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Drama. John van Druten, adapted from The Berlin Stories of Christopher Isherwood. 3 men, 4 women. Interior The play looks at life in a tawdry Berlin rooming house of 1930
with a stringently photographic eye. For the most part, it concerns
itself with the mercurial and irresponsible moods of a girl called
Sally Bowles. When we first meet her, she is a creature of extravagant
attitudes, given to parading her vices, enormously confident that
she is going to take life in her stride. She is fond of describing
herself as an 'extraordinarily interesting person,' and she is vaguely
disturbing. As we get to know her, as we watch her make frightened
arrangements for an illegal operation, seize at the tinselled escape
offered by a rich and worthless American playboy, attempt to rehabilitate
herself and fail ludicrously, we are more and more moved, more and
more caught up in the complete and almost unbearable reality of this
girl. The author has placed a character named Mr. Isherwood on the
stage. He serves both as narrator and as principal confidant to Sally
Bowles. He is the camera eye of the title, attracted to Sally, yet
dispassionate about her. Though Sally is the chief point of interest,
the plight of the Jew in Germany in the early '30s is brought within
focus in a few touching scenes. Comedy. Paul Rudnick. 3 men, 3 women. Interior Andrew Rally seems to have it all: celebrity and acclaim from his
starring role in a hit television series; a rich, beautiful girlfriend;
a glamorous, devoted agent; the perfect New York apartment, and the
chance to play Hamlet in Central Park. There are, however, a couple
of glitches in paradise. Andrew's series has been cancelled; his
girlfriend is clinging to her virginity with unyielding conviction;
and he has no desire to play Hamlet. When Andrew's agent visits him,
she reminisces about her brief romance with John Barrymore many years
ago, in Andrew's apartment. This prompts a seance to summon his ghost.
From the moment Barrymore returns, dressed in high Shakespearean
garb, Andrew's life is no longer his own. Barrymore, fortified by
champagne and ego, presses Andrew to accept the part and fulfil his
actor's destiny. The action becomes more hilarious with the entrance
of Andrew's deal-making friend from LA, spouting the laid back hype
of the Coast and offering Andrew a fabulous new TV deal worth millions
of dollars. The laughs are non-stop as Andrew wrestles with his conscience,
Barrymore, his sword, and the fact that he fails as Hamlet in Central
Park. Play. J. B. Priestley Dr Görtler believes that a future dimension of time can be
entered in dreams, and is drawn to a Yorkshire inn in search of proof.
He had dreamed of an unhappy couple coming to this inn, the wife
meeting a lover, and the discovery driving her husband to suicide.
To his horror, Dr Görtler sees the dream in danger of becoming
reality. He warns them of the potential unhappiness and fortunately,
they heed him. Written in 1938 Comedy. Adapted from Jane
Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice by Margaret Macnamara The author has adapted Jane Austen's great novel with the particular
problems and needs of the amateur stage in view. The actual course
of events has been, in the author's words , 'pretty drastically simplified',
but the essential spirit of the novel has been delightfully retained.
Period early nineteenth century Adaptation by Paul Shyre of the first of six autobiographical volumes
by Sean O'Casey. Six actors bring the sad, pithy boyhood of John Casside (O'Casey)
into quick and sensitive focus. His strong, resigned mother, his
impetuous, groping sister, the friends and enemies of his Dublin
childhood and Johnny himself are gems of truth and beauty. Throughout,
balancing pathos with humor, an image of young Sean O'Casey is slowly
unveiled. There is a ceaseless struggle between the doctor, who is
treating the boy's painful cataracts, and the Protestant minister,
who considers it more important for the boy to be at school; Johnny
being caned by the sadistic schoolmaster; and the telling interactions
with his loving mother. Through it all, the people of O'Casey's crowded
youth come to life with superb vividness. Play. Fay Weldon Trendy magazine Femina offers two contrasting wives - country-bumpkin
Anne and sophisticate Cat -
£1000 to swap places for a week to compare lifestyles. Anne
goes to London to run the chic apartment of Cat's advertising executive
husband, while Cat journeys to deepest Devon to cook, clean and care
for gentle, sexually repressed, shopkeeper Derek. Violent snowstorms
mean that Cat and Derek are cut off, and when the snow ploughs eventually
arrive the life-swap has become a wife-swap. A witty, finely observed
study of middle-class contrasts. Play. Robert Anderson. Gene is a widower, with an elderly mother whom he loves and an 80-year-old
father, whom he has never loved, hard as he tried. The father has
been mayor of a small town in Westchester County, self-made and highly
respected. Beneath these trappings, however, he is a mean, unloving
and ungenerous man, who has driven his daughter away because of her
marriage to a Jew. He has alienated his son through his possessiveness,
his selfishness and his endless reminiscences. Suddenly the mother
dies and Gene is faced with the responsibility of having the father
on his hands just at a time when he wants to remarry and move to
California. There is a series of dramatic confrontations. Alice,
the sister, who has defied her father, pleads with Gene not to take
on the burden of the old man and ruin his life. The penurious father
and son have to pick out a coffin for the mother and the final episode
in which Gene tries, once again, to rouse in himself affection for
his father and succeeds, but only for a moment. For it is still not
possible for him to "sing" for his father - to understand and be
understood, to give the love he so wants to give and to feel it all
will be accepted, and appreciated, by his father, who can not love. Play. John Van Druten The play opens with Katrin Hanson, a young Norwegian girl living
in San Francisco, reading from the manuscript of her autobiography.
Then follow scenes from an important period of her life giving us
glimpses of the career of this delightful, affectionate, impecunious
family of Hansons. Mama, the real heroine, is responsible ultimately
for Katrin's literary career, in which I Remember Mama is
her first success. Period 1910 Play. Alan Plater An ex-miner turned poet is appointed writer-in-residence at Eastwood
branch library. Ellen, senior librarian, soon realises the feckless
but charming Geordie is no poet. Despite this she finds him highly
entertaining, much to the disgust of Nutley, an earnest young man
who covets the writer-in-residence role. These three find themselves
an unlikely but united strike group when the Libraries sub-committee
proposes demolishing the library. '... warmth, affection and humour
... ' Sunday Telegraph Drama. John van Druten. 3 men, 4 women. Unit Set Everyone has to believe in something - religion preferred. Always a familiar writer with sympathy for ordinary people, Mr. van Druten starts off proving his thesis in terms of two unmarried girl roommates. One is artfully trapping a suitor into marriage. The other, who has visions of grandeur in her soul, refuses to be either cynical or ambitious, but withholds herself for a great uncalculated love. Comedy. Edwin O'Connor. 5 men, 1 woman. Interior. As commented on by the New York Daily News: "...Burgess Meredith
gives an endearing, funny and skillful performance as a 70-year-old
star hoofer who has come to the end of the road and headed home ...
Or to what he thinks is home, his son's house. He has been here a
year and the welcome has worn thin for he was never much of a parent,
what with running out on his wife and infant son to hoof it alone
around the globe. So his ungrateful boy, age 38 at the moment, wants
to pry him out of his comfortable top-floor bedroom and lodge him
comfortably in Smiling Valley, a home for senior citizens. Meredith,
a spry fellow given to subconscious dance steps and waltzing when
he is alone, doesn't want to go to Smiling Valley. He likes it where
he is - and besides, his sister, Pert Kelton, the gabbiest Irishwoman
alive, is already a resident of Smiling Valley and he can't stand
her. Meredith has a scheme to halt the ouster by faking a heart attack
and softening up his son. He confides it to his cronies, who are
an odd lot. One, David Doyle, is an unlicensed doctor with a busy
practice among strange cases, like a woman who got shorter and shorter
until she died. Another is an affable priest who wanted -to be a
jockey. The third, Eli Mintz, is an utterly mournful man, and his
account of how a friend died of a blood clot after playing golf is
one of the funniest soliloquies in the play." Play. Caryl Churchill Produced to acclaim at the Royal Court Theatre, this eighty-minute play was subsequently produced in New York as a double bill with Hot Fudge. A middle-class American couple travel to England on a genealogical search and find third cousins who are decidedly lowlife and whom they aid following a violent event. Who is the worse: the doer of evil deeds or he who enables him to continue? 'Highly comic ... works like a short, sharp shock: an acidly entertaining statement about mutual cultural incomprehension.' Guardian Drama:. David Fishelson from the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The story of a saintly, simple young man whose sheer goodness makes him the target of envy and hatred in a corrupt society. 9 men, 6 women (flexible casting). Unit Set A young man, Leo Myshkin - called "Prince Myshkin" due to royal
blood somewhere in his past - returns to Russia after 15 years in
a Swiss institution where he was treated for severe epilepsy. Carrying
nothing but a small bundle, he is at first taken for an idiot by
the cynical, jaded society of 1860s St. Petersburg. Gradually, his
non-judgmental, forgiving and almost child-like nature bewitches
all who meet him, including two of the most beautiful, sought-after
women in town: Aglaya, the impulsive younger daughter of the wealthy
General Yepanchin; and Nastasya Filipovna, the kept mistress of Totsky,
a middle-aged dandy who seduced Nastasya as an underage young girl.
Growing tired of Nastasya, Totsky tries to marry her off to one of
his flunkies, but the tormented, self-hating Nastasya won't go easily.
At a dazzling society party to announce this unwanted engagement,
Nastasya meets the Prince, who quickly perceives that she's being
victimised by the men in her life. The Prince offers to marry her
himself to save her from this horrible fate, moving Nastasya to open
her heart to him. Suddenly there is confusion as Rogozhin, a passionate
and self-destructive merchant's son, insanely in love with Nastasya,
crashes the party with his gang of drunken rowdies and offers to
buy Nastasya hand for 100,000 roubles. Torn between the saintly Myshkin
and the unruly and dangerous Rogozhin, Nastasya chooses Rogozhin
- certain that she'd only corrupt the 'pure and gentle: soul of the
Prince. As the Prince chases after Nastasya and Rogozhin, Aglaya
Yepanchin falls in love with Myshkin, horrifying her father. The
story rapidly builds to a series of violent confrontations as the
two women face off, competing for Myshkin right before his horrified
eyes, and Rogozhin tries to murder Myshkin when Nastasya cannot erase
him from her heart. Gradually, the people surrounding Myshkin begin
to destroy him, each wanting him for themselves and not willing to
share his love. When Nastasya is murdered by Rogozhin in the play's
harrowing climax, Myshkin snaps and lapses back into idiocy: a victim
of a society that destroys the best part of itself when it lets greed,
lust and power rule. THE
IDIOTS KARAMAZOV Using the characters and events of The Brothers Karamazov as
a springboard, the play becomes a lampoon not only of Dostoyevsky
but of western culture and literature in general. Dotted with literary
allusions and intellectual jibes, it pokes fun at figures ranging
from Ernest Hemingway and L. Frank Baum on to Leo Tolstoy, as it
turns the saga of the ill-fated Karamazov brothers topsy-turvy. The
narrator of the proceedings is the famed translator, Constance Garnett,
who struggles to keep the wild goings-on in perspective and under
control, and, in the end, settles for conjugating the verb "Karamazov" -which,
under the circumstances, makes more sense than one might suspect. |