Composers and their stage works 



 

The Folding Green

Comedy: Howard Moss. 3 men, 6 women. 2 Interior.

Elena, the richest woman in the world, devises a scheme in which she plays dead and then assumes a different identity in order to spy on her possible heirs amongst whom include a greedy daughter and son-in-law from middle America, a companion, Ramona, who is almost as old and as clever as Elena, a ward who spends most of her time answering her second-class mail, a young doctor substituting for Elena's usual physician, a painter friend, female, who has a loft in Hoboken and two minor characters, a woman and a man, who keep cropping up at seances and may be either genuine spirits or hired actors. A sort of Modern-day Valpone, The Folding Green is a play of wit and language whose targets are greed and contemporary conceptions of money, art, medicine, love, sex, and of dying.

The Food Chain

Comedy/Drama. Nicky Silver : 3 men, 2 women. Unit set.

Amanda, an anorexic poet of some pretensions, has been married for three weeks, but her husband, Ford, has been missing for two. She calls a crisis hot line and reaches Bea, a volunteer. Bea's answer to Amanda's problems is to complain about her own deceased husband's inattentiveness and her son's embarrassing nature. She also dispenses hilarious (but useless) advise. Just as Amanda nears her wit's end, Ford walks in, so she simply hangs up on Bea. Meanwhile, across town, Serge, a completely vain runway model, paces as he waits for the arrival of his latest paramour. He is intruded upon by a former one-night stand, Otto, who worships him and who tips the scales at about three hundred pounds. Otto tortures, harangues and cajoles Serge while swilling Yoo-hoo, eating junk food and taking phone calls from his mother. Serge can take no more and explodes, but is interrupted by a phone call - his new lover will not be coming. This leaves Serge and Otto in the same state: both are now victims of fickle romance. The scene shifts back to Amanda's at the crack of dawn. Serge is banging on the door, looking for his lover. It was with Serge that Ford spent his lost two honeymoon weeks. Having followed Serge, it isn't long until Otto shows up, with breakfast and threatening suicide. Next to arrive is Bea, furious at Amanda for hanging up on her. As riotous chaos builds, we learn that Bea is Otto's mother, that Otto and Amanda are old school friends, that Serge will settle for both Amanda and Ford and that Ford has absolutely nothing to say. Bea takes charge and offers a solution short on practicality, but long on pleasure.
ISBN: 0-8222-1510-1

Fool For Love

Sam Shepard: Light Drama 3M 1F Interior set

In a stark motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert, May, a dishevelled young woman sits dejectedly on a rumpled bed while Eddie, a rough-spoken rodeo performer crouches in a comer fiddling with his riding gear. When he attempts to console May, who is distressed by Eddie's frequent absences and affairs, she seems at first to soften but then suddenly attacks him. As the recriminations pour out, the desperate nature of their relationship becomes apparent - they cannot get along with or without one another, yet neither can subdue their burning passion. The poignancy of their situation (they are half-brother and half-sister as well as lovers) is pointed up by the play's two other characters; a hapless young man who stops by to take May to the movies and becomes the butt of Eddies funniest yet most humiliating jokes; and a ghostly old man (perhaps their father) who sits in a rocking chair at the side of the stage, sipping whisky and commenting wryly nn what he observes. Eventually May and Eddie tire of their struggle and embrace, but it is apparent that the respite is temporary and that their love, the curse of the past which haunts them, will remain forever damned and hopeless.
ISBN: 0 8222 4515 0

Fools

Comic fable. Neil Simon : M7 F3. A village square, a house

Leon Tolchinsky is ecstatic at landing a job as schoolteacher in the idyllic Ukrainian village of Kulyenchikovin 1890. But the village has been cursed with chronic stupidity for two hundred years and the desperate villagers have hired Leon hoping he can break the curse, which he must do in twenty-four hours or become stupid himself. Instead of leaving he falls in love, gets the girl and breaks the curse.
ISBN 0 563 60877 6

Fool's Paradise

Farcical comedy. Peter Coke
M2 (23, 50) F6 (20s, 40s, 50s, old). A drawing-room.

Although surrounded by valuable antiques, Jane and Catherine live in debt, for their late husband, Basil, left house and property to them stipulating they could not sell any of it. Basil's sister has left them a spray of emeralds. If they prove valuable all their debts can be paid. Unfortunately Jane giddily accepts deposits on the emeralds from too many people and has to invent a third owner for them. As debts and troubles increase, she even accepts a deposit on Catherine's son!
ISBN 0 573 01137 0

Fools Rush In

Comedy. Kenneth Horne
M3 (young, 45, 50) F5 (20s, 40, elderly). A lounge-hall.

On her wedding morning Pam is so appalled at the gravity of the promises she must make that she refuses to be married to Joe. Her doubts increase on meeting her father, Paul, long divorced from her mother. Pam was taught to think him an abandoned bounder, but finds him so charming she is convinced that if his marriage disintegrated then hers is bound to fail. Paul intervenes and incites Joe to elope with Pam whilst he himself enjoys a reconciliaton with his wife.
ISBN 0 573 01138 9

For Love Or Money

Comedy. F Hugh Herbert : 4 men, 4 women. Interior.

The play tells of a charming and rather unsophisticated young miss who stumbles, almost by accident, into the home of a charming and sophisticated older man who is wise in the way of the theatre and of life. The theatre man is, of course, pursued by women his own age, but because of the wiles and of the appealing charm of the younger women, he is at last brought to bay and the two decide to get married.

For the Use of the Hall

Comedy. Oliver Hailey. 2 men, 4 women. Interior.

The time is winter, the place a chilly summer house on Long Island, where Allen and Charlotte, after twenty spendthrift years together, are "hiding out" - burning bogus art works for heat and raiding a neighbour's back porch for food. They are joined, unexpectedly, by Terry, a nun facing a crisis of belief, and then by Martin, a failed Broadway playwright, and his new wife. Terry and Martin are brother and sister and Charlotte, years ago, was the girl whom Martin's mother had chosen as his intended bride. But this, like so many well meant plans, never came to pass - nor, for that matter, did most of the hopes and dreams which all had held in their promising, and much happier, youth. The house they had come together in belonged to Bess, departed mother of Martin and Terry, who appears as a "vision now and again to evoke the past or comment on the present - and to bring into focus the funny, albeit desperate and ultimately touching, plight to which all these zany yet very human and believable people have come.
ISBN: 0-8222-0416-9

For Whom the Bell Chimes

Farce. Graham Greene
M6 Fl. An apartment.

The first chime ushers in to X a con-man supposedly collecting for charity. In a very short time X has changed clothes with him, covered his bald head with his own shock-haired wig, and walked off with his visitor's collecting case. Almost immediately the con-man discovers a dead girl, and from then on situations and surprises become increasingly frenetic.