Play. William Norfolk A highly entertaining and ingenious black comedy. Four elderly ladies
have been sharing their lives in Violet's rented house, pooling their
pension books and sharing chores. After a mugging Violet dies, but
Marge, Lottie and Doris omit to tell the authorities and leave Violet's
body peacefully in the cemetery. However, Violet's granddaughter,
Ronnie, arrives from Australia in search of her relative ... Play.
Helen Blakeman Fifteen-year-old Kim brings twenty-year-old Mick back to the family
caravan where he rapes her and leaves her pregnant. Her older sister
Kelly falls for the same man, and rushes into marriage when she too
becomes pregnant, only to miscarry. The girls' widowed mother, Josie,
is involved with striking docker, Bruce. Whilst Bruce faces redundancy,
Mick seizes the job opportunity and is labelled a 'scab'. Lives and
loves become increasingly entangled in this desperate search for
a place to go. Period 1994-1996 Play -Tragicomedy. Steven Sater. 4 men, 4 women. Unit Set The setting is Carbondale, Illinois, where the Bader family has
set down roots and prospered. The youngest (and still unmarried)
son, David, a poet who now lives in New York, has come home for Thanksgiving.
At first the reunion seems to be a typical Jewish family get-together,
with much discussion of food and the problems of providing for growing
children. But David's arrival also serves as a catalyst which provokes
the explosive airing of deeper tensions and animosities, apparently
ready to burst forth at the slightest provocation. The father, Arnie,
regrets that his long hours at his store, making money for his family's
benefit, cut him off from really knowing his children. And while
his wife, Barone, professes to derive great joy from her offspring,
it is soon evident that she has never really understood or appreciated
them. As for the children, daughter Beth is a compulsive eater trapped
in a loveless marriage with a self-indulgent husband, Barry, who
berates her for weakness while denying nothing to himself and son
Bradley is a would-be rock musician who works for his father but
dreams of the "big hit" which will rescue him from Carbondale. Meanwhile
he and his alcoholic wife, Cindi, find solace in cocaine and compulsive
over-spending. And while they all turn to David, the one who has "escaped" to
a supposedly better life, to help them find a purpose in their own,
it is apparent that he is as helpless to save them from themselves
as they are to understand the tangled motives which have brought
them to where - and what - they are. Play. Dramatized by Leslie Darbon
from the novel by Agatha Christie A dramatization, first presented at London's Vaudeville Theatre
starring Gordon Jackson and Margaret Courtenay, of a classic Agatha
Christie tale of murder and mystery, involving a wealthy collector,
four murderers and two crime specialists, Superintendent Battle of
the Yard and Mrs Oliver the novelist. (in Spanish
Plays) : Sergi Belbel. Trans J. London This acclaimed Catalan drama creates a disturbing picture of contemporary
Western society set against a background of urban alienation and
violence. Inspired by Schnitzler's La Ronde each of the ten
scenes presents a pair of characters in a confused and contradictory
relationship. Caresses was released as a film in September
1998. Play. Harold Pinter Into his derelict household shrine Aston brings Davies, a tramp
- but a tramp with pretensions, even if to the world he may be a
a pathetic old creature. All that is left of his past now is the
existence in Sidcup of some papers, papers that will prove exactly
who he is and enable him to start again. Aston, too, has his dreams:
he has always been good with his hands and there is so much to do
in the house. Aston's hopes are tied to his flash brother Mick's;
he has aspirations to live in a luxurious apartment. Human nature
is a great spoiler of plans, however ... Comedy/Drama. Harold Pinter. 3 men. Interior. An old bum receives shelter in a cluttered room of an abandoned
house. His samaritan is a gentle young man whose kindness is so casual
that he seems almost indifferent. Dirty, tattered, unkempt, itching
and scratching, the tramp is by turns wheedling, truculent and full
of bravado ... He speaks the proud lingo of those who have untold
resources awaiting them at near-by havens. He pronounces his meager
phrases with the exaggerated precision of one unaccustomed to being
heeded. He flails a fist into a palm or into the air with the belligerence
of a fighter no one will ever corner. He associates himself with
fastidious practices like soap as if they were his daily habit. He
is very funny - at first. But the laughter shades increasingly into
pity. Like a cornered animal, he cannot believe that anyone means
to be kind to him ... He hates foreigners. He trusts no one, and
fears everyone. He alienates the two brothers who separately have
offered him a job as caretaker of the premises. Their offers and
the job itself become themes with subtle overtones. Aston, the samaritan,
lives in personal and emotional isolation, tinkering with gadgets
and dreaming of building a shed out in the yard. And Mick, who carries
on like a man of affairs, inhabits a dream world that resembles an
extrovert's nightmares. Mr. Pinter has been vehement in his assertions
that his play is no more than the story it tells. But he cannot prevent
his audiences from finding in it a modern parable to derisive scorn
and bitter sorrow. Play. Jules Feiffer. 2 men,.5 women. Unit Set Childhood buddies and then college roommates, Sandy and Jonathan
seem more concerned with mysteries of women than with their respective
studies in medicine and law. Sandy has been dating Susan, and as
he reports on his "progress" to date the intrigued Jonathan decides
to find out for himself just how available Susan might be. Although
he never tells his friend, he is the first to succeed with her; but
while Susan is strongly attracted to Jonathan it is Sandy she decides
to marry - a rejection which is deeply disturbing to Jonathan and
which sets a pattern he follows for the rest of his life. Choosing
sex over love, while failing to realize his need for both, Jonathan
embarks on a Long and varied series of liaisons which, to Sandy,
seem to embody a sexual freedom and excitement which far outstrips
what married life can provide. Eventually his marriage to Susan founders,
and he emulates his friend by seeking fulfillment in a series of
affairs. But, like Jonathan, he also finds that fantasies are no
substitute for stable commitment, and that while chasing money and
women may seem enough when you are very young it can become shallow
and even pitiful as you grow older. Told in a series of brief, fast-paced
scenes, filled with the sharp, satiric dialogue for which the author
is so justly famous, the play, in the end, moves from biting humour
to poignant self-realisation as Sandy and Jonathan become aware that
what they really need and want they have never found - and that their
long and tumultuous odyssey, for all its indulgent excesses, has
left them both feeling empty and embittered. Play. Steve Tesich. 3 men, 2 women. Unit set The story is concerned with a family living in a decaying house
that is about to tumble down. The fumbling, inept father tries to "communicate"
with his children, but settles for listening to tape recordings of
the childish games of happier, simpler days; the mother barely thinks
or feels anymore, and devotes her days to preparing food; the older
son makes listless plans to kill his father; the younger son, slightly
retarded, dreams of escaping to the unspoiled wilds of Oregon; and
the daughter, a college drop-out, becomes, in an oddly gentle way,
the sex object of both father and brother. In the end there are discoveries,
and compassion, but also a sense of aching loss of the relentlessness
of the fate which the Carpenters have, like betrayed innocents, ordained
for themselves. Play. Graham Greene An untalented sculptor, Father has spent many years working on an enormous statue of God the Father, modelling the face on that of his own parent. Meanwhile life goes on at the base of the statue. He is looked after by his teenage son who becomes briefly involved with a sexy young girl, later seduced by the father. The son then brings a gentle deaf and dumb girl to the studio with tragic consequences. |