Drama: Jack Richardson. A retelling of the Greek legend of Orestes; this is an attack on the senselessness of war. This Orestes is an indifferent man, completely unsympathetic to his father, Agamemnon, and his warlike ambitions. Unlike his sister, Electra, Orestes has no burning desire for vengeance when Clytemnestra and Aegisthus murder Agamemnon. He freely accepts his banishment to Athens with his friend, Phylades, and there falls in love and is about to wed Athenian. The fates, however, have ordained that Orestes play the hero and avenge his father's death and so unwillingly yet hopeless, he becomes what is decreed. Comedy. Molière. Adapted from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by
Miles Malleson. Music by John Hotchkis Monsieur Jourdain, the wealthy merchant, is prepared to suffer any
indignity provided it is inflicted by someone of high enough quality.
He refuses to allow his daughter to marry except into the nobility.
In the end he is made the victim of a practical joke, as the result
of which he unwittingly takes part in the marriage of his daughter
to the man of her choice. Period 1670 Play. Doug Lucie The play is set in the London home of Will, a handsome, well educated
television-documentary researcher, and his attractive, social activist
wife, Ronee, who runs a community centre, in South London. Anxious
to match his wife's liberal concerns, Will has taken over most of
the household chores and has formed a male consciousness-raising
group whose principal interest seems to be a close examination of
pornography. Ronee, however, is now involved with a female lover,
and her unwillingness to expand the relationship to a ménage à trois (as
Will would like) has driven a wedge between husband and wife. Further
complications arise when Ronee brings home a young battered wife,
Ange, whose brutish young husband soon discovers her whereabouts
and tries, by force, to take her home. Also in and out of the action
are the rather pathetic Oliver, who is shattered by the sudden absence
of his live-in lover, Martin; a young barman named Bruce (who is
Martin's new boyfriend); and Will and Ronee's boarder, Mark, a Fleet
Street gutter journalist who delights in tasteless jokes and imagines
himself to be sexually irresistible. Filled with bitterly funny repartee,
and sudden bouts of anger and violence, it is the uneasy relationship
between these characters which forms the disturbing, but revealing,
heart of the play - and, when all pretences are stripped away, demonstrates
how little these middle-class activists are able to bring order to
their own lives, much less to the larger society in which they are
foundering. Play. Aleksei Arbuzov. Translated by Ariadne Nicolaeff. The play opens during the three-year siege of Leningrad, as three
young people - two boys and a girl - find shelter together and establish
a triangular relationship. The girl wants to be a doctor. One of
the boys dreams of becoming a poet, while the other has decided to
be an engineer so that he may build bridges. The intricacies of the
triangle, the rising and falling of their hopes for each other and
themselves, over the next 17 years provide the drama of the play.
Arbuzov has constructed his work simply but soundly; the framework
is broad and flexible, allowing the action to evolve organically.
There is no attempt to establish dominant symbolic overtones in the
writing, and, thankfully, this is mirrored in the production; the
playwright is concerned with the literal situation, its obvious reality,
and any attempt to place the work within a rigid symbolic structure
would have strangled it. Comedy. John Patrick Shanley. Arthur, an obscure young painter struggling in the, art world of
Manhattan, announces to his self-satisfied friend, Howard, that he
is engaged to be married. To whom? asks Howard. The answer is to
Lucille, a powerful, attractive, no-nonsense Texas socialite, a kind
of wealthy Annie Oakley. But, Arthur confides to Howard, there are
three problems: 1. Arthur is a fetishist and Lucille doesn't know.
He cannot make love without being in proximity to his father's argyle
socks. 2. Arthur's psychiatrist, Dr. Block, unable to cure Arthur
of his fetish, has stolen said socks. 3. Arthur's wedding night is
fast approaching and he needs his socks back Howard vows to retrieve
his friend's socks from the wily Dr. Block This brilliant if unconventional
shrink proceeds to reduce Howard to a sniveling wreck. We finally
meet the robust Lucille, in her wedding dress, as her friend Ellie
(Howard's wife) blurts out all the bad news. At this point, Arthur
enters and begs Lucilles forgiveness, which he obtains. Lucille resolves
to go to this Block character and rescue her man's socks. Lucille
and Dr. Block fight it out for the soul and the socks of Arthur.
Lucille wipes the floor with the clever psychiatrist. Her secret
weapon? A hearty store of common sense and razor-sharp country wit.
Block finally resorts to trying to seduce her. When she cries help,
Arthur and Howard burst in and save her. Arthur reclaims his socks
(as each man must), and he and Lucille are married. Comedy. Nicky Silver. An absurdist black comedy about the demise of the Duncan family,
and, by extension, the species. Emma Duncan, a hypochondriac with
memory problems, and her orphaned fiancé, Tommy, confront
her mother, Grace, with the news of their intended marriage. Disapproving
at first, Grace acquiesces and puts Tommy to work as a maid. Shortly
after, Grace's son, Todd, returns home and announces he has AIDS
which sets off a frenzy of denial-spurred activity. The father, Arthur
Duncan, reaches out to his son who is more interested in assembling
the dinosaur bones he discovers in the back yard. As the wedding
approaches, Tommy falls in love with Todd and when confronted with
this news, Emma goes quite spontaneously deaf. It is only during
a frenzied wedding rehearsal, after Tommy is informed he's HIV positive
and Emma shoots herself with a gun given to her by her brother as
a wedding gift, does the possibility that Todd is destroying his
family rear it's head. As winter descends, the bottom falls out of
the farce and the tone is replaced with a more ironic one. Tommy
has died (although he's not been buried as "the ground is too hard"),
Grace's glamour has been replaced with an alcoholic haze, and Arthur
cannot remember that Emma has died. Only Todd remains unchanged.
In a final manipulation, Todd accuses Arthur of being responsible
for Emmâs death, and provokes his father into attacking him.
Grace has no choice but to banish Arthur from the house and into
what now seems a lifeless tundra outdoors. Left alone with his mother,
Todd pours her drink after drink as the months pass, until she too,
at last, is dead. Finally, as Todd embraces his sister's ghost, we
see the dinosaur skeleton, now complete. No one knows why the dinosaurs
lived, or died, Todd told his mother. He suggests the possibility
that their end was the natural order of things "and no tragedy. Or
disease. Or God." Kenneth Horne : Comedy Temporarily disenchanted with her husband Nicholas, Bridget is persuaded into running away with Mark. But Mark has expectations from a rich, fearsome aunt and cannot afford scandal, so arranges for Bridget's disappearance to look like a bathing accident. At first, the police seem to be taken in by this, but the added disappearance of Nicholas, who has set off from his flat to find Bridget, leads them to suspect him of Bridget's murder and a nationwide manhunt ensues. Meanwhile, Nicholas has traced Bridget and Mark to a guesthouse in Bath where the aunt lives. Much of the comedy stems from the situation which is created when Nicholas takes a room under a false name and settles down to recover his wife. Farce. Norman Robbins When Albert's mother-in-law Boadicea discovers a letter written
to Albert from his friend Hilary she refuses to believe it is perfectly
innocent or that Hilary is a man. Along comes Hilary in blonde wig
and evening dress straight from his drag act at the local pub. Further
disasters ensue as Hilary attempts to make amends for the trouble
he has caused and tries to help Albert. Comedy. Bill Svanoe. Marina Cliff, a Hungarian-Swiss beauty who is recently divorced
from her real estate billionaire husband, decides she wants to write
a novel to amuse herself. She hires Carol Spearman, a smart, reclusive,
cynical, witty, failed writer, to work with her. Marina is still
emotionally tied to her ex-husband and guarantees a loan for him.
Carol is in a push-me, pull-me relationship with a married man for
twenty years and allows him to treat her badly. At the beginning,
the two women dislike each other and seem to have nothing in common.
They spar, test, betray and manipulate each other, yet come to an
uneasy truce and agree to continue working together. But by the end
of Act One, Marina loses all her money to her ex, and Carol's boyfriend
drops dead. Now the two women have more in common than they realize.
In Act Two, Marina and Carol, dealing with their losses are drawn
together and apart. Carol's book is a huge success, and at first
Marina is furious, but comes around and tries to help Carol with
her grief. Carol, having trouble with intimacy, tries to push her
away, but the two women struggle through and find a budding, though
tenuous, friendship. Realizing they can work together, Carol confronts
Marinâs ex-husband to get back the money he's lost. Intertwined
in their relationship and activities is Melody Charm, Marinâs
ex-husband's current girlfriend, who seems like a `bimbo , but who
is really a smart woman who knows better than Carol or Marina how
to get the man she wants. Comedy. Sean O'Casey. Two English financiers, Stoke and Poges, have acquired an old Irish
Tudor mansion and have romantic plans to refurbish it and install
themselves like country squires. They bring their mistresses to the
house and indulge in pastoral pursuits, like country dancing, much
to the amusement of the shrewd local workmen who are repairing the
dilapidated building. Gradually their aspirations begin to fade in
the face of rural discomforts and the increasing inefficiency of
their Irish workforce, who are by stages reducing their dreamhouse
to a pile of `purple dust'. A garden roller demolishes a wall, antique
furniture is destroyed, a horse is shot in the hall and the foreman
rides off with Stoke's mistress. The two Englishmen have totally
failed to understand the Irish mentality which finally defeats them
and they are forced to escape back to England as floodwaters engulf
the house and their mistresses run off with their money to their
Irish lovers. James McLure : Comedy A full-length version of a short play dealing with three Vietnam
veterans who are recuperating in an Army hospital, the play combines
humour and compassion with uncompromising honesty as it follows the
irreverent doings of its exceptionally engaging characters. The Three
GIs while aware their time on the terrace of the hospital. Gately,
a hillbilly, fiddles compulsively with a disembowelled radio: Silvio,
a street-wise big-city type is addicted the flashing (even though
his sex organs have suffered irremediable battle damage): while Natwick,
a prissy rich kid from Long Island writes letters to his mother telling
her how much he wants to become a close friend of Gately while failing
to mention how actively Silvio dislikes him. Comprised of a series
of brief scenes the play creates a meaningful mosaic as the three
men tease, torment, entertain, exasperate and, on occasions, console
each other. |