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Drama. J. B. Priestley Robert Caplan and his wife are entertaining her brother and sister-in-law.
Because Robert insists on uncovering the truth about his brother
Martin's 'suicide', many unpalatable revelations ensue which cause
Robert to shoot himself. At this point, the opening scene is repeated,
but this time they bypass the dangerous corner at which the truth
is demanded, thus averting the disaster. Written in 1932 this forms
one of the three 'time plays'. Play. N. J. Crisp John Barrett appears at the home of Sally and Mark Driscoll. It
emerges that Barrett is 'dangerously obsessed' with pinning the blame
for his wife's accident on someone. Barrett strips away the conflicting
facets of the Driscolls' lives. As suddenly as he entered Barrett
slips away leaving behind shattered faith, broken trust and a marriage
that will never heal. This play had a very successful run in the
West End staring Dinsdale Landen, Carol Drinkwater and Jeremy Bulloch. Comedy/Drama. John Patrick Shanley : 1 man, 1 woman. Open Stage. The setting is a run-down bar in the Bronx, where two of society's
rejects, Danny and Roberta, strike up a halting conversation over
their beer. He is a brooding, self-loathing young man who resorts
more to violence than reason; she is a divorced, guilt-ridden young
woman whose troubled teenage son is now being cared for by her parents.
Danny, whose fellow truck drivers call him "the animal," seems incapable
of tender emotion, while Roberta, who is still haunted by the memory
of an ugly sexual incident involving her father, is distrustful of
men in general. And yet, as their initial reserve begins to melt,
and they decide to spend the night together, the possibility of a
genuine and meaningful relationship begins to emerge - the first
for both of them. In the end there are no facile, easy answers, but
thanks to the playwright's skill and compassion both characters are
able to probe within themselves to find an exorcism and forgiveness
which, while painfully achieved, offers the hope of a future touched,
at last, with more than the bitterness and loneliness which had been
their lot before their fateful meeting. Play: Stephen Levi : 1 man, 1 woman. Interior. As John Chapman describes "The basis of the comedy is simple. The
scene is a modest cottage in a New England seaside resort, where
Miss Dennis is living alone, and lonesome. She manoeuvers an acquaintance
with Daniels, another loner, in the hotel dining room and asks him
up for a drink. He does manage to get a drink or two but most of
what he gets is talk delightfully disjointed talk by the artful Miss
Dennis. Sex doesn't seem to be the objective of either party; when
he kisses her at her invitation he kisses too enthusiastically, and,
in a sudden fury, she rips his shirt front and orders him out. But
he comes back of course. And she does make an occasional play for
sympathy, stubbing her toe or hurting her ankle or banging her head
on a ladder, and it's a lucky thing he is a doctor. Once she went
to an oculist and he said the only thing wrong with her is that she
is psychologically unaware of where she is going... What is eating
Miss Dennis, the well-off widow of an Oscar winning movie star? Why
isn't her 7-year-old son with her? And why has Dr. Daniels, who seems
to be a perfectly decent sort, been estranged from his wife for so
long? The answer to these questions give a final twist to Daphne
In Cottage D. I recommend it..." The Dark At the Top of the Stairs William Inge : Drama 3 men, 2 women, 3 boys, 2 girls. Interior set William Inge's look at small town life in the 1920s is set in the
house of Rubin Flood and his family. A travelling salesman, he lives
with his wife Cora, their teenage daughter Reenie and young boy Sonny.
As the play progresses, the trials and tribulations of each emerge
in a mosaic portrait of a family whose secret hopes and fears are
bubbling just below the surface. Soon others are taken into the story
as well, from Cora's sister Lease and her husband Morris to Reenie's
friends Flirt, Enmity and Sammy, with far-ranging effects on the
entire community. At the end it has become apparent that while there
is dark at the top of everyone's stairs, through love and understanding
it can be overcome and a better world can be made. Melodrama. Mary Orr and Reginald Denham. 6 men, 4 women. Interior. In a remote part of Florida Coral Platt, a sinister woman has married a man considerably older than she. For reasons sufficient to her, she wants him out of the way and plans an ingenious though slow murder by poison. She has succeeded in making it seem that Marvin is dying through natural causes. However, she is forced unexpectedly to play hostess to two women who have come to Florida. The women stay longer than they planned because they have begun to suspect what Coral is up to. In a series of exciting scenes they discover just what is going on and prevent Marvin's death. Play. Christopher Fry This verse play dramatises an imaginary incident during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-9. The elderly, kind Countess Rosmarin Ostenburg's daughter's former husband is a lazy Hungarian officer who alone seems impervious to the Countess's charm. As the play closes the Austrians are hammering at the door. He turns to escape but seeing the Countess dying turns to stand by her body as the knocking of the Austrians grows louder. The Dark Is Light Enough is set in an Austrian country house
in the winter of 1848-49 during a futile uprising of the Hungarians
against Austrian rule. The play is concerned with the impact this
rebellion has on the inhabitants of the house. Foremost of them is
the countess - an eminent lady of wit, independence, compassion and
honesty. At the bottom of the heap is a highly intelligent scoundrel
with no character at all. Apart from several other well-drawn people,
representing either amusing worldliness or earnest convictions, the
play concentrates on the ordeal of the countess' conscience: Although
she is above petty acrimonies, although she overflows with forgiveness,
she is grievously hurt by the callousness of the scoundrel's unprincipled
behaviour." Through a last final act of self-sacrifice, in which
she gives up her own life to save another, the countess redeems the
scoundrel, and some of her own strength and nobility become his. Play. Philip King and Parnell Bradbury When Carol, the highly-strung ex-actress wife of the Vicar, complains
hysterically that she has been assaulted by 'Dark Lucy' - an unpleasant
old village woman who lives in a dirty broken-down cottage - the
doctor is inclined to put it down to hallucinations and she is believed
by nobody. But when another young girl disappears Carol decides to
investigate what goes on in the the old cottage. What she discovers
exceeds her wildest nightmares. Play. Len Jenkin. 6 men, 4 women. Unit Set The story is comprised of a series of vignettes involving characters
who, at first, appear to bear no relation to each other. A mysterious
figure gives a scholar an ancient manuscript to translate; a thief
steals an enormous jewel; a woman assures us that life is all coincidence;
a dream-like waitress serves her customers all manner of thoughts
and suggestions, but no food. The images created are bizarrely funny
and provocative and, in time, coalesce into a pattern of driving
concerns and obsessions which come into focus when the various characters
finally meet at an ocultists convention in Mexico City. Phantasmagoric
and convoluted, the play is a journey which, in the final essence,
transcends the physical world to explore the seat of true reality
- the inner recesses of the mind. Play. Rodney Ackland It is 1937; there are warning signs of World War Two. Catherine Lisle, recently divorced and with her hopes of a dancing career dashed, moves into the house of her old schoolteacher. Like nearly everyone else in the house, Catherine is attempting to evade the present by living entirely in the past, and is hopelessly torn between her infantile ex-husband Chris and her lover Alan, who is passionately aware of the dangerous political situation surrounding them. (in Cinzano) : Ludmila Petrushevskaya.
Trans S. Mulrine Naturalistic in tone, each of these short pieces depicts a complex relationship encompassing a mother and her son, two men and two women. Each lasts 10-20 minutes, and can be played separately. Titles: The Execution (2m)
Play. Lisette Lecat Ross. 4 men, 1 woman. Interior. A bus transporting a group of international Red Cross workers through
the township of Soweto, on a factfinding tour, is bombed and many
of its passengers killed. In the ensuing chaos one survivor, Lydia
De Jager, a white woman in her forties, escapes and is sheltered
by Simon Kgoathe (a Sowetan in his late forties, early fifties).
This single compassionate act may doom him - a fact he quickly realizes.
Any hope of utilizing his meager options are thwarted firstly, by
Lydiâs fear and her fecklessness; then by his discovery that
she is a South African, by events outside and, finally by the intrusion
of a young black man, Sipho, who may or may not be a government informer
and who is also urgently in need of Simoris help. As Simon tries
desperately to survive in the increasingly dehumanized environment
of a country without hope and a township seething with rage, he strives
also to hold onto his humanity. Isolated in what is, for Lydia, both
a fragile haven and a frightening cage, these two people, so vastly
different in character and experience, struggle through mistrust
and prejudice towards a tenuous understanding. As the night progresses,
Simon's main hope of survival becomes his secret underground "cubby-hole." But,
from Sipho's entrance, events spin out of control and the play is
propelled towards a powerful and moving conclusion. Drama. George Brewer, Jr. and Bertram Bloch. 7 men, 7 women (extras). 2 Interiors. Judith, sceptical, wealthy, loves horses and parties; her existence
is bounded by her social world. She learns that she must undergo
a delicate brain operation. Dr. Steele, on the point of retiring,
is an idealist, who has found in human service a solution to the
problems of life. He is a new type to Judith. She is drawn to him
and he to her. Having recovered, she demands the truth, and he tells
her she has only a few months to live. They have fallen deeply in
love, but when Steele proposes she refuses in the belief that he
has asked her out of pity. He leaves for Vermont, while Judith returns
to the high life. She discovers, however, that alcohol and casual
affairs no longer satisfy her and, after a few months, she humbly
goes to the doctor to spend the rest of her short existence with
him.
Pop Larkin, who makes a fortune from scrap-iron deals but has never
paid income tax, lives in rural idyllic bliss with generous-hearted
Ma and their six children. When a young, earnest tax official, Mr
Charlton, turns up one hot May afternoon in 1957 to investigate he
is bewitched immediately by eldest daughter Mariette and it isn't
long before he succumbs to the boisterous Larkin family charm and
largesse. Period 1950s Play. Jack Popplewell With Celia Johns growing more and more frustrated by staying at
home, and her husband Rupert proving more and more inefficient as
a businessman, it seems a good idea that they should change places:
and indeed Celia soon starts Rupert's firm on a profit-making course,
while Rupert runs the house with equal efficiency. Matters are brought
to a head by the arrival of daughter Karen to take up residence -
with two babies, but for the moment, no husband. Farce. Anthony Marfott and Bob Grant Mild Edward works at the Continental Telephone Exchange and has
been in the habit of chatting up his cotelephonists, all female,
in various Continental exchanges. These affairs-by-proxy have caused
no complications until the occasion of a Miss Europhone Contest brings
the girls to London. Four of the most glamorous turn up at his home
anxious to meet the flirtatious 'Mr London' in the flesh. The complications
that ensue result in an evening he will never forget! |