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Pygmalion

One of George Bernard Shaw's best-known plays, Pygmalion was a rousing success on the London and New York stages, an entertaining motion picture and a great hit with its musical version, My Fair Lady. An updated and considerably revised version of the ancient Greek legend of Pygmalion and Galatea, the 20th-century story pokes fun at the antiquated British class system. In Shaw's clever adaptation, Professor Henry Higgins, a linguistic expert, takes on a bet that he can transform an awkward cockney flower seller into a refined young lady simply by polishing her manners and changing the way she speaks. In the process of convincing society that his creation is a mysterious royal figure, the Professor also falls in love with his elegant handiwork. The irresistible theme of the emerging butterfly, together with Shaw's brilliant dialogue and splendid skills as a playwright, have made Pygmalion one of the most popular comedies in the English language. A staple of college drama courses, it is still widely performed.
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As You Like It

Readers and audiences have long greeted As You Like It with delight. Its characters are brilliant conversationalists, including the princesses Rosalind and Celia and their Fool, Touchstone. Soon after Rosalind and Orlando meet and fall in love, the princesses and Touchstone go into exile in the Forest of Arden, where they find new conversational partners. Duke Frederick, younger brother to Duke Senior, has overthrown his brother and forced him to live homeless in the forest with his courtiers, including the cynical Jaques. Orlando, whose older brother Oliver plotted his death, has fled there, too. Recent scholars have also grounded the play in the issues of its time. These include primogeniture, passing property from a father to his oldest son. As You Like It depicts intense conflict between brothers, exposing the human suffering that primogeniture entails. Another perspective concerns cross-dressing. Most of Orlando’s courtship of Rosalind takes place while Rosalind is disguised as a man, “Ganymede.” At her urging, Orlando pretends that Ganymede is his beloved Rosalind. But as the epilogue reveals, the sixteenth-century actor playing Rosalind was male, following the practice of the time. In other words, a boy played a girl playing a boy pretending to be a girl.
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Bus Stop

In the middle of a howling snowstorm, a bus out of Kansas City pulls up at a cheerful roadside diner. All roads are blocked, and four or five weary travellers are going to have to hole up until morning. Cherie, a nightclub chanteuse, a twenty-one-year-old cowboy, the proprietor of the cafe, the bus driver, a middle-age scholar, and a young girl who works in the cafe.
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Danny and the Deep Blue Sea

The setting is a rundown bar in the Bronx, where two of society's rejects, Danny and Roberta, strike up a halting conversation over their beer. He is a brooding, self-loathing young man who resorts more to violence than reason; she is a divorced, guilt-ridden young woman whose troubled teenage son is now being cared for by her parents.
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Reasons To Be Pretty

When Greg makes a seemingly harmless comment about his girlfriend Steph's regular looking face, the information gets back to Steph and sends their relationship over the deep end. Greg's life spirals out of control when Steph leaves him, and he has to come to terms with what he has said. Greg's best friend Kent is married to Steph's best friend Carly, and when things start collapsing in Steph and Greg's life, Carly and Kent are pulled in for the ride. We see Greg, Steph, Carly and Kent deal with the pressures of what it means to be pretty, and observe how the four friends manage the infidelity, betrayal and deceit that creeps into their lives.
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The Shape of Things

Hua, her brother Chye and friend Reginald, try to find their equilibrium when they return to Singapore after their studies abroad. Friendship and values, conscience and duty no longer balance in the scales back home.
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Cyrano de Bergerac

Phil, a supporting character in the author takes center stage in this haunting drama about trying to escape the past. A former mob hitman, Phil is in Hollywood trying to make it as a television actor. He had a few bit parts, but it is hardly a success, and he is largely supported by his wife, Susie, a waitress. Unfortunately, Susie desperately wants something in return, something Phil is not prepared or eager to give: a child. Phil is going nowhere fast when Sal, a mysterious man from his past, appears and offers him the chance to return to an exciting life of crime. Sal is in town to hit a guy, and he wants Phil to be his partner. To Sal, Phil has become a mook, a nobody. Phil is tempted with this opportunity to redeem himself as a man.
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