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Play. Michael Frayn John Garrard is a compulsive businessman, and his self-absorption
is complete. During one climactic night amid the hectic activities
of a trade fair in Germany, it looks as if the shell of his self-concern
might at least be pierced; an unexpected relationship with an attractive
secretary, a lesson in Buddhism, a sudden apparent heart attack and
confrontation with death. But death when it comes strikes unexpectedly
elsewhere - and Garrard's character seems unchanged, unless for the
worse ... Comedy. John van Druten from the novels of E. F. Benson E. E Benson's hilarious novels, written in the 1920s and 30s, of
the war for social supremacy between Lucia and Miss Mapp in Tilling
are brought to the stage with all the wit, irony and humour of the
originals. Hitherto, Tilling's doyenne has been Miss Mapp; Lucia
is the supreme poseuse who peppers her speech with Italian phrases
she doesn't understand. When Lucia rents Miss Mapp's house for the
summer the battle lines are drawn ... Play. Brian Friel The central character of this play is Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who led an alliance of Irish and Spanish against the armies of Elizabeth I in an attempt to drive the English out of Ireland. The action takes place before and after the Battle of Kinsale, at which the alliance was defeated: with O'Neill at home in Dungannon, as a fugitive in the mountains, and finally exiled in Rome. Period Elizabethan Play. James Saunders It is 1989; Czechoslovakia is struggling with its new-found freedom.
In London, Pavlicek and Tomas, two Czechoslovakian émigrés,
become involved in the tangled relationship between Diana and Adrian
Harrington, who purvey British culture across the globe via the World
Service. Betrayals - of friends, loves, countries and ideals - abound
in this emotionally exacting and politically stringent comedy. Mel Dinelli : Thriller 5M 2F Interior set Mrs. Gillis lives alone in a large house. Her son was killed during
the war, and she takes a motherly interest in Howard, the pathetic
youth she has hired to clean floors. Howard, however, shows signs
of paranoia, and he sometimes has lapses during which he completely
forgets what he has done only a few minutes before. All of Mrs. Gillis'
efforts to help merely result in Howard becoming suspicious. Tension
mounts as Howard, at intervals, becomes wholly friendly and helpful.
But Mrs. Gillis becomes more and more worried. When friends come
to the house Howard prevents her from conveying any message to them,
and she finds herself imprisoned in her own home. Howard then decides
to move into Mrs. Gillis' home. But later when an employee from the
phone company comes to the house, after the phone is found to be
disconnected, it seems the old lady may be saved. The phone man manages
to call the police while Howard disappears. Neither Mrs. Gillis nor
the phone man know where Howard is. Ready to leave, Mrs. Gillis goes
up to get her things, but it is Howard who slowly comes down and
confronts the phone man. Suspecting the worst, the latter runs upstairs
and when he appears again the expression on his face confirms this. Unlikely story. John Dighton In preparation for the January Sale, a window-dresser has the idea
of utilising a very special sunlamp in the window which contains
two blasé female dummies and Waldorf, a male dummy. But the
lamp's rays have fantastic properties: they turn the waxen dummy
into a beguiling young man and the store's unpopular owner, Hathaway,
into a dummy. Waldorf's human life is short but exceedingly merry
and he revolutionises life in the store while Hathaway learns some
valuable lessons. Drama. Terence Rattigan A tense drama of the business world which requires a comparatively
simple set. Gregor, a tycoon of Hungarian origin, arrives at the
apartment of his illegitimate son, Basil, for a business meeting
to discuss a highly-profitable merger. After achieving apparent success
he finds everything collapsing aound him and learns from Basil that
a warrant is out for his arrest. Basil offers help, but Gregor acquires
a conscience for the first time in his life and determines his own
way out. Play. Robert Bolt Paul Schofield starred in both play and film as Sir Thomas More,
the sixteenth-century Chancellor unwillingly in conflict with Henry
VIII. More loves God, but he loves the world also. He has a subtle
intellect, a scrupulous conscience and a very human fear of death,
knowing full well the penalty of even silently opposing the king.
All the while the chorus figure of the Common Man evades all personal
responsibility for orders carried out, even to being More's executioner. Play. Bertolt Brecht Translations:Steve Gooch M8 F2. Soldiers. Various interior and exterior settings. Four soldiers loot an Indian temple, but one is left behind. Terrified of their fierce Sergeant, they get Galy Gay, an Irish docker, to pose as the fourth man. Galy Gay witnesses his own supposed execution and funeral; in the last two scenes he takes part in a war against Tibet and has become the perfect soldier. The missing man tries to rejoin his comrades, but is turned away with Galy Gay's old identity papers. The story is vaguely set in British India, but both time and geography are largely nonsensical. Comedy. Albert Beich and William H. Wright (from a novel by Edwin Corte.) 6 men, 4 women. Interior. Oliver is being groomed by his in-laws for a position in the family
business - banking. Shy and ineffectual under ordinary circumstances,
Oliver discovers that he can be bold and independent when wearing
the dog costume he had acquired for a masquerade ball. Donning it
on the proper occasions, he can even outface his in-laws. They, in
turn, are appalled at the thought of Oliver wearing the dog suit
in public. When he wears it to work at the bank he's told he must
choose between the dog suit and his job. To his delight, he discovers
that his wife is as bored with their stuffy life as he is, and they
suddenly decide to head for the great woods of Oregon where Oliver
can pursue his dream of being a tree surgeon. The in-laws are shocked,
except for one: as Oliver leaves, his brother-in-law takes over the
dog suit, and another hilarious rebellion is apparently on its way. Play. Alan Ayckbourn This joint winner of the Evening Standard Best Comedy Award
starred Peter Bowles as the exrobber turned successful media personality
and Michael Gambon as the timid clerk who once heroically foiled
his bank raid. ' ... one of the best things he has ever done ...
It is, in fact, a masterpiece ... Ayckbourn at the peak of his powers
using comedy to say harsh, true things about our society ...' Guardian Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman : Comedy 15M 9F Interior set Sheridan Whiteside comes to dine with the Stanleys, a nice conventional
American family, and is forced by an unhappy accident to stay for
six weeks. The Stanley living-room is monopolised by this irascible
invalid. Ex-convicts are invited to meals, strange gifts arrive from
his friends and transatlantic calls send the Stanleys' phone bill
soaring. This is just the start of things to come. The war that breaks
out between Sheridan and the ultra-theatrical friends that flock
to his side and the desperate efforts of the Stanleys to get rid
of their increasingly unwelcome guest, provide enough material for
a dozen comedies. Arthur Miller : Drama 9M 2F 2 Interior sets Miller's early American fable tells the story of two brothers, David
and Amos Beeves, and the fate which sends one brother on to success
while the other spirals down into failure. The mild mannered and
innocent David's life appears to be a steady progression of good
fortune, where everything he tries succeeds and obstacles seem to
fall helplessly by the wayside. However, his phenomenal luck begins
to breed anxiety and he becomes convinced that fate will one day
do him in. By contrast, his brother Amos is a promising athlete,
whose years of hard work and practice have prepared him for the big
time. When his moment arrives, he fails - the damage done from over-coaching
by his doting father has come with a price, which leads both men
to understand the mysteries of fate and destiny in life. Play. Alexander Gelman. Translated by Stephen Mulrine Andrei Golubev realizes that his desire to further his career has led him to ignore his wife's affair with his superior; he is also partly responsible for his son's horrific injuries in an industrial accident. Andrei eventually declares that he will quit his job, and his wife remains with him on this understanding. She is then horrified when Andrei reveals that he has been promoted and cannot leave his job for some time, and she walks out on him. Drama. John Lahr. 9 men, 5 women (double casting of many roles). Unit Set Raymond Shaw is a young American hero, the first Congressional Medal
of Honour winner since Vietnam. Decorated for saving his troops in
a peace-keeping mission in the Middle East, he has returned to the
US and a career as a journalist in Washington, D.C. His wealthy widowed
mother has married the repugnant racist Senator John Iselin, wedding
her lust for power to his crude demagoguery. Through ruthless manipulation
of the media, the power elite, and the disenchanted masses, Mrs.
Iselin manoeuvers her husband closer and closer to the vice-presidential
nomination. She even masterminds Raymond's marriage to Jocie Jordan,
the beautiful daughter of Senator Tom Jordan, the favoured candidate
for vice-president. In a series of chilling flashbacks, Raymond is
shown to have been no war hero, but a prisoner brainwashed by mysterious
captors in the Middle East. It was during the brainwashing sessions
that Raymond killed several of his own men in cold blood, was told
he saved them, and the seeds were planted for future murders using
Raymond as the medium. One of the other prisoners, and a survivor,
was Ben Marco, who discovers the international conspiracy which depends
upon Raymond killing a number of prominent figures. As Ben vainly
attempts to find someone to believe him in order to stop the killing,
Raymond struggles to understand his own dreams and flashbacks while
systematically murdering the people who are blocking the Iselin nomination:
the savvy editor of his newspaper, his father-in-law, and even Jocie.
When Ben finally unravels the final step in the plot, he races to
the Republican Convention to prevent Raymond from completing the
final murder. the assassination of the president, who has just chosen
Johnny Iselin as his running mate. In his last confrontation with
his mother, Raymond learns that she has been a part of this ongoing
plot and has used him as a murdering pawn in her scheme to put Johnny
Iselin in the White House. With a deep, incestuous kiss, she sends
him to his fate. As these characters engage in the final battle for
ultimate power, the play reaches a crescendo of almost unbearable
suspense. Comedy: La Mandragola by Niccolo Machiavelli. Translated
by Wallace Shawn. Set in 16th century Florence, the play blends songs and robust action
in detailing the hilarious lengths to which the smitten Callimaco
goes in winning the favours of Lucrezia, the beautifid young wife
of the rich and aged lawyer, Nicia. Enlisting the aid of the artful
trickster Ligurio, Callimaco is passed off as a doctor who has devised
a magic potion which, he promises Nicia, will make the childless
Lucrezia conceive. But the catch is that the first man who sleeps
with her after she takes the potion will die. Lucrezia's gullible
mother and a venal friar, Brother Timothy, are also persuaded to
help overcome Lucrezia's scruples against bedding down with a man
not her husband (and who needless to say, turns out to be Callimaco
in disguise). The resulting twists and turns lead on to non-stop
high spirits and hilarity until, in the end, everyone gets exactly
what he hopes for and, quite possibly, deserves. (in The Guid Sisters). Michel Tremblay. Trans J. van Burek The play crosscuts the lives of Manon, an obsessively religious
girl, and Sandra, a sex-obsessed transvestite, exploring the similarities
and differences between them. A controversial but humane duet. Play. Adapted by Willis Hall from the novel by Jane Austen As a timid nine-year-old, Fanny Price is taken to live with her
affluent cousins, the Bertrams, at Mansfield Park. Despite suffering
many hardships as the poor relation in her early years, Fanny, by
her gentle good-matured disposition, becomes an indispensible member
of the household and finally marries her true love Edmund. This skilful
dramatization preserves all the plot and characterization of the
classic novel. |