Drama. Arnaud D'Usseau and James Gow. 7 men, 4 women. Interior
A black war hero returns to his hometown in the South and is welcomed
by the white family in which he was employed. All would have gone
well if it were not that one of the women of the family has fallen
deeply in love with him. On this fundamental basis, the authors show
how the hero is overwhelmed by the prejudice which keeps him from
being treated not only as a hero, but as a man. Though the play is,
of course, a plea for decency and justice, it is over and above this
an exciting, suspenseful and holding story.
ISBN: 0-8222-0296-4
Play. Terence Rattigan
M5 (young-50) F3 (young, 30, 50). A sitting-room.
Hester Collyer's husband is a rich, talented lawyer; her lover,
Freddie, is neither Hester's moral nor intellectual equal, but Hester
loves him with an intensity that few, and especially not Freddie,
are capable of matching. They are death to each other. Hester is
driven to attempt suicide. Between the devil and the deep blue sea
the latter looks very attractive. She is saved by Miller, a disbarred
doctor, and through him learns how to transcend both hope and despair.
Period 1950s
ISBN 0 573 01098 6
Comedy Charles Leipart. 2 men, 2 women. Interior.
As the author comments: "Deep Sleepers takes place in a dream.
As such, it celebrates the peculiar logic and theatrical excesses
of that territory." In the present instance the dreamer is one Wally
Tuttle, who has to wake up so as not to be late for an important
business meeting, but can't. Trapped in his dream with him is his
toothsome secretary, Miss Fuller (clad only in a bikini), who tries
everything she can to jar Wally back to reality - including shooting
him with a pistol (no effect) and pushing him out the window (this
doesn't work either). The problem seems to be that he is in her dream
as much as she is in his - and both of them have lost the ability
to separate the real world from the realm of dreams and fantasy -
and perhaps don't want to. As the complications multiply Miss Fuller
magically roasts a chicken in her desk drawer; races in the Indy
500; and goes skiing and scuba diving (from her desk); while Wally's
deceased mother and father suddenly materialize, she as a chatty "Avon
lady" on her way to go bowling with the Queen, and he as a lecherous,
alcoholic drag queen. And, inevitably, sex also rears its head as
Wally begins to realize that Miss Fuller is actually quite fetching
in her skimpy costume. In the end Wally does awake from his dream
(and performs nobly at the crucial business meeting) but there are
lingering aftereffects which neither he nor Miss Fuller can fully
comprehend - but which suggest that the path to true love and happiness
is perhaps illogical, and unfathomable, at best.
ISBN: 0-8222-0297-2
Play. Edward Albee
M2 (60s) F4 (30-50s). A living-room.
Agnes and Tobias are long married and remain together out of habit. Agnes' sister, Claire, lives with them and takes refuge from life's perils in alcohol and self-lacerating wit. One night Julia, Agnes and Tobias' daughter, comes home, escaping from her fourth marriage. They are visited by Edna and Harry, their oldest friends, who are deeply disturbed by a great shock they have had. The door is locked and Tobias' family is made to recognize how they have lost love through undervaluing it. This stimulating play is distinguished by the award of a Pulitzer Prize.
Play. Don Rifkin. 3 men, 1 woman. Unit set
Obsessed with the character of Heathcliff (from Wuthering Heights)
young Michael Moorehead, an aspiring poet seeks to evoke the romantic
nature of his idol in his own life - a conceit regarded with amused
forbearance by his professorial mentor, Evan Buckman. Interested
in advancing Michael's academic prospects (not to mention his own
amorous interests in Michael himself) Dr. Buckman helps his protégé to
prepare a paper for delivery at a university conclave, a project
which is sidetracked when Michael takes up with a comely young art
student, Sharon Glass, who seems to be the personification of his
poetic vision.The action shifts deftly from Dr. Buckman's office
to Michael's apartment (now shared with Sharon), to the apartment
where Dr. Buckman lives with his longtime male lover, George Brandon
- who also happens to be Sharon's art instructor. Ironically Dr.
Buckman's attempts to seduce Michael are echoed (with equal futility)
by Sharon's designs on the hapless George, all leading to a quirkily
romantic. quadrangle in which jealousy, deceit, pettiness and the
baleful effect of flagging passion are explored with wit, humor,
compassion and a telling awareness of the way in which we delude
ourselves about the scope - and nature - of our true capabilities.
ISBN: 0-8222-0298-0
Comedy/Drama. Romulus Linney.
From two novels by Henry Adams, and
the Administration of Ulysses S. Grant. 4 men, 5 women, extras.
Unit Set.
In the presidential society of Washington in the spring of 1875,
two beautiful American women are courted by two dashing American
men. Madelaine Lee, a wealthy widow from New York, and Esther Dudley,
an agnostic photographer from Washington, are pursued by Silas Raitcliffe,
Senator from Illinois and candidate for the presidency, and by the
Reverend Stephen Hazard, a handsome Episcopal priest whose spellbinding
oratory packs his church. Around them move Baron Jacobi, the cynical
Bulgarian Ambassador; Esther's unmarried Aunt Lydia, who played at
the feet of George Washington when she was a child; Mrs. Essy Barker,
an outrageous female lobbyist; and the President and his wife, the
world-famous Grants themselves, innocent, blundering and touching.
The two women must decide whether to marry the two men, knowing they
will also marry what their men believe, about America, about religion,
about final truth and untruth, about success and reality. Their courageous
decisions, in two highly charged scenes, are the same; they will
not marry men they may or may not love, but whose fundamental beliefs
they cannot share. Henry Adams' comic vision of American democracy
is scathing, passionate, funny, and in the deepest and best sense,
loyal to his country.
ISBN: 0-8222-0299-9
Play, Thomas Babe. 6 men, 2 women. Unit Set
Jimmie, a salesman who loved his work, is devastated when his job
is redundant and he seeks solace in bourbon. Jimmie, who is full
of self-deluding swagger about his sense of dedication, and is, perhaps,
not too bright, is grateful when his friend Curly offers him a job
working for his father, Vinnie - even though his prospective employer
turns out to be a loan-sharking mobster. Put to work collecting debts
and performing other unsavoury tasks, Jimmie, eager as ever to satisfy
his boss, is eventually jailed on a murder rap, but bargains his
way to freedom by agreeing (secretly) to inform on his associates.
But as Jimmie moves up in the mob hierarchy, the more his anguish
and longing for respectability increase, exacerbated by the defection
of his friend Curly (who falls into disfavour with his father and
takes a lowly job in a diner); the guilt he feels at murdering a
tramp (a former friend who happened to owe money to Vinnie); and
the disaffection of his daughter, Wanda (who loves to fish, but is
always latching on to painful and embarrassing truths). Almost surreal
in concept and execution, the play treats these sometimes chilling
incidents in heightened, cartoonish style, with characters being
stabbed or thrown from rooftops only to- reappear later, and with
Vinnie's henchmen synchronised in dress and gesture. But, in the
end, the message of the play emerges with startling clarity; true
morality as opposed to the abstract notions droned from pulpits,
is something which should infuse our lives on a daily basis, and
within the confines of individual choice and responsibility.
ISBN: 0-8222-0300-6
Desdemona, A Play About a Handkerchief
Comedy/Drama. Paula Vogel. 3 women. Interior.
Having slept with Othello's entire encampment, Desdemona revels
in her bawdy tales of conquest. Her foils and rapt listeners are
the other integral and re-imagined women of this Shakespeare tragedy:
Emilia, Desdemona's ser-vant and the wife' of Iago, and Blanca, now
a majestic whore of Cyprus. The reluctantly loyal Emilia pesters
Desdemona about a military promotion for her husband. Her motive,
however, is that he leave her a wealthy widow, preferably sooner
than later. Blanca, now a street-wise, yet painfully naive prostitute,
visits Desdemona thinking she is a very good friend and fellow hooker
(at least one night a week). Blanca thinks the worst when she soon
discovers that Desdemona knows intimate details of the life of her
lover, Cassio. Though Desdemona has never been intimate with Cassio,
her life is soon in danger when her husband, Othello, also suspects
her of infidelity.
ISBN: 0-8222-1391-5
Drama. Eugene O'Neill. 4 men, 1 woman.
This domestic tragedy is set in the rocky New England farm country
of the 1850s. Eben Cabot nurses utter hatred for his domineering
father, Ephraim, based on the conviction that the old man has swindled
ownership of the family farm from Eben's dead mother, to whom it
once belonged. When old Ephraim returns to the farm with a new young
wife, Abbie Putnam, Eben takes an immediate dislike to her too, but
he soon falls under her spell and becomes her secret lover. When
a baby is born the lovers are obliged to pretend that Ephraim is
the father. At a party to celebrate the birth, Ephraim goads Eben
by revealing that the farm will now be passed on to the baby under
an agreement he has made with Abbie. Eben, convinced that he has
again been duped, rejects Abbie and their child and prepares to leave
for California. To prove her love and loyalty to Eben, Abbie smothers
the child to death. The lovers are arrested for the crime and Ephraim
abandons the farm to the encroaching wilderness.
ISBN: 0-679-76396-1
Comedy/Drama. Bruce Graham: 1 man, 1 woman. Interior
Maddie is an actress pushing forty, who specializes in commercials
for household products. Happy because she's been dating a great guy,
Richard, for the last few months, she is also nervous, sure that
he must have a fatal flaw soon to be revealed. Richard is good looking,
successful and loving, though a bit too clean. He even -tells Maddie
he loves her. But Maddie's instinct is right: Richard's flaw is that
he's a professional assassin who plans to shoot the President from
her bathroom window. When the time comes, Richard handcuffs Maddie
and meticulously removes all traces of his presence from her apartment.
Maddie tries various means of escape or dissuasion including telling
Richard she is pregnant but nothing seems to work until they struggle
and end up making love. Now Richard has a big problem: he's fallen
completely in love with Maddie despite the fact that he only starting
dating her for her window. But it is unprofessional to leave witnesses,
and if he doesn't fulfill his contract he will be the next target.
So he comes up with a plan. Maddie can come with him. She agrees
but tells Richard this is his last job. He agrees, but then there
is a disturbance outside. Someone has tried shooting at the President
and now his limo has fled the scene before Richard had his chance.
There will be no shot at the President for him. He is upset, but
Maddie breaks out the champagne. When Richard reminds her she can't
drink if she's pregnant, Maddie admits she's not. Maddie wonders
if he is angry at her, Richard says he's relieved, but then shoots
her, and takes his leave.
ISBN: 0-8222-1578-0
Ben Jonson: 15m 5f, extras. Classic comedy. Multipurpose set.
Pug, a junior demon, persuades his master, Satan, to let him spend
a day in London. He is taken on as a manservant to the gullible Squire
of Norfolk, Fitzdotterel, who refuses to believe Pug's claim that
he is a devil, but is happy to take him on for no wage. Fitzdotterel
is bribed and persuaded into all kinds of mischief - more successfully
by his other acquaintances than by Pug - and ends up attempting to
extricate himself from his trouble by pretending to be possessed
by a demon. Meanwhile Pug, the true devil, has been arrested, and
has to be retrieved by an irate Satan. First performed in 1616.
ISBN 1854592688
Play. John Whiting from a book by Aldous
Huxley
M 17 F6. Composite setting.
The nuns of St Ursula's Convent, led by the Prioress, Sister Jeanne,
accused Urbain Grandier, Vicar of Loudon, of sorcery. He was tried,
tortured and burned. On this baldly terrible foundation, Whiting
has built a powerful, complex play, interweaving the personal dilemmas
of Jeanne and Grandier with the political necessities of the time.
Period 1623-34, although essentially it is no more a period play
than Miller's The Crucible.
ISBN 0 573 01101 X
Drama:. Elizabeth Egloff, from the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 9 men, 6 women. Unit Set
In a small provincial town in 1870s Russia, a group of friends hunger to join the national movement for Socialist revolution. Under the influence of their idealistic new leader, Peter Verkhovensky, they risk arrest by producing a poster advocating a national strike. However, when their charismatic founder, Nicholas Stavrogin, returns from abroad on the verge of nervous collapse, their loyalties waiver. Peter and Nicholas struggle for control of the group, and the members, engulfed by paranoia, wind up murdering one of their own. Paralleling the action is the plight of Nicholas Stavrogin, a rapist, haunted by the ghost of his young victim. Loosely based on the novel by Dostoyevsky, and steeped in the historic events that shocked 1870s Russia, The Devils is a story of love and betrayal in a society on the edge of revolution; a society full of idealists destroyed by a new definition of humanity.
ISBN: 0-8222-1656-6
Play. Abe Polsky. 7 men, 2 women, 1 girl. Interior.
The action takes place at Sutter's Fort, in northern California,
in 1847. Lewis Keseberg, a German immigrant and survivor of the tragic
Donner Party expedition, has brought a suit for slander against several
other survivors who have accused him of being a grave robber and
murderer. As the trial testimony proceeds the awful facts of the
expedition's demise are revealed - the heavy snows which trapped
them in the mountains; the starvation and death of women and children;
the desperation which drove the few survivors to cannibalise the
corpses of the dead. Keseberg does not deny the horror of what occurred,
or the madness which made him a party to it, but he cannot live with
the accusation that he deliberately killed for food and that he robbed
the graves of the deceased. Ultimately he wins his case, but not
before it is made eloquently clear that all involved will be burdened
until the end of their lives with the terrible, numbing anguish of
what they went through.
ISBN- 0-8222-0304-9
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