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Play. A. R. Gurney Three men and three women portray a wide, diverse range of characters
- from little boys to grandfathers, from giggling girls to housemaids
- in this brilliantly structured play which enjoyed a very successful
run off-Broadway and was given its British premiere at Greenwich
Theatre in 1983. The action takes place in an upper middle-class
American dining-room, the hub of social family life, comprising a
mosaic of interrelated scenes, sometimes funny, sometimes touching,
sometimes rueful, which together create a profound study of the decaying
mores of the American WASP. Fantasy: William Gibson. 8 men, 6 women. Exterior. "This play is a fairy-tale," states William Gibson in his notes
to the New York production, "and all fairy-tales are dreams in which
the hero goes forth on a pilgrimage through life; this one is no
exception. Dinny is just the average American young man. He has only
one fault; he is foolish, greedy, gullible, vain, confused, inconsiderate,
lustful, ignorant, selfish, incompetent, lazy, immature, obtuse,
frightened, cocky, and chronically self-deceived. He wants everything
in the world, and expects it in the easiest way possible. He believes
he deserves only the best, and will settle for nothing less. Nevertheless,
he is our hero ...Reader, forgive him - he might have been you." John Chapman : Farce 5M 5F 2 Interior sets One of John Chapman's most enjoyable farces in which he weaves an hilarious plot around Barry Lima who, due to the indisposition of his senior, has to step into his shoes at a minute's notice and deal with the signing of an Anglo-French treaty. This involves a trip to Paris and as well as having to cope with the French minister, he finds he has a bevvy of beautiful secretaries and chambermaids on his hands. The arrival of his wife and uncle, an aged rogue, do nothing to ease the situation and the fun runs fast and furious from beginning to end. Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land. Two plays. Tom Stoppard Dirty Linen concerns the investigation of a Select Committee
into the moral standards of the House of Commons - a somewhat unconventional
investigation, rendered not less so by the presence of an ultra-sexy
secretary whose clothes have a trick of whisking off in the hands
of various members. NewFound-Land is a duologue between two
Home Office officials, with a tour-de-force speech on America by
one of them. Comedy. Don Cherrett
and Evan Thomas Janis Villiers looks forward to celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary
but events seem determined to wreck the occasion. Her daughter Lucille
is besotted by fiancé
Bingo; husband David appears to have forgotten their anniversary
and, to cap it all, a much-treasured wedding present is stolen. With
a dash of intrigue and mistaken identities, the plot bounces along
in this bubbling comedy which provides excellent cast opportunities
for a wide variety of characterization. Play.
Phyllis Nagy This starkly modern play concerns Sarah Casey, a twenty-five-year-old
travel agent who has never been outside New York City. She goes missing
after leaving a bar, where the last person to see her was Elston
Rupp, a man who works in a thrift shop and dresses in his clients'
clothes to assume different identities. Was Sarah killed, or did
she merely 'disappear' to escape her anonymous existence in a big,
lonely city? Play Charles Marowitz. 9 men (doubling possible). Unit Set The story begins in the mid-1950s at the institute in Rangeley,
Maine, which the famed scientific innovator Wilhelm Reich has established
after fleeing from Hitler's Germany. He is visited by a Dr. André from
the Sigmund Freud Archives, who wants to interview him about his
early association - and later falling out- with the master. As their
conversation progresses it becomes apparent that Dr. André has
also begun to harbour doubts about many of Freud's theories but his
request to stay on at Rangeley and work with Reich is less than enthusiastically
received - for reasons which become apparent as the action of the
play, through flashbacks, explores the development, and disintegration,
of Reich's singular career. We learn of his early apprenticeship
under Freud, and of his gradual disagreement with many of the older
man's concepts; and of his years in Vienna and Berlin, when his radical
theories about primal energy. and the liberating force of the human
orgasm first brought him into conflict with the medical/scientific
establishment. His initial acceptance, and later rejection, of communism
is also explored, as is his controversial use of his "orgone box" to
treat cancer patients, a practice which, eventually, results in his
trial and imprisonment by the United States Government. As the play
ends Reich, fatally broken and slipping into paranoia, is visited
in his penitentiary cell by spectres from his past, including President
Eisenhower and, in particular, Sigmund Freud, who, at last, concedes
Reich's brilliance, but also cautions him that radical thought will
continue to be resisted as long as political and economic power remains
in the hands of the uninspired and the ill informed - and that a
great man's closest disciples, as they seek progressively to make
their own voices heard, will invariably become his most dangerous
and destructive detractors. (edition includes Sucking Dublin) Written by an award-winning young Irish playwright, Disco Pigs was
first performed in Cork before an extensive tour to the Traverse
Theatre, Edinburgh and a run in the West End. Pig and Runt are two
17-year-olds who share everything: birthday, language, world view
and that moment when pop songs and life-changing orgasms flash by
and last forever. 'Poignantly funny, full of sound and movement,
this electric two-hander is phenomenal' Sunday Times (Ireland). The Disintegration of James Cherry Play Jeff Wanshel. 7 men, 5 women. Unit Set After announcing at the outset that what follows is his
"nightmare," young James Cherry leads us through a series of hilarious
and revealing episodes from his life. Awful things keep happening
to those around him, and for some reason it always seems to be James
Cherry's fault. His grandparents fall downstairs to their deaths;
his father is eaten by crocodiles; his sister leaps off the roof.
When James goes off to the big city to pursue an acting career his
roommate is devoured by the pig he keeps as a pet; his car is eaten
by a large truck; he accidentally shoots his agent during the course
of an audition. And through it all James Cherry, innocent, earnest,
agreeable - and perhaps doomed without knowing it - goes on trying
to piece together the bizarre elements and people of his existence
into something reasonable and acceptable. But as his knowledge of
what he is up against grows he can only go deeper and deeper into
his nightmare and on to the disintegration which inevitably awaits. Play. Kevin, Heelan. 6 men. Exterior. Thomas, a black construction worker, has just been asked to fill
in for the injured foreman of his crew. He takes the responsibility
seriously because he hopes it will help him earn a rare union job
for which he's the only black crewman eligible. Meanwhile, Beauty,
a white co-worker, confides to his friends that he's also up for
the union job that Thomas wants but that he didrA do as well as Thomas
in the bricklaying competition. Resenting the way Thomas wields his
new authority, his black crew members accuse him of selling out.
Foos, a disillusioned alcoholic who's about to lose his job for constantly
bucking the management, is his most embittered adversary. In an impassioned
monologue he describes a run-in with the police during a race riot
the night before; mistaking him for another man, the police humiliated
and harassed Foos who had only gone out to get some ice-cream. When
the construction site manager tells Beauty he gets the union job
instead of Thomas, Foos' predictions of white favouritism come true.
The final confrontation between Beauty and Thomas remains unresolved
as both men feel diminished by the implacable, entrenched system
of racism that neither of them can continue to abide, but must if
they are to work. Play. John Bowen One of the classical myths that the modern theatre has found to
be more relevant to our time is that portrayed in The Bacchae of
Euripides in which Pentheus, the King of Thebes, denies the god Dionysus
and is then torn limb from limb by the 'dancing women', who are the
god's followers. In this play the author presents the myth as a tragic
story, in which a good man, attempting to perform good acts, is destroyed
by his denial, both in himself and others, of what is instinctive,
irrational and destructive. Peter Whelan : Drama 18M 11F, doubling possible Flexible staging Set in the year 2000, Peter Whelan's epic new state-of-the-nation
play examines the debate over the fuure of the monarchy in 21st century
Britain. When the heir to the throne renounces his rightful succession,
his eighteen year old son must determine his own future with the
monarchy seeming increasingly out of place in a scared Britain. With
the help of his brother, the young prince secretly slips away from
his minders and travels around the country, searching for clues to
help his dilemma. Meanwhile, the Republican movement in parliament
is growing at an alarming rate, with powerful support coming from
both Left and Right In one of the most fiercely contested political
debates of a generation, the Labour Government and the opposition
Conservatives tackle the concerns of the people as the fate of an
entire nation hangs in the balance. Comedy. Jennifer Jarrett. Also called Winter Chicken. 3 men, 4 women. Interior. Divorced for 15 years, and running low on cash, Eleanor Bander decides
reconciliation with her ex-husband (whose second wife died the year
before) is her best hope. To lure him within striking range, she
tells him that their daughter is about to be married - hinting that
it is a forced situation - when the truth is that the daughter is
merely engaged again (for the fifth time) to her long-standing fiancé.
The ex-husband, Walter, not only arrives, but brings along his current
flame, a former classmate who was Eleanor's competition from high
school days. As the plot thickens, which it does with growing hilarity,
Eleanor's friends and neighbours become involved in the action, culminating
in a surprise birthday party where the truth, at last, comes out.
But Walter is prepared to forgive and forget, and falls easily into
Eleanor's trap. So easily, in fact, that Eleanor is the one who now
has second thoughts - deciding that it is better, after all, to stay
single, and broke, than to resume the bickering which drove her away
from Walter in the first place. |