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The
Break of Day. Play.
Timberlake Wertenbaker Tess, Nina and April are old friends reunited one hot summer weekend to celebrate Tess's fortieth birthday. With their partners in tow, a feeling of dissatisfaction and unease seizes the group. Is it too late to have children? Were they wrong to focus so much on work'? The second act finds Tess and Robert resorting to the fertility industry to conceive, while Nina and Hugh become embroiled in the corrupt bureaucracy of an East European country as they try to adopt a baby. Breaking
the Code. Play. Hugh
Whitemore, based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma
by Alan Hodges This compassionate play is the story of
Alan Turing, who broke the code in two ways: He cracked the
German Enigma code during World War II (for which he was
decorated by Churchill) and also shattered the English code
of sexual discretion with his homosexuality (for which he
was arrested on a charge of gross indecency). Whitemore's
play, shifting back and forth in time, seeks to find a
connection between the two events. Breaking
the Silence. Play.
Stephen Poliakoff Stephen Poliakoff's intriguing and moving
play is inspired by his own family's experience in Russia.
Father spends his time (and government money) in trying to
record sound on to film. With the death of Lenin, however,
the research must be abandoned and the family is forced to
flee. The play follows the material and spiritual
adjustments the upper-middle-class Pesiakoff family have to
make when forced to live for years in a railway
carriage. Breaking
the String. Play.
Frank Vickery To add to her own and her family's
problems, Iris nurtures an intensely possessive love for her
only child, Simon. Simon comes home, accompanied by a
girlfriend, Deryn, and Iris's joy quickly turns to jealousy
and suspicion. Confronted with an increasingly difficult
situation Simon finally announces that he and Deryn are
married and expecting a baby. Iris cannot be reconciled to
the news and the play closes with Iris alone, her world
shattered, unable to acknowledge her own folly. Breath
of Spring. Comedy.
Peter Coke Dame Beatrice houses a collection of
middle-aged 'guests', plus Lily her maid. To repay Dame
Beatrice for giving her a job despite her criminal past,
Lily presents her with a mink stole filched from the next
flat. The Brigadier deploys his 'troops' to return the fur.
The whole campaign is so invigorating that they decide to
retain this excitement in their lives by pinching furs and
giving the proceeds to charities. Breezeblock
Park. Play. Willy
Russell Three married couples, 'superior'
council-house dwellers, regard themselves as a close-knit
family, a team, despite their generally concealed
jealousies. When one of their daughters, Sandra, announces
she is pregnant and intends to live unmarried with her
student lover, Tim, the news explodes like an atom bomb. Tim
himself is unhappy about the arrangement and tries to make
Sandra realise she now has responsibilities, but she walks
out on them all. Brezhnev's
Children. Play. Olwen
Wymark, based on the novel The Women's Decameron by
Julia Vozneskaya It is International Women's Day in
Moscow, 1985. Isolated in a run-down maternity hospital ward
seven women tell their own violent and disturbing stories of
rape, abuse and oppression. Despite the depressing nature of
these stories, however, the enormous strength, vitality and
humour of the women comes through. Finally overcoming the
patriarchal, authoritative hospital system, their escape is
set against the wider background of Gorbachev coming to
power in this moving play. The
Bride and the Bachelor.
Farcical Comedy. Ronald Millar On the eve of her wedding, Serena
Kilpatrick is having cold feet. Among her wedding presents
is a magic bowl which can bring aid to a distressed bride.
The aid turns out to be Sir William Benedick Barlow, lately
dead, but earthbound until he can soothe a troubled bride.
He discovers that Serena, abandoned as a baby, is really his
own daughter, while her mother arrives from Heaven to settle
matters. Brideshead
Revisited. Play.
Evelyn Waugh, adapted for the stage by Roger Parsley This portrait of the interweaving
relationships and fortunes of a desperately charming, if
eccentric, aristocratic family and their influences upon
Charles Ryder has been faithfully adapted for the stage,
preserving all the sharp wit and candid social commentary of
Waugh's narrative. Period 1943, and in flashback to the
1920s. Brief Lives. John Aubrey. Adapted
for the stage by Patrick Garland John Aubrey (1626-97) has come to be recognised as England's first serious biographer. Patrick Garland's adaptation of Aubrey's writings represents a day in the latter part of Aubrey's life. 'It is as if one is paying a visit to the house of an old man, who makes up for the absence of friends by bringing to life reminiscences of people, remembering them and telling stories about them.' Brighton
Beach Memoirs. Play.
Neil Simon This portrait of the writer as a Brooklyn
teenager in 1937, living with his family in crowded, lower
middle-class circumstances, was first presented in London at
the National Theatre in 1986. Eugene (the young Neil Simon)
is the narrator and central character. The play's scenes
consist of a few days in the life of a struggling Jewish
household, of whom two have heart disease, one has asthma
and two at least temporarily lose jobs needed to keep the
straitened family afloat. It is a deeply appealing play that
deftly mixes drama with comedy. Brimstone
and Treacle. Play.
Dennis Potter A clever and highly controversial play
about the intrusion of a slick, satanic young man into the
lives of a humdrum couple whose only deviation from the
appalling norm to which they steadfastly adhere is that they
have an attractive only daughter, reduced to a vegetable
after a car accident. 'Dennis Potter is a mass of
contradictions as a writer and in Brimstone and Treacle
... we see all his paradoxical drives coming fruitfully
together.' Guardian Britannicus.
Play. Racine. A new version by Robert David
Macdonald In his great neo-classical plays, Jean Racine reached the peak of sophistication in French tragedy. Britannicus addresses power and politics with the action centring essentially on the politics seething within the young Emperor Nero's Court. Yet the play is as much about his mother, Aggripina, losing her hold on power as Nero turns against her. Although Racine does not draw a direct parallel with Louis XIV's Court, he regards those in power with an all-seeing, but not forgiving eye. Period: Ancient Rome Broadway
Bound. Play. Neil
Simon Forming the third part of the famous Neil
Simon autobiographical trilogy, this charming play about
youthful ambition and parental regret is set in late 1940s
Brooklyn. While their parents go through various conflicts
which will ultimately end in divorce, Eugene and his brother
Stanley struggle to become professional comedy writers. When
a sketch based on their family life gets a radio broadcast
it upsets the family but Eugene and Stan are now Broadway
bound. Brothers
of the Brush. Play.
Jimmy Murphy Jimmy Murphy's 'subtle unsentimental lament for the working class' (Irish Times) tells how housepainters, patching over the cracks of an old house, misuse each other for their own advantage. In a world blighted by economic recession, with workers losing faith in old ideologies, this award winning play demonstrates just how fragile allegiances are when personal interests are at stake. 'There is a new and remarkably realistic voice on the scene with the arrival of Jimmy Murphy...'Sunday Independent Brothers
Of Thunder (in Scotland
Plays) : Ann Marie Di Mambro John, an HIV positive man takes refuge
with a Roman Catholic priest. A fragile relationship begins
to develop between them until a figure from John's past
arrives upon the scene. The conflict between them
encompasses questions of forgiveness, reconciliation and the
role of the church in the modern world. A taut yet poignant
play. Brush
with a Body. Play.
Maurice McLoughlin In Sybil Walling's absence her children
call in the chimney-sweep, whose brushes dislodge not only
soot but a body. When Sybil returns she tells them that,
just before he died twenty years ago, their father had
killed a Soho gangster and had hidden the body in the
chimney. The police descend in pursuit of an amorous patient
of Sybil's son Henry, which leads to hilarious
misunderstandings and surprises.
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