Drama. Dick Goldberg. 6 men. Interior.
Old, rich and ailing, Isaiah Stein dominates the lives of his four
grown sons, three of whom are still living at home. Bitter over the
death of his wife in an accident for which he holds one of his sons
responsible, and aware that his own time is short, the old man constructs
a will which closely controls the disposition of his sizable estate
and which, after he experiences a fatal heart attack, exacerbates
the tensions which have been building between his sons. One, married
and establishing a career in psychology, is desperately in debt;
another, who has taken over the family business, wants to keep a
tight rein on the money; a third, obsessed with preserving home and
family, tries to keep things as they were when their mother was alive;
while the youngest brother, a hitherto secret homosexual, wants to
use his share of the estate to gain his independence from the others.
Inevitably antagonisms mount as each brother maneuvers to his own
advantage, but from this a basic, inescapable truth emerges - these
men are a family, four brothers whose shared love and loyalty will,
in the final essence, transcend the bitterness which their confrontation
has provoked.
ISBN: 0-8222-0381-2
Play. Alan Ayckbourn
M4 (20s, 30s, 60s) F4 (20s, 30s, 50s). A living-room.
'We all marry the wrong people,' announces Edward Gray and, looking
at his three daughters and their unsuitable partners, it is difficult
to disagree. Edward's marriage to mousy Emma isn't much better- otherwise
why would the daughters suspect they are trying to kill each other?
Just as the plot is thickening, there comes Ayckbourn's coup de
theatre : the younger couples change partners - and then again!
- so that every possible combination is shown to the audience.
ISBN 0 573 01764 6
Play David Henry Hwang. 4 men, 5 women. Divided Set.
Ama and Popo, two elderly and devoutly Christian Chinese sisters,
escaped with their family from China just before the Communist revolution.
Their younger brother, Di-Gou, however, believed in the revolution
and returned to China. The two curmudgeonly sisters now live in Bel
Air, California, with their daughters, Joanne and Hannah, and their
daughters' prosperous husbands, Wilbur and Robert. The married couples
have completely embraced some of the worst aspects of being American,
waste and total self-involvement. Their children, however, Jenny
and Chester, are not this way and are preparing their own escapes
by one going to college and the other getting a job with the Boston
Symphony Orchestra. The whole family eagerly awaits a visit from
Di-Gou, whom the sisters have not seen in over thirty years. When
he arrives it is clear he is not the man his sisters remember. a
religious young man who went out on a tour of China with a Christian
evangelist and who had converted the family. Now Di-Gou does not
believe in God, and when his sisters go so far as to tie him up and
beat him to try and remove the
"demon spirit" from his body, he reveals that the evangelist they
have revered for so long was a fake with an illegitimate child. They
refuse to believe this, but Di-Gou pursues the matter and even asks
them to return to China and Chinese ways. But this request, along
with the shock of the religious revelation, kills the elderly Ama
and Popo. As their daughters react in horror, Di-Gou slips away and
Jenny and Chester also begin to make their exits.
ISBN: 0-8222-0265-4
Comedy. Benjamin Zavin and Carl Leo. 5 men, 7 women, 1 boy, 1 girl. Interior
Bill Cahill, a former athlete but accident-prone, breaks his leg
sliding into third base while playing baseball with his children.
Faced with a long convalescence, his wife, Ellen, valiantly goes
back to work to support the family while Bill looks after the house.
They do their work grudgingly, not realising that they are both happier
and more efficient in their new roles. Then Ellen, on a last minute
impulse, brings her boss home for dinner, sending Bill into a rage.
Bill feels this imposition is the last straw and their new scheme
of living, as well as their marriage, seems to be heading for the
rocks. Things become even more uproariously complicated when it is
discovered that Bill, using his wife's name, has sent in one of his
original cookie recipes and an essay on homemaking to a TV Contest
- and has been chosen the recipient of the Homemaker Award of the
Year. The winner is to receive $50,000, plus additional sums for
appearing on television - but the winner must be a woman. Bill wants
his wife to pass herself off as the homemaker, but she refuses to
be involved in anything so deceitful. The producers of the TV show
arrive and are alarmed and dismayed when Ellen turns down their handsome
award, and then are horror-struck when they realise they have bestowed
their award on a man rather than a woman. Their fifteen million dollar
TV program might be held up to ridicule and cancellation. But they
decide, to save face and their program (and to capitalise on the
enormous publicity which they sense will develop), to give the award
this year to, a man - Bill Cahill. Bill and Ellen are happily reunited,
and the next thing we hear is that there is a sudden rash of broken
bones among the men in the neighbourhood. Accidental? Perhaps. But
then Bill Cahill has shown that staying around the house each day
might not be such a bad idea after all.
ISBN: 0-8222-0383-9
Play. Frank Vickery
M3 (young, 21, 40s) F4 (teenage, 40s, old). Composite setting: a
living-room, a bedroom, a hallway.
When young Tracy discovers she is pregnant she doesn't know how
to tell either her parents solid, dependable Elsie and hypochondriac
Idris - or her boyfriend, Bobby. Gran, permanently ensconced in bed
(on stage), knows all and sees all, and helps to pave the way for
her announcement. Unfortunately, Idris, overhearing Tracy and Elsie,
jumps to the wrong conclusion and believes he has but a short time
to live! An hilarious comedy!
ISBN 0 573 01685 2
Mike Stott : Comedy 4M 3F Flexible staging
Does Amy Granville have a 'fancy man? Set in a small Pennine village
in the 1920s, Amy and Arthur have been marred just under a year,
but the small community begins to talk in whispers when Amy starts
visiting the public baths twice a week and taking long walks alone.
Arthur is more interested in local cricket, football, and the pigeons
he keeps, and in an attempt to inspire more romance in their relationship,
Amy does nothing to dispel the rumours of her 'fancy man'. The plan
initially works, as Arthur's rage and jealousy turns to desire for
her, and the couple begin making love every night of the week, much
to the consternation of the neighbours. But when Amy falls pregnant,
Arthur is convinced that the baby isn't his but the 'fancy man's',
and nothing she or anvonc else can say or do will dissuade him from
his notion, leading to a tragic and unexpected twist.
ISBN: 0 85676 127 3
Play. George S. Kaufman and Leueen MacGrath. 6 men, 4 women. 3 Interior.
An attractive and energetic female has spent 5,000 years tracking down her man, without ever trapping him into matrimony. We first meet her in a wedding gown, in the year 1952, as she is about to make a marriage of convenience with somebody else. But she cannot go through with it." and she ditches the prospective bridegroom. This is the cue for the first of several flashbacks, and we pick up our determined lass in the stone age, begging to be tapped by her negligent cave man. Later, we see her as a Roman slave-girl, still on the trail, hot for her lover whose current reincarnation has turned him into a shepherd boy. In her contemporary manifestation Amanda Phipps discovers that the art critic Heybore, who has come to interview her, is none other that the man she has been in love with for five millennia. Ultimately Amanda meets the fate which she has awaited for so many centuries.
Play.
David Hare, based on the book by William Hinton
9 actors taking 30 parts. An open stage.
This play is an accurate historical record of what once happened
in one village four hundred miles south-west of Peking. Based on
William Hinton's book it recounts in vividly dramatic form how the
people of this village come to terms with Communism. The play should
be performed by about nine actors, with no props, lighting cues or
scenery.
ISBN 0 573 01703 4
A Victorian Reverie. Amlin Gray. 4 men, 3 women. Interior
The scene is a country manor in 19th century England, where the
widow Marryat and her adolescent daughter, Rachel, await the arrival
of Sir Tristam Northmoor, a gentleman of clouded origin who had been
with their departed husband and father when he died in a far off
colonial outpost and who is now the executor of his estate. Sir Tristam
proves to be a man of mystery and mesmerising gaze, who is immediately
drawn to Rachel - despite her long-standing commitment to the rather
bland but reliable Arthur Loscombe. Ostensibly devoted to establishing
a temperance clinic. (through largesse from the departed's estate)
Sir Tristam is actually more concerned with the exotic and sinister
philosophies and potions of the East, and a Dracula-like hold over
Rachel. Luckily the spell is broken, just in the nick of time, by
the redoubtable Vicar Dibdin, whose purity of heart and abiding faith
overcome the malevolent force which threatens the serenity of his
parishioner's well-ordered world.
ISBN: 0-8222-0384-7
Play. Adapted by Matthew
White from the novel by Thomas Hardy
M5 F3 or 4. Various simple settings.
The passion, melodrama, earthy humour and strong, gripping plot
of Thomas Hardy's novel Far from the Madding Crowd are vividly
conveyed in Matthew White's fast-moving and admirably economical
adaptation. Written to be performed with the simplest of settings
and a relatively small cast, this is a powerfully intimate, concentrated
theatrical experience. Period 1870s
ISBN 0 573 01769 7
Comedy. John Vari, with Rodney Ackland. 3 men, 6 women. Interior
How do you say "farewell" to someone who never appears in the first
place? Let the action speak for itself: the time is 1915; the place
a shabbily genteel basement apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Its denizens are Gert and Minnie Povis: the former quite correct
and slightly formidable, the latter not above sneaking a clandestine
bottle of beer or reliving her brief but happy days as a member of
a third-rate opera company. The sisters supplement a small income
by turning out hand-painted greeting cards, which Cousin Peonie merchandises
through her acquaintances in the "outside world." One of these is
Chuck Bailey who is in love with Peonie but out of favour with Gert.
He does move a lot of greeting cards, however, which means more money
for the growing fund in the "Visit to Eugene Box."
Brother Eugene, we might add, has been off in Africa for a rather
long time doing nobody knows what. All this, of course, has its complications,
which runs something like this: Gert manages to break up Peonie's
romance; Peonie vanishes; a baby is left on the doorstep; the authorities
take the baby away despite the pleas of Gert and Minnie. But then
the pendulum swings back: Chuck redeems himself Peonie returns; Minnie
gets slightly tiddly on liqueur-filled chocolates; Chuck and Peonie
decide to get married and adopt the baby. As for brother Eugene,
he is exposed for the worm he is by a certain letter not meant for
his sisters' eyes, and they decide not to visit him after all - so
it is farewell, and perhaps good riddance too.
ISBN: 0-8222-0385-5
Comedy. F. Andrew Leslie from the screenplay by Allen Rivkin and Laura Kerr. 11 men, 3 women (many bit parts). Interior.
Katrin Holstrom, in the big city to study nursing, is obliged, for
financial reasons, to take a temporary position as maid in the home
of the wealthy and politically powerful Morleys. Mrs. Morley and
her son Glenn, being political leaders, their home is a gathering
place for newspaper people, candidates and party regulars and Katrin,
with her encyclopaedic knowledge of rural politics, is fascinated
by the "inside" goings-on. While serving coffee, however, she also
expresses her opinions on people and policies, and soon it is clear
that her ideas of how to run a political organisation are somewhat
at variance with those of her employers. The upshot, after a perfectly
logical, if uproarious, course of events, is that Katrin becomes
the candidate for the opposition party - and the battle lines arc
drawn. But politics can be dirty as well as exhilarating and the
introduction of a trumped-up scandal involving Katrin forces her
to give up her campaign for the good of the party. It also brings
Glenn to her defence, and in the fast-moving climax of the play he
proves the charges are false, exposes the other candidate for the
bigot he is, and persuades Katrin that if she can't go to Washington
one way she should go another - as his wife.
ISBN: 0-8222-0386-3
The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery.
Comedy. David McGillivray and
Walter Zerlin Jnr
M1 F4 (20s-50s). A drawing-room.
Every drama group has experienced the horrors of what can go wrong
on the night and the ladies of the F.A.H.E.T.G.D.S. are no different,
with the possible exception that almost everything that could happen
does. The scenery collapses, cues are missed, lines forgotten, as
the ladies present their ambitious evening's entertainment with the
cunning whodunit Murder at Checkmate Martyr.
ISBN 0 573 11141 3
Comedy.
David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jnr
M 1 F4 (20s, 40s, 50s). M and F voices. Various simple settings.
In festive mood, the F.A.H.E.T.G.D.S. ladies mount yet another assault
on the classics with their stage version of A Christmas Carol. Enthusiasm
their middle name, and with the virile support of stagemanager Gordon,
the cast present a dizzy array of characters from the Dickensian
favourite (and a few which aren't).
ISBN 0 573 01680 1
The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society's Production of Macbeth.
Comedy. David
McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jnr
M3 F7 (20s-50s), with doubling. M1 F2 voices only. Simple settings.
This uproarious comedy introduces the ladies of F.A.H.E.T.G.D.S.,
their producer, Plummer, and stage manager, Henry. Their startlingly
original production of Macbeth should get them to the Welwyn
Garden City Finals, but, under the carefully mascara'd eye of adjudicator
George Peach, events conspire against them ...
ISBN 0 573 11269 X