Play. Ronald Harwood Sir, the last of the great, but dying, breed of English actor-managers, is in a very bad way tonight. As his dresser tries valiantly to prepare him to go on stage as King Lear, Sir is having great difficulty remembering who and where he is, let alone Lear's lines. With a Herculean effort on the part of Norman, the dresser, Sir does finally make it on stage, and through the performance. Period 1942. During its long West End run the play starred Tom Courtenay and Freddie Jones. Comedy/Drama. Jean-Claude Grumberg. Adapted by Garson Kanin. 8 men, 2 women. Interior The play is set in a Jewish ghetto in Vilna, Poland, in 1931. A
group of amateur actors are rehearsing a new play written by their
ambitious young director, about Alfred Dreyfus, the French-Jewish
military officer whose persecution was opposed by the eloquent Emile
Zola. The performers in this play-within-a-play are all good, kindly
people but they have difficulty in accepting the relevance of the "Dreyfus
Affair" to their own situation and, furthermore, are preoccupied
with the concerns of their personal lives - which leads to a series
of very funny and often ironic exchanges with their highly-strung
director. However, their placid conviction that anti-Semitism could
not exist in the Poland of their time is abruptly shattered when
drunken hoodlums break into their rehearsal and attack them - after
which the project is abandoned. The shaken cast members flee, one
to the Soviet Union, others to England and Germany, but all now deeply
disturbed and apprehensive - and nervously facing a future clouded
by the menacing spectre of Nazi Germany. Alfred Uhry : Light From. 2M 1 F Flexible staging Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a long running hit in New York
and the West End. Drama. Douglas Post. 3 men, 2 women. Interior Duncan Crawford, a bartender on the island of St. John, is considering
abandoning his bar for greater adventure when an heiress from Manhattan,
Emily Miles, wanders into his establishment. She begins to tell him
the story of her life: how she was left at the alter at the tender
age of nineteen by a fiancé who mysteriously disappeared,
how she has spent the past twenty years searching for this man, and
how she now believes that she has found him in the person of Duncan.
Duncan denies this, but Emily is certain. To complicate matters,
Emily's husband, Raymond, an investment banker, offers Duncan $10,000
to pretend he is the man Emily is looking for in the hopes she will
finally come to some sort of closure over the event. The story continues
to twist and turn right up to the ambiguous conclusion: Duncan might
be playing along with Raymond or he may actually be the man Emily
claims he is. Play John van Druten. 5 men, 6 women. 2 Interior. The story shows how an embittered professor comes near to wrecking the lives of a young man and young woman whose love for each other has been accidentally revealed to him through a letter written by the boy to the girl. The professor uses this to humiliate the young people, unconsciously venting upon them his own perverse cruelty for the disappointment suffered in his own life. (in Dutch
Plays) : Arne Sierens. Trans N. Malfait A short play about a woman who employs a new drumming teacher for
her son, only to find out they have a shared past. A large cast of
unseen characters is revealed to us through the shared memories of
Paola and Ray. Drums in the Night. Drama. Bertolt Brecht Translations: John Willett M9 F6. Interior and exterior settings. The soldier Andreas returns from a prison camp to find his fiancée Anna just engaged to the prosperous Murk. Against sounds and reports of the Spartacists storming the newspaper offices, Andreas quarrels in a bar with Anna's parents and the now drunken Murk. Lost in the street, he follows the rioting; Anna follows him. In desperation Andreas leads the (partly drunken) company to the newspaper offices. In the early morning he and Anna meet in the streets. He refuses to return to the fighting and the two go home together. Staged Reading. Paul Shyre from the third of six autobiographical volumes by Sean O'Casey : 5 men, 2 women. Simplified Unit Set Following the technique which he utilized so brilliantly in I
Knock at the Door, Paul Shyre has again adapted the rich and
imaginative writings of Sean O'Casey into theatre of great variety
and dramatic impact. In the present instance, Mr. Shyre has conceived
his work in a modified play form, with narration and stage action
cleverly interbalanced. The effect achieved is unique. Great prose
and striking theatre combined into an experience of humour, pathos
and moving power. The Drunkard or Down with Demon Drink! Melodrama.
Brian J. Burton Edward, the penniless heir of his kind-hearted father, is a virtuous man. One day the villain Squire Cribbs lures Edward to drink in an inn, and the effect is instantaneous; he becomes a drunkard and his poverty increases. It is his foster brother William who finds out what Cribb is up to, discovers Edward in the slums of London and finds the true will hidden by the villain. Period Victorian John Chapman : Farce 6M 4F Interior Set One of the most successful farces that has appeared in London. It
deals with a crazy, but very likeable gang of bookies who, in order
to be near the racecourse, are staying at a country hotel run by
a retired colonel and his wife and daughter. Secret rooms, sliding
panels, mistaken identity and a nice little bit of romance are some
of the main ingredients of this very racy and slick farce, which
never lets up for a moment and provides some of the best possible
entertainment around. John Webster The widowed Duchess of Malfi secretly marries her steward Antonio,
against the wishes of her two brothers, who view her desire to wed
again as a disgusting example of female lust. She manages to keep
the identity of her husband secret, and bears three children by him.
The revengeful brothers hire a malcontent, Bosola, to imprison her,
subject her to mental torture, and finally murder her along with
her children. 'This dark and glorious masterpiece' (Observer)
was first performed around 1613 and most recently revived by Cheek
by Jowl Theatre Company. Play. Aleksandr Vampilov. Translated by Alma H. Law. 6 men, 4 women, 1 boy. Unit Set Constructed out of flashbacks, the play moves backward and forward
in time as it probes into the plight of one Zilov, an engineer who
has achieved a certain position in the Soviet bureaucracy but has
lost his will to live. He has come to detest his boring job and the
petty superior he must defer to; his marriage is falling apart; he
feels betrayed by his friends, he disdains the young student who
offers him the passion and sense of wonder he once derived from his
wife; and he seems concerned only with his annual hunting trip which,
he hopes, will restore a purpose and identity to his life. But events
continue to frustrate him: his wife aborts the child who might have
saved their relationship; the new apartment they have wrested from
the grudging bureaucracy seems more a tomb than a home and ultimately,
suicide appears to be Zilov's only alternative. But, in the end,
emboldened by vodka and defying the persistent bad weather, Zilov
does go hunting - for the will to live is stronger than the desire
to give up, and hope remains, even in the grey sameness of an existence
gone stale. Comedy Jean Giraudoux. Translated and adapted by Christopher Fry. 8 men, 5 women, extras. Exterior and Interiors. To express its somewhat moderate viewpoint, the play takes us to
Aix in the middle of the last century and introduces two ladies of
contrasting temperaments. One is so concerned with sexual virtue
that she snubs women of less exacting standards, causing their suspicion.
To avenge herself for having her affairs made public, the bad angel
drugs her enemy and makes her believe she has slept with a local
rake while unconscious, thus tumbling her moral world about her.
Although the "good angel" retains her purity she loses her "joy of
the world." Play. Tom Kempinski Stephanie, an eminent violinist struck down by multiple sclerosis,
consults Dr Feldmann to help her adjust to her new life. Under Dr
Feldmann's quiet, probing questions layers of protective pretence
are stripped from her, revealing dangerous depths of resentment and
despair. She becomes aggressive towards the psychiatrist and finally
decides to give up the treatment, but his last word is to ask her
if 'the same time' will be convenient for her next appointment. Play. Pam Gems. 4 women. Interior The scene is an unpretentious London flat, where four young women,
on their own for various reasons, have thrown in together. Dusa,
who returns as the play begins, laments the loss of her children,
who have been abducted by her estranged husband; Fish, an upper-class
intellectual and "women's libber," finds, herself rejected by the
one man she can truly love; Stas, a nurse and part-time hustler,
regards men - and life - with a cynicism so bitter as to be suspect;
while Vi, a zany "flower child," withdraws into Zen, pills and starvation
diets. In a series of revealing, inventive scenes, sometimes hilarious,
sometimes deeply affecting, the four endeavor to help each other
in pulling their lives together and in finding the sense of purpose
and individuality which can so easily elude women in contemporary
society. The end result, like life itself, is mixed - a degree of
success for three of the friends, and tragedy for the fourth. |