and blush but also would lose her magical
powers. Problems arise when Nicky, her warlock brother, begins working
on a book all about witches. Gillian `magics' the book so it won't
be published, so Nicky threatens to tell Tony that she is a witch
(Tony has read Nicky's book and doesn't believe a word of it). Gillian
decides to let the cat out of the bag and tell him herself, revealing
that she cast a spell on him. When at last he believes her, he storms
out of her house and pays another witch a thousand pounds to have
the spell removed. One evening Tony visits Gillian to pay some back
rent (which she refuses) and to use the phone. As he leaves, Gillian
blushes and then she starts to cry. Tony realizes she is no longer
a witch and he too discovers that he is in love with her, even without
being `magicked'. Tragi-Comedy: Michael Tremblay. 15 women. Interior Germaine Lauzon has just won a million trading stamps in the local
lottery. To get them pasted into books, she invites her four sisters
and a variety of close friends to assist her. While Germaine dreams
of things she's always wanted and can now buy for herself, her sisters
and friends scheme to thwart her, as they turn jealous with no understanding
as to why Germaine should win, anything. Each sister explains her
view of Germaine's life while they scheme to pilfer stamps away from
her. Thrown into the wacky group is Germaine's daughter, Linda, who,
going through the dramatic changes of a misunderstood teenager, needs
help dealing with her mother, and invites her friend Lisette to the
house. But Lisette needs advice too, being newly pregnant, and finds
Dear Aunt Pierrette, the black sheep of the family, to advise her
on whether to have an abortion, put the baby up for adoption, or
any other alternative. Germaine battles with Linda, when she suddenly,
realises some of her stamps are missing and catches the ladies in
the act. A wild and raucous stamp-throwing melee ensues which triggers
Linda to decide that this is a good time to get out on her own. Germaine's
sisters make off with as many stamps as possible and Germaine is
left with shattered dreams and only a fraction of the million stamps
she had when she started. Divine comedy. John Mortimer Gavin, Rector of St Barnabus Without, runs his parish on determinedly trendy lines, concentrating on gays, 'bondage freaks', mackintosh fetishists and other perversions rather than the Old Time Religion. His Bishop also thinks along modern lines when the arrival of a new, somewhat strange, Curate causes a series of true miracles. The Bishop is about to announce a return to the old ways when a natural explanation of the miracles is discovered. But who exactly is the mysterious Curate? ISBN 0 573 11038 7 Comedy. Bruce Graham : 5 men; interior. A corrupt councilman has just died, leaving a city council seat
to be filled. Fran, head of the all white 51st political ward, chooses
Tommy - an all around good guy, party loyalist and, most importantly,
close friend of the deceased - to fill the seat. He chooses him above
Doug, a well-educated, fast-talking, up-and-comer with strong support
from the area's growing Black districts. Doug has been waiting for
this post for years, and when the opportunity arises to reveal a
past indiscretion of Tommy's, he takes it, under the guise of saving
Tommy embarrassment in the public eye. Politics is an intricate system
however, and Fran sees Doug's ploy as betrayal, after the many years
of support. Fran tricks Doug into revealing his true feelings about
power and Black and White politics, the catch being that Doug was
caught on tape. Doug's threats to reveal the closed-door workings
of the ward become moot when Fran holds the damaging tape. A Black "outsider" is
then picked to fill the spot, signalling not only a change in the
ward, but a change in the future. Play.
Michael Frayn Michael Frayn's highly-acclaimed play was premiered at London's
Vaudeville Theatre and won the Standard, Plays and Players and
Laurence Olivier awards for the Best Play of 1984. Spanning fifteen
years this complex, well-structured play traces the story of the
destruction of David's architectural dream by the embittered Colin
and Colin's marriage to the inept Sheila, contrasting those who help
and those who are helped; those who create and those who destroy.
'... a beautifully crafted play, economically written.' Time Out Play.
Martin Sherman
Bent is set in Berlin in the thirties (Cabaret) and revolves around the lives of Max and Rudy. Max is a bon-viveur, totally immersed in the decadence of gay Berlin; confident, out-going and cock-sure. Rudy is the opposite; reticent, shy and insecure yet the two are totally co-dependent on each other. Their insouciant lives are turned upside down when they have to go on the run from the SS, following the Long Night of the Knives. This dramatic episode, when Hitler ordered the murder of Rohm – his gay right hand man - sounded the death-knoll for Berlin’s gays. Max and Rudy are duly captured by the SS, and transported to Dachau Concentration Camp, where Max’s desire to survive is tested beyond the limits of what any human being should be able to endure. Yet he manages to, primarily going to inhuman lengths to prove to the guards at Dachau that he’s not gay, but Jewish. Within the camp, gays are treated as the lowest of the low and for Max that would be too demeaning so he hides his sexuality. It’s only when he is forced to move rocks mindlessly from one end of the prison quad to the other that he’s forced to confront his own dishonesty by his workmate Horst. Horst wears his pink triangle hardly with pride – but at least without shame. The two men defy the brutality of their incarceration by becoming intimate without even touching, in one of the play’s most brilliantly innovative scenes. Max and Horst stand there, facing the audience, motionless and enjoy one of the best fucks of their lives. The relationship develops but it is only with Horst’s murder that Max can finally hold him. The final scene is almost too painful to watch. Taken from Internet posting http://uk.gay.com/article/5000 Play. Brian Jeffries The Mercer family take up their usual position at the beach. When
the Adamsons arrive, the differences between the two families become
apparent as do the conflicts within each of them. Tensions and temperaments
reach breaking point, and as they leave the beach, Jack makes the
symbolic gesture of abandoning all the beach equipment, in the hope
that another family will find it and be as happy as they were, beside
the sea. Leslie Sands : Comedy 3M 6F Interior set The first play in Leslie Sands' trilogy of seaside capers at the
Seaview Guest House. The tyrannical landlady Mrs Austin terrorises
her lodgers with her bread and butter pudding, while newlyweds Mr
and Mrs Pepper realise that marriage is no honeymoon and Wilf and
Ethel Pearson try to prevent their daughter Sally from running off
with a local 'theatrical' trickster. Chaos abounds in this stormy
seaside resort. Play. Hugh Whitemore, adapted
from the letters and writings of Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Sir
Sydney Cockerell and George Bernard Shaw In 1924, when George Bernard Shaw was 68, his friend Sydney Cockerell, then Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, introduced him to a Benedictine nun at Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire. Dame Laurentia McLachlan, later to be elected Abbess, enjoyed a lively friendship with both Shaw and Cockerell for over twenty-five years. Whitemore's play is based upon the letters and writings of the three friends. Comedy. James Elward. 4 men, 5 women. Interior. As he had deserted them many years before, the family of Archer
Connaught, famous author (and philanderer), receives the news of
his death in a plane crash with mixed emotions. His daughter is cool
and bitter, his son jumps at the chance to write the official biography
and his wife relishes the idea of basking in the reflected glory
of the tributes certain to come. But then Archer turns up, alive
after all, and squiring the lovely young girl, half his age, whom
he hopes to marry. But first a divorce is needed, and while his wife,
Kate, is seemingly compliant, the problem (or so she says) is that
they were never legally married in the first place. After that the
complications multiply uproariously as family skeletons are exhumed,
romance blossoms in unexpected places, and our hero comes to sense
both the generation gap between himself and his intended and value
of a good, loyal wife, tried and true. |