fbpx

Having a Wonderful Time, Wish You Were Her

This wild bedroom farce involves infidelity, double standards, midnight rendezvous and a hungry bear. Danny and Kathy halt their night of sultry passion when Kathy reveals she is dating another man. Paul and Jennifer play a mad slapstick scene of frustration because she is reluctant to cheat on her husband. Bill and Mary, a couple about to celebrate their twenty ninth wedding anniversary are at odds: Mary yearns for a night of passion while Bill yearns to be left alone. To make matters more interesting, Paul's best friend is Danny who is married to Jennifer who is having an affair with Paul who is dating Kathy who is Danny's mistress and Jennifer's sister.
Read More

Brooklyn Boy

Novelist Eric Weiss, critically celebrated but unsuccessful, "arrives" when his new, autobiographical novel becomes a best-seller. An outsider all his life, he is suddenly on the inside of everything: town cars, television studios, the Sunday book review. But as his career takes off, his personal life stutters. His father lies ill in Maimonides Hospital, Jewish Brooklyn's version of the river Styx, wondering when Eric will produce his first grandchild. His former friends and neighbours in Brooklyn celebrate his success while simultaneously being suspicious about his attitude toward them in life and in his novel. And his success, rather than oiling the waters of his marriage, troubles them for him and his writer-wife.
Read More

Rock ‘n’ Roll

Rock 'n' Roll is one of Stoppard's most ambitious works. The play is set in the politically charged years between the demise of Czeckoslovakia's Prague Spring in the late 1960s and the Velvet Revolution, which two decades later signaled the end of Communist reign. Rock 'n' Roll uses the philosophical conflicts between Marxism and democracy to explore larger, more personal topics. The relationships between generations and the changing value systems which inform them plays into the mother-daughter dynamics between Eleanor and Esme and later between Esme and Alice. Jan's record collection serves as a reminder of the power of art to challenge oppression and champion freedom of expression. And Max must face the ongoing tension between his intellectual investigation of political thought and the realities which that investigation sometimes ignores realities embodied in the people he loves. Stoppard accomplishes all of this with his signature wit, erudition and theatricality, informed by a wellspring of character emotions that are nearly overwhelming in their immediacy and depth. As the characters face life, love and loss the audience is transported across continents and years, but Rock 'n' Roll is bound by the reverberating chords of electric guitars. A play that begins in 1968 as a stranger serenades a young girl from atop a garden wall ends in 1990 at the Rolling Stones' first concert in Prague.
Read More

Candles To The Sun

Set in the Red Hills coal mining section of Alabama and dealing with both the attempts of the miners to unionize and the bleak lives of their families, the play, according to St Louis Star-Times critic Reed Hynds, is "an earnest and searching examination of a particular social reality set out in human and dramatic terms." This was the first full-length play by novice playwright Thomas Lanier Williams to be produced, and subsequently opened to rave reviews in St. Louis.
Read More

The Distance From Here

Darrell and Tim, both seventeen years old, are wasting away their lives. They spend their time checking out the monkeys at the local zoo, hanging out at the mall, and smoking cigarettes in their high school parking lot. Occasionally they even attend class, and, after school, Tim reports in to his menial job at a nearby Chinese take-out joint. When the two of them clash--in a high-stakes confrontation also involving Darrell's on-again, off-again girlfriend Jenn--their battle climaxes in a horrifying act that will leave all of them scarred forever.
Read More

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

The Last Days of Judas Iscariotis a hilarious, poignant, thought-provoking work by Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. Boasting a large, zany cast of characters, the play asks one of the most plaguing questions in the Christian ideology: What happened to Judas Iscariot? The facts (we think!) we know are these: Judas was the disciple of Jesus who betrayed his friend and teacher to the authorities. He is seen as the man responsible for Jesus's death; afterwards, Judas fell into despair and hung himself from an olive tree; since then, he has been suffering for his deeds deep in Hell, and will continue to do so for all eternity. Is that really fair? Was Judas the duplicitous master of his own fate, a much-suffering pawn used for Jesus's ends, or just a man who made a mistake?
Read More

Fugitive Kind

Valentine "Snakeskin" Xavier, a guitar-playing drifter, flees New Orleans in order to avoid arrest. He finds work in a small-town five-and-dime owned by an embittered older woman known as Lady Torrance, whose vicious husband Jabe lies on his deathbed in their apartment above the store. Both alcoholic nymphomaniac Carol Cutrere and simple housewife Vee Talbott set their sights on the newcomer, but Val succumbs to the charms of Lady, who plans to set him up with a refreshment bar. Sheriff Talbott, a friend of Jabe, threatens to kill Val if he remains in town, but he chooses to stay when he discovers Lady is pregnant. His decision sparks Jabe's jealousy and leads to tragic consequences.
Read More

Doctor Faustus

This play tells the story of the man who sells his soul to the devil in return for 24 years of power and knowledge - a legend that began in Germany in the 1500s. The story has inspired countless writers, dramatists and composers ever since, but the first major stage version of the story in England is this one by Shakespeare's contemporary Christopher Marlowe (1564-93). Written sometime between 1588 and 1592, but first published in 1604, the play was extremely controversial at the time, as it explores the paths human beings can take when they allow the devil into their lives.
Read More

The Food Chain

Amanda, an anorexic poet of some pretensions, has been married for three weeks, but her husband, Ford, has been missing for two. She calls a crisis hot line and reaches Bea, a volunteer. Bea's answer to Amanda's problems is to diminish them by complaining about her own deceased husband's inattentiveness, her son's embarrassing nature, and also to dispense hilarious (but useless) advice. Just as Amanda nears her wit's end, Ford walks in so she simply hangs up on Bea. Meanwhile, across town, Serge, a completely vain runway model, paces as he waits for the arrival of his latest paramour. He is intruded upon by a former one-night stand, Otto, who worships him and who tips the scales at about three hundred pounds. Otto tortures, harangues and cajoles Serge while swilling Yoo-hoo, eating junk food and taking phone calls from his mother until Serge can take no more. Serge explodes but is interrupted by a phone call his new lover will not be coming. This leaves Serge and Otto in the same state: Both are now victims of fickle romance. The scene shifts back to Amanda's at the crack of dawn. Serge is banging on the door, looking for his lover, surprising Amanda. It was with Serge that Ford had spent his lost two honeymoon weeks. Having followed Serge, it isn't long until Otto shows up, with breakfast, threatening suicide. Next to arrive is Bea, furious at Amanda for hanging up on her as Bea does not tolerate rudeness. As riotous chaos builds, we learn that Bea is Otto's mother, that Otto and Amanda are old school friends, that Serge will settle for both Amanda and Ford and that Ford has absolutely nothing to say. Bea takes charge and offers a solution. Although short on practicality, it is long on pleasure
Read More

The Joke

Unit set It's 1965 and two comedians, "Steady Eddie" & "Doug the Mug," knock 'em dead every night in the Catskills. Punchlines and cheap shots fly -- on stage and off -- as Doug and Ed battle for the spotlight over a decade, pushing each other to the cusp of a new direction of stand up comedy. With their personal and professional lives uncovered at center stage, Eddie and Doug must find a way to laugh it off while staying at the top of their game. Sam Marks' The Joke takes a look at the friendship and the rivalry between two comic partners during the golden years of the Borscht Belt. "A tasty two-hander by Sam Marks...A comedy team working the Catskills in the 1960s and '70s, getting few laughs while undergoing all the stresses of a doomed marriage...And just as in a marriage in which one half of the couple changes while the other stays the same, the relationship deteriorates. Allusions to a woman and to the historical context as the '60s give way to the '70s are tantalizing but not overdone; the focus stays on the two men.
Read More

The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?

Martin, a world-famous architect, leads an ostensibly ideal life. But a conversation with an old friend on his fiftieth birthday sets in motions events that will destroy his family and leave his life in tatters. The Goat is a hugely enjoyable parable that plumbs the deepest questions of social constraints on the individual expression of love.
Read More
  • Category

  • Genre