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Play. Horton Foote. After returning to Harrison, Texas, from his disastrous visit with
his mother and sister (and his new stepfather) in Houston, Horace
Robedaux has moved into a local boarding house prior to returning
to Houston to take a six week business course. During his brief stay
at home he falls suddenly and passionately in love with an attractive
but rather self-centered young-widow, Claire, who, as it happens,
already has several suitors, not to mention two rather overactive
small children. From the first it is apparent that Horace's hopes
are futile, and the other boarders - mostly cigar smoking, poker
players - take delight in ribbing Horace about the Widow Claire's "reputation" and
the mischief he can expect from her fault-finding offspring. Their
warnings prove to be all too true, and the gentle Horace is even
drawn by the widow's young son into a disastrous (for him) fistfight
with another of her suitors. As the play ends Horace is reconciled
to yet another defeat in his young life. He prepares to depart for
Houston a sadder but, hopefully, wiser person. The audience is left
with a haunting, eloquent evocation of a time and place where life
may have seemed simpler but was, in truth, as filled with compromises,
disappointments and the need for strength of mind and spirit as our
own, more complex, times. Play. Ariel Dorfman, with Tony Kushner In a war-torn village the men have disappeared. The women-their mothers, wives, daughters wait by the river, hope and mourn. Their anguish is unspoken until bruised and broken bodies begin being washed up on the banks and the women defy the military in the only form of protest left to them. Ariel Dorfman's smouldering political allegory, written in collaboration with Tony Kushner, was given its European premiere by the Traverse Theatre in Cambridge, Oxford, Newcastle and Edinburgh. Play. Israel Horovitz. The scene is the wastepaper processing plant in a blue-collar Massachusetts
town. Two workmen, Archie and George, are drinking beer and swapping
stories, mostly about their apparently extensive sexual conquests.
Archie mentions that Margy, a friend from high school and now a widow,
has invited him to join her for a dinner. When she arrives to pick
Archie up, the mood of the play shifts. Suddenly, the play's original
macho bantering takes on new and dangerous meanings. Margy will subtly
set the two men ' against each other while gradually revealing her
contempt for her former classmates, whose lives have remained in
a rut, she says, while she went on to bigger and better things living
in the big city. But this only the beginning of Margy's complaint.
Piece by piece Margy reconstructs a night, fifteen years ago, when
she was gang-raped after a party by a group of boys who included
not only Archie and George, but also her blind brother, whom she's
come back to town to visit. In the end, Margy gets what she came
for: her revenge, and a violent, breath-stopping exorcism of the
guilt and remorse that has plagued them all throughout the years. Comedy. Arne Sultan, Earl Barret and Ray Cooney This delightful comedy was premiered by Ray Cooney's Theatre of
Comedy. Forty is a traumatic age for some people, especially Linda
Harper who starts worrying about it three years before the date!
Dissatisfied spiritually and physically with marriage to the staid
George, Linda decides to leave. George moves out, giving Linda a
chance to 'find herself', but returning to discuss maintenance they
discover the flames of passion are not quite dead! Play. Henrik Ibsen, translated by Christopher Hampton Here is the greatest account ever written of the destructiveness
of missionary zeal. Gregers Werle enters the house of photographer
Ekdal preaching 'the demands of idealism' (a nicely ambiguous phrase
in Hampton's translation) and systematically destroys a family's
happiness. 'If Ibsen's play is not a masterpiece, then the word is
devoid of meaning.' Guardian Farce. Derek Benfield Chester Dreadnought bluffs his way into the crumbling stately home
of an impecunious aristocratic family, and even a trigger-happy belted
Earl suffering from hallucinations cannot keep at bay the enterprising
pair of jewel thieves who are pursuing their loot - not to mention
Chester-round the castle. Suits of armour and secret doors, mistaken
identities and dotty servants all help to provide the variety of
fare that goes to the making of this wild goose chase. Play. Anton Chekhov, translated and adapted by Michael Frayn A dazzling version of this dark comedy (sometimes called Platonov) premiered at the National Theatre in 1984 starring Ian McKellen as the complex, but hapless schoolmaster Platonov who lurches from one amorous chaos to the next, until, tormented, self-recriminating and suffering from delirium tremens he dies in the path of an oncoming train. Frayn has subtly cut and remodelled the original six-hour running time whilst staying close to Chekhov's original. James McLure : Comedy James McLure has transferred O'Keefe's restoration comedy to the
American Old West, retaining the basic plot structure of the original
play while ingeniously transferring the events and people to the
American frontier. Transforming the scheming servants and lustful
gentry to music hall girls and cavalrymen, the story follows mistaken
identities and long lost reunifications in an increasingly convoluted
spin until a happy ending is eventually reached, providing both a
field day for performers and sheer delight for audiences. Play. Alan Ayckbourn Four typical Ayckbourn misfits are playing a Dungeons-and-Dragons
type game in a suburban living room. The repressed Hazel and Stanley,
her meek, sex-starved husband, are joined by emotionally retarded,
computer-freak schoolboy, Warren, and Rick, a taciturn lesbian. The
game offers the chance for them to be beautiful, wise and heroic-qualities
they will never possess in reality. The advent of Marcie, escaping
from her violent husband, blows apart their foursome. Will You Still Love Me in the Morning? Farce. Brian Clemens and Dennis Spooner Jeremy and Celia return early from their honeymoon to find that
both Jeremy's working partners have accepted his offer to stay in
his house while he is away; unfortunately they have each brought
the other's wife with them. Jeremy discovers one illicit couple,
Celia the other, and both issue invitations to dinner. Desperate
to make a good impression, they then must stage two dinner parties
- simultaneously! Romantic Drama. John Patrick. This is the story of 2 sisters, young in 1900 and in love then with
the same tall, young man. One of the sisters is frail and gentle,
the other robust and assertive and used to getting what she wants.
But it is the gentle girl the young man loves and is about to marry.
He never marries because the more violent sister tries to kill herself,
and the other, finding her with a revolver and wrestling with her
for it, is shocked out of reality when the gun is fired. Her mind
cowers back from the violence, runs into hiding in terror, and for
40 years the girl lives in her clock-stopped mind on her summer wedding
day. And then, in the violence of a summer storm, she awakens the
events of the day; that her lover married the sister and died; that
they had a son who is very like the father. You may guess whose face
she first sees when she returns to time and what it does to her. Comedy. Maurice Hill. Gracie Martin is a dear little old lady who has found consolation
after the death of her beloved husband, Henry, by placing his urn
of ashes on the mantelpiece and chattering away to it as though Henry
were still with her. This eccentricity is accepted easily by her
old ftiend, Amelia, a garrulous neighbour who always says good morning
to Henry when she visits. Not so, however, with Gracie's two selfish
children, John and Sheila, who fear that gossip about Gracie's fey
behaviour will ruin their social and political futures. Matters are
brought to a head on a Sunday visit when a little boy passes by to
look at the "looney" he's heard lives there. John and Sheila concoct
a plot to get rid of the ashes with a shocking act that plunges Gracie
into tragic despair. Sheila, brought to her senses by the realisation
of the wicked thing she's done, devises a wild but effective scheme
to remedy the situation and the final curtain descends on a radiantly
happy Gracie. Family entertainment. John Morley, adapted from the novel by Kenneth
Grahame John Morley has taken the well-loved characters of Toad, Mole, Ratty
and Badger from Kenneth Grahame's classic tale and woven their exploits
into an exciting adventure story for all the family. Designed to
be staged simply or elaborately, the casting is also very flexible
with choice of music left up to individual producers. This delightful
play will provide an evening of magic and joy for all. Kenneth Grahame. Adapted for the stage by Alan Bennett. Music by
Jeremy Sams The characters of Ratty, Mole, Toad and Badger have delighted generations
of readers. Alan Bennett's version is true to the original and yet
carries the distinctive Bennett hallmark. It was first performed
at the Royal National Theatre in 1990 and subsequently at the Old
Vic Theatre, London, in a shortened version adapted for proscenium
staging. This is the version given here. The music by Jeremy Sams
is available in a separate songbook. Play. Emlyn Williams Dilys Parry, an inconsolable Crimean War widow, lives in Blestin,
a village which has no children, sings no songs, and worships no
god since a disaster snatched away all its youth. She is gradually
reawakened to life once a Miracle boy's influence begins to permeate
her home and the village. A flashy showman turns up intending to
exploit the boy but becomes his world-forsaking disciple. The boy
restores a dead man to life but dies himself in agony. Period 1856 Drama. Mary Gallagher. When Marlin Carroll sells the family farm without telling his son,
he sets in motion an inexorable trap for his two children - the idealistic
Rafe, and the strong, beautiful Ruby, who cling, with equal stubbornness,
to their opposing dreams. The sale of the farm brings in two strangers
who become catalysts for the events that follow: Evan Brooks, a wealthy
young investor and developer, and Dylan, a handsome, lonely drifter
who survives by selling people what they want to hear. As Ruby and
her desperately unhappy mother, Ceelie, both look to Dylan for magical
escape, Rafe determines to buy back the farm at any cost. Dylan falls
in love with Ruby, but his longing for a home grows as strong as
his need for her. When Brooks - the man with all the money - is also
attracted to Ruby, the whole family, along with Dylan, begin to see
her as the answer to their prayers. As the characters are entwined
in threads of anger and violence, their conflicting dreams and needs
converge in a catastrophe that changes them forever. |