8284 shows
Clear filtersAn idealistic farmer leaves his Midwestern land to establish a college. Forty years later, his granddaughter supports Hindu nationals' right to protest there, jeopardizing the college's funding and setting herself against her uncle, the trustees' president. She defies her family and faces prison.
Nahum Tate’s adaptation of John Webster’s revenge tragedy The White Devil, published under the title Injur'd Love: or the Cruel Husband.
In October 1969, Australian businessman Rupert Murdoch is in negotiations to purchase the failing British daily newspaper The Sun from its parent paper The Mirror. He approaches the Daily Mails Northern editor Larry Lamb and asks him to be the editor of The Sun for its re-launch. Lamb, a Yorkshire native and former sub-editor for The Mirror, is frustrated over his lack of progress in his career, which he attributes to his working-class background. Reluctantly, he accepts Murdoch's offer. Murdoch and Lamb meet with Mirror chairman Hugh Cudlipp to finalise the sale. The contract stipulates that publication must continue uninterrupted after the handover, giving Lamb mere weeks to assemble the first issue. Cudlipp privately reveals to Lamb that he is selling The Sun (as opposed to shutting it down) only to avoid angering local unions. He expects the paper to fail and discourages Lamb from taking the job. Murdoch declares his intent to prioritise profits and proposes that Lamb strive to overtake sales of The Mirror within one year of the re-launch. Murdoch grants Lamb full freedom on the condition that he make the paper "loud", encouraging him to compete aggressively with other papers. On Fleet Street, Lamb frantically recruits new staff members for The Sun, the former staff having been laid off or re-absorbed into The Mirror. While brainstorming with the new staff, Lamb designs the paper's new logo and proposes new features, several of which are blatant pastiches of The Mirror. He also hires Stephanie Rahn and other models to pose in lingerie for the paper. At the London Press Club, Lamb encounters Cudlipp, who mocks The Suns lowbrow content and attempts to copy The Mirror. Convinced that The Mirror does not reflect the mood or interests of common people, Lamb pushes the re-launch of The Sun in a more populist direction that includes frank discussions of sexuality, a television section, and weekly giveaways. The evening before the re-launch, last-minute problems plague the staff, including a lack of enough "E" keys for the full headline and an interviewee's death. Murdoch and his wife Anna visit the office alongside his deputy Sir Alick McKay and his wife Muriel. A power outage delays printing and prevents that day's distribution in the north. Despite the limited distribution and rushed nature of the issue, the paper is an unprecedented success, worrying Cudlipp. In a televised interview, Murdoch defends The Suns outrageous content as a manifestation of the will of the masses. At a meeting, Lamb explains to Murdoch how the paper's newfound success has sown hostility in its competitors. While the Murdochs are visiting Australia, Muriel is kidnapped for ransom. The staff realise that Anna Murdoch was the kidnappers' intended target; the mistake arose after they stalked a Rolls-Royce the Murdochs had lent to the McKays while they were in Australia. Lamb insists on covering the incident in The Sun and publishing the ransom notes, in doing so defying the wishes of his staff, union leaders, and Murdoch himself. Two brothers are arrested for Muriel's abduction and presumed murder. The Sun is widely criticised for its treatment of the tragedy, though sales surge. In a last-ditch effort to take down The Sun, Cudlipp offers to make Lamb editor of The Mirror, but he refuses. As the one-year anniversary of The Suns re-launch approaches, sales remain behind that of The Mirror. Lamb asks Rahn to secretly pose for a fully-nude photo shoot, to be printed on Page 3 of The Sun. After some discussion, Rahn consents. The anniversary issue sparks public outrage, ruins Rahn's reputation, and infuriates Murdoch, but successfully outsells The Mirror. Conceding defeat, Cudlipp begins planning his retirement. Despite his own disapproval and Lamb's reservations, Murdoch allows the Page 3 feature to continue. At a dinner with Lamb, Murdoch proposes that The Sun start appealing to the new conservative government, confident that the paper has the power to sway public opinion. He also tells Lamb his plans to purchase an American television network and relocate The Suns office off of Fleet Street. He concludes the dinner saying, "People like stories." Lamb imagines that Murdoch will outlive him and someday publish his obituary in The Sun.
A fourteen-year-old boy is convicted of murdering a classmate in a small Ontario community in 1959. Drawing on the Steven Truscott case, the play examines the assumptions, testimony, and lasting damage surrounding a wrongful conviction.
A young widow suspected of murdering her husband enlists a leading King’s Counsel to prove her innocence. As the lawyer becomes convinced of her case, they work together to find the real killer.
The show begins with a cold open in which an on-stage audience are being seated before a performance of Hamlet. As Charles (Reece Shearsmith) begins to watch the performance, the members around him Angus (Steve Pemberton), Antonia and Daddy become too distracting causing Charles to comedically kill each of them before addressing the audience "Ladies and gentlemen, may I please remind you that you are in a theatre. No coughing, no eating and no mobile phones." Shearsmith and Pemberton step in front of the red curtain to introduce Stage/Fright and explain that the theatre the show is playing is haunted as the cold open was based on an incident that happened a number of years ago where Mr Dowling was in such a state of grieving for his wife that he killed three audience members. They explain about a Grand Guignol play called La Terreur de L'aisle or "Terror at the Asylum" was performed however its lead actress Madame Belle Catron was killed during a scene that went wrong and her ghost has since haunted the theatre called Bloody Belle. Suggesting that Mr Dowling might have seen Bloody Belle's ghost or the ghost of his late wife, they ask “For what is a ghost but a memory? A way of keeping a loved one’s memory alive? Maybe every ghost story is really just a love story.” They also explain the tradition of the ghost light before Pemberton sceptically encourages the audience to summon Bloody Belle by saying her name three times. In the next scene, the episode "Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room" is performed. Thomas "Tommy" Shelby (Shearsmith) arrives on an empty stage with props and a ghost light to meet his former "Cheese N Crackers" double act partner Len Drake (Pemberton) to attempt practising their old routines. Shelby has moved on from showbusiness while Drake is enthusiastic about starting again. Tommy reminds Len that he owes him £25 for "Bernie Clifton's dressing room" in which Len doesn't recall what he means. As Len goes out for a cigarette, Tommy reads a script that he has written about two burglars Eddie and Ray (played by Pemberton and Shearsmith respectively, reprising their roles from the episode "A Quiet Night In") who have mistakenly broken into the wrong house and taken a celebrity hostage (in which the celebrity is different every performance). The celebrity is tasked with an improvisational script before Ray accidentally shoots them dead. The scene ends with the celebrity taking a bow in front of the red curtain and is handed flowers. As the scene goes back to the episode "Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room", Tommy discovers that Len has been homeless by finding his belongings who insists that he never wanted any money, just to have Tommy by his side performing again. In rehearsing their final routine "Brown Bottles" which involves Len drinking seven bottles of beer within the song, Tommy reminds Len that during one night he collapsed in Bernie Clifton's dressing room choking on his own vomit and reveals that he stopped performing because of fear that Len would kill himself due to his alcohol addiction. Len's daughter Leanne walks to find Tommy who in fact has been on his own the whole time as it is revealed that Len died and he is preparing for his funeral speech. She gives him a card with £25 from Len. As the first half ends, the ghost light starts flickering. After Tommy leaves the stage, Bloody Belle appears. The second act begins with a performance of La Terreur de L'aisle. Suzette arrives at Dr. Goudron's (Pemberton) asylum to treat for her migraines and is greeted by Cragg, one of the nurses and Hugo (Shearsmith), one of the insane patients. Goudron offers a pain-free hypnotic method for operation by which he demonstrates by convincing Hugo to surgically remove his own leg. As violence and chaos ensures, Abby, a theatre usher and aspiring actress, enters with a coffee order ruining what is in fact a rehearsal for the play. Rehearsals continue using a camera and a screen on stage as Abby discusses the curse of Bloody Belle with the director Marcus (and Hugo), Vincent Gannymeade (Goudron) and the play's celebrity leading actress Sherrie Leeks (Suzette). After the rehearsal and theatre has been emptied and the ghost light has been left on, Sherrie and Abby stay behind to rehearse the play's lines. They begin to see movements on the camera and screen, which Sherrie uses the light on the camera to guide herself around the empty theatre to investigate the noises. Having lost Abby, she makes her way back onto the stage where she is frightened away by seemingly the ghost of Bloody Belle, which turns out to be Abby pretending in a ruse by her and Marcus to make Sherrie quit the play and attract publicity. As Marcus rejects the idea of Abby taking over from Sherrie, Abbie becomes possessed and strangles him to death as the real Bloody Belle appears. In what is seemingly the curtain call for Stage/Fright, the company take their bow before Pemberton steps forward to thank the audience for their support and paying tribute to Shearsmith who had in fact died in rehearsals before the show's run began, revealing that Toby, his understudy, had played Shearsmith's roles in the performance, ending with applause and an obituary photo of Shearsmith on the screen. After the curtain falls, the audience can still hear Pemberton on his microphone who walks onstage during the show's reset and is killed by a falling stage light. The curtain rises to see him being greeted by Shearsmith's ghost handing him a coffee, much to his annoyance that Pemberton still continued to go ahead with the show and that the "twist" was that he was dead. With nothing to do but to haunt the theatre, Pemberton exits the stage whilst Shearsmith turns to the audience revealing that the falling stage light was meant for Toby. The show ends with Shearsmith, Pemberton and the company performing "Tears of Laughter" (the finale number from the episode "Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room") in what is their memorial service all dressed in white on Cloud 9.
A struggling professional theatre company faces funding cuts and an inspection tied to a needed grant while staging its long-running A Christmas Carol. Mistaking a would-be actor for the inspector, the company’s members try to win him over as rehearsals and personal tensions unravel.
Jessica Parks, a London Crown Court judge and mother, balances her legal career with family life. When her teenage son Harry is accused of raping a classmate, Jessica must confront the collision between her commitment to justice and her instinct to protect him.
Outside a house, an old man and a stranger debate how to tell the family inside that one of the daughters has died. The family is visible through the windows as a crowd approaches with the body, and the old man enters to deliver the news.
Youth rejects Charity’s guidance and follows Riot and Pride in pursuit of pleasure and status. With Humility’s help, Charity persuades him to abandon his companions, seek forgiveness, and turn toward a virtuous life.
Behind the scenes of a long-running London stage show, actress Laura Mannington becomes increasingly offensive as fame changes her character over a two-year period.
In 1905 New York, Esther, a skilled Black seamstress, saves money to open a beauty parlor while sewing for wealthy women and prostitutes. She exchanges intimate letters with George, a worker on the Panama Canal, while developing a quiet bond with Mr. Marks, the Hasidic fabric shopkeeper. After marrying George, she discovers he deceived her and leaves with her savings; Esther returns to her sewing determined to rebuild her dreams.
A single opening scene branches according to Celia Teasdale's choice to smoke, then divides repeatedly as characters make further choices. The sixteen possible paths follow a small village's marriages, affairs, careers and other consequences over five scenes spanning five years.
At Balliol College, a feud pits privileged Old Etonians Julian and Billy Grenfell and Patrick Shaw-Stewart against social reformers Ronald Poulton and Keith Rae. The drama follows their rivalry from college conflicts over class and conduct into the trenches of the First World War, where all five die.
A play about John Donne's life, focusing on 1611 and his relationships with people involved in translating the King James Version.
Ferdinand, son of a powerful president, and Luise, a middle-class musician’s daughter, fall in love. Their families oppose the match, and the president and his secretary frame Luise through a forced letter, provoking Ferdinand’s jealousy and a fatal tragedy.
A blind grandfather waits with his family in a house where his ailing daughter lies in a nearby room after childbirth. As the family debates his reports of footsteps and a silent presence entering, the baby cries and a Sister of Mercy announces the mother’s death.
International acting student Maia develops severe insomnia and psychosis amid the pressures of Yale's drama program, then wakes in a youth psychiatric ward. She must adapt to the ward and its teen residents to leave in time for her acting showcase.
Teenager Lucy Baines escapes her unhappy family by reviving her imaginary friend Zara. Zara makes Lucy's family invisible and brings her into a fantasy household where Lucy at first feels happier, until Zara and her family turn against her. Lucy defeats them and restores her family, who begin to pay more attention to her.
At a society ball, twins Horace and Frédéric are caught in different romantic pursuits: Frédéric loves Diana, who desires Horace. To disillusion his brother, Horace invites Isabelle, a dancer, and stages her transformation into an aristocratic beauty.
A pseudo-classical tragedy based on the story of Inês de Castro, the Portuguese noblewoman executed on King Afonso IV's orders despite her relationship with his son Pedro.
At Delphi, temple servant Ion and childless Athenian noblewoman Creusa meet while seeking answers about their origins. Creusa's attempt to poison Ion fails; the pair recognize each other as mother and son, and Athena reveals Apollo's role in their reunion.
Ion, a Tragedy is a tragedy by the British writer Thomas Talfourd. Published in 1835, it was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London on 26 May 1836. The Covent Garden cast included William Macready as Ion, Ellen Tree (and subsequently Helena Faucit) as Clemanthe, John Vandenhoff as Adrastus, King of Argos, Charles Thompson as Medon, George John Bennett as Phocion, Henry John Wallack as Ctesiphon, John Langford Pritchard as Agenor, Harriette Deborah Lacy as Abra.
The foundling Ion becomes king of Argos, inheriting a royal curse that has brought plague upon the city. Torn between his love for Clemanthe and his country’s survival, he resolves to sacrifice himself and asks that sovereignty pass to the people rather than another hereditary ruler.
The Greek fleet is stranded at Aulis, where Agamemnon is told he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to obtain favourable winds. Her family and Achilles resist, but she ultimately offers herself for Greece. The authenticity of the surviving ending, in which a deer replaces her, is disputed.
Iphigenia, a Greek priestess forced to sacrifice foreigners in Taurica, learns that her brother Orestes has arrived with Pylades to steal Artemis’s statue. The siblings recognize one another and devise an escape by deceiving King Thoas; Athena intervenes to secure their departure.
Iphigenia, serving as Diana's priestess in Tauris, longs to return to Greece. When her brother Orestes and his companion Pylades are captured, she must choose between escaping with them through deception or appealing to King Thoas's humanity; she finally tells him the truth and wins their release.
At Aulis, Agamemnon faces pressure to sacrifice his daughter Iphigénie so the Greek fleet can sail against Troy. As Iphigénie accepts her fate and Achille tries to save her, Ériphile is revealed as the intended sacrificial victim and dies in her place.
During the German occupation of Poland, nurse Irena Gut hides twelve Jews from the Holocaust in a German officer’s house. When he discovers them, she begs him to spare their lives; he agrees and does not betray them. As the Red Army approaches, Irena and the people she protected flee into the forest.
After the Ottoman Sultan Mahomet captures the Greek Christian Irene, he offers to spare her and grant her power if she converts. Her choice draws her into a court power struggle; she is killed amid false suspicions, and Mahomet grieves when he learns she was not conspiring against him.
Iris Bellamy, a wealthy young widow bound by her late husband’s will to lose her fortune if she remarries, loves the penniless Laurence Trenwith but accepts millionaire Frederick Maldonado. After her trustee loses her money, Iris and Trenwith separate; years later Maldonado’s control and her divided choices lead to a tragic confrontation.
Sir Patrick Worthy represents good nature, arranges suitable marriages for his family without regard to money, and tricks his unprincipled son Charles into marrying a serving girl he has seduced.
In ancient Rome under Elagabalus, Greek rebel Irydion seeks to overthrow Roman despotism, but his pursuit of revenge and use of deception and ruthlessness undermine his cause. The tragedy weighs resistance against its motives and methods.
Irène loves Alexis, who returns victorious to Constantinople and defies Emperor Nicéphore's order to leave. After Nicéphore is defeated and killed, Alexis takes the throne, but Irène's father forces her toward a convent; she takes her own life rather than reconcile love and duty.
Twenty-one-year-old African-American twin sisters Racine and Anaia were burned and scarred as babies. Racine has burn scars on her arms, back, and neck, and Anaia has scars on her arms, face, and neck. After receiving a letter in their apartment in Northeast, they journey to the Dirty South to the deathbed of their mother, who is known as "SHE" or "God" and has scars all over her body. SHE informs them that their father, referred to as “Man”, set the fire that burned the three of them. SHE instructs the sisters to go west to The Valley to find and kill him for revenge. The sisters travel to the Valley to face Man and his new family.
A group of poor artists in Barbizon, France, fake a friend’s death to raise the value of his paintings, setting off a farce of cross-dressing, a sham funeral and lovers’ deceptions that satirizes the art market.
Impoverished painter Jean-François Millet and his artist friends stage his death to raise the value of his paintings. Millet disguises himself as the Widow Daisy Tillou, generating romantic and financial complications until his friends' scheme is exposed and he returns to claim his life and love.
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? is a 1944 comedy play by the British writer Vivian Tidmarsh. The title is a reference to the wartime slogan Is Your Journey Really Necessary?. It ran for 981 performances in its original West End run at the Duke of York's Theatre, lasting from 1 August 1944 to 14 December 1946. The cast included Ralph Lynn, who also directed, and Enid Stamp Taylor.
Brooklyn boxer Chick Cowan and his talkative manager Hap Hurley enter Fifth Avenue society after wealthy Clint invites them to live with him and train him to fight. Their relationships and a prize bout become entangled with an embezzlement scandal and mistaken suspicions about a fixed fight.
An actor sentenced to death for performing a banned author's works is granted a final performance. He stages a satirical history of Christopher Columbus, depicting him as a shrewd but compromised figure navigating royal power and political advantage.
In a fictional 1930s United States, Senator Buzz Windrip wins the presidency and imposes authoritarian rule. Newspaper editor Doremus Jessup opposes the regime and joins a resistance movement as the country descends into conflict.
Alan Ayckbourn’s murder mystery is structured so that subtle changes can produce three different endings, each naming a different character as the murderer.
An idle son of a wealthy manufacturer sets up a sham business to compete with his father's company. The farce turns on the son's elaborate attempt to sell a product he has not yet manufactured.
It Pays to Sin is an American play in four scenes with an English adaptation by Louis Macloon and George Redman from the Hungarian by Johann Vaszary. The Broadway production was directed by Monty Collins at the Morosco Theatre, opening on November 3, 1933, and closing on November 5, 1933. It survived only 3 performances, receiving scathing reviews from the critics. Leon Ames, who played David Janossy (credited as "Leon Waycoff") and Garnett Lucille Ryman, who played Greta Kasda (credited as Jane Starr), each made their Broadway debut. Victor Sutherland played Zoltan Keleti.
During a storm in Massachusetts, guests become stranded at an isolated inn with the eccentric Saltmarsh family and follow a mystery involving a peculiar nurse, an obsession with “Effie,” and the family’s late ancestor known as the General.
A Yiddish comedy about the difficulties of Jewish-Gentile relationships in the Russian Empire.
A comedy of Moscow merchant life centered on Akhov, a domestic tyrant whose authority over the people around him is collapsing. Ostrovsky reproduces the merchants’ speech and way of life as he portrays the waning power of the samodur.
Elvis fanatic Tom and his fiancée Alice arrive in Spain for their wedding. Tom joins fellow fan Keith in trying to kidnap a man believed to be the real Elvis and sell the story, but the captive appears to die, setting off frantic attempts to hide the body and confusion among several apparent Elvises.
At a producer's opening-night party for a new Broadway play, the playwright, director, actors and friends nervously await the reviews. Their gossip, rivalries and disappointments unfold as the reviews arrive, and they start planning another show.
Louis returns home to tell his family that he is terminally ill, then leaves after his relatives deliver long, repetitive monologues marked by failed communication and self-correction.
Ostrovsky's comedy satirizes the self-satisfied Moscow merchant class through the household of merchant Samson Bolshov, his wife and daughter, his clerk Podkhalyuzin, a matchmaker, and a lawyer. The work's censorial troubles centered on its bleak view of merchant society and lack of positive examples.
On Christmas Eve 1946, a small group of actors gathers at Manhattan radio station WBFR to perform It’s a Wonderful Life live. The ensemble plays multiple roles, using sound effects and props to create the broadcast.
Racing driver Marshall takes the blame after his foster brother James borrows his car and hits a cyclist. When their mother is murdered, Marshall plants clues that make James appear guilty, setting up a crime puzzle built around their divided identities and alibis.
A comic romance set in Italian American New York, blending tall tale with a slice of local life and exploring gender conflict, loneliness and the joys and strains of a close-knit community.
Ribeiro’s Konkani stage version of Italian Boy unfolds through a sequence of changing scenes. Songs and dances on separate subjects entertain the audience in front of the curtain while the next setting is prepared behind it, creating the distinctive dramatic form later known as tiatr.
After twenty years away, Odysseus returns to his court in Ithaca and massacres the suitors who have pursued Penelope, seeking to restore order.
A malfunctioning time machine swaps a Moscow apartment superintendent with Ivan the Terrible, setting up a farce that satirizes parallels between Soviet and tsarist authority.
Nikolai Ivanov, deeply indebted and disillusioned, neglects his tubercular wife Anna while spending time with the Lebedevs. He becomes involved with their daughter Sasha; after Anna's death and as Ivanov prepares to marry Sasha, a public accusation about his motives prompts him to shoot himself.
A sardine seller falls for an upper-class courtesan and disguises himself as a samurai to reach her. After comic deceptions involving his father, a horse seller and a three-legged horse, the courtesan reveals she is a runaway princess who once fell for a sardine seller; the two are reunited and leave to marry.
At Ariwara Temple, a traveling monk meets a woman by a grave. She recounts the childhood love of a poet and his wife, then reveals herself as the wife’s ghost and dances beside the well where they once played.
The play opens in "a corner inside an enormous circus tent". Two vendors, Mr. Zuss (evoking the chief Greek god Zeus) and Nickles (i.e., "Old Nick," a folk name for the Devil) begin the play-within-a-play by assuming the roles of God and Satan, respectively. They overhear J.B., a wealthy New York banker, describe his prosperity as a just reward for his faithfulness to God. Scorning him, Nickles wagers that J.B. will curse God if his life is ruined. Nickles and Zuss watch as J.B.'s children are killed, his property is ruined, and the former millionaire is left to the streets. J.B. is then visited by three Comforters: Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar (representing history, science, and religion), who each offer a different explanation for his plight. J.B. declines to believe any of them, asking God himself to explain. Instead, he encounters Zuss and Nickles. Nickles urges him to commit suicide to spite God; Zuss offers him his old life back if he will promise to obey God. J.B. rejects them both, and finds comfort in the person of his wife Sarah. The play ends with the two building a new life together.
A semi-biographical play about James Thurber's childhood and eccentric family as they live through World War I.
A wartime reworking of Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals, set in July 1940.
Pasquil and Katherine face trials on their way to happiness, alongside the romance of Camelia and Planet. The play combines romantic and comic plots with satire of human folly, the absurdities of being in love, and the self-satisfied belief that some people are above foolishness.
Four flawed lower-middle-class New Yorkers navigate romantic and marital troubles while taking cooking classes, learning to swim and dealing with drug use.
The lazy servant Jenkin Careaway lies and steals to escape trouble. Jack Juggler, a trickster, dresses in Jenkin's clothes and impersonates him; when Jenkin tries to expose the prank, his master and mistress disbelieve him and punish him.
After Emma leaves her husband Jack, who has abandoned law for creative work as an island-resort bellhop, their friends' failing marriage and the arrival of new partners bring the group into confrontation.
In this absurdist play, Jack’s family arranges his marriage to Roberta; when she does not satisfy them, they present Roberta II. Their exchanges spiral through clichés and surreal conceits, including Roberta’s multiple noses.
After the Fitzgerald sisters win the lottery three times, their good fortune attracts family, opportunists and an investigator who suspects a crime.
Poor Leonard hopes to marry Lucilia, but faces competition from two wealthier, eloquent rivals: soldier Jacob von Thyboe and Styge Stygotius.
Jacques and his aristocratic Master travel through an unexplained void, exchanging and interrupting stories of romantic betrayal. An innkeeper adds a third tale, and the three stories interweave as variations on one another, while the characters' dialogue questions authorship and artistic creation.
A Caucasian woman passes herself off as a minority to sell a book to a major publishing company.
After returning from the city to his rural Bavarian village, mechanic Abram faces rumors about his homosexuality and rejection by his mother, who fears losing her standing. Hoping to fit in, he courts Tonka, whom villagers stigmatize, but his closeness to troubled Rovo turns Abram into the target of a merciless manhunt.
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding in Harlem is a salon full of funny, whip-smart, talented women ready to make you look and feel nice-nice. Every day, a lively and eclectic group of West African immigrant hair braiders are creating masterpieces on the heads of neighborhood women. On this particularly muggy summer day, Jaja’s rule-following daughter Marie is running the shop while her mother prepares for her courthouse, green-card wedding—to a man no one seems to particularly like. Just like her mother, Dreamer Marie is trying to secure her future; she’s just graduated high school and all she wants to do is go to college. While Marie deals with the customers’ and stylists’ laugh-out-loud drama, news pierces the hearts of the women of the salon, galvanizing their connections and strengthening the community they have longed to make in the United States. The uncertainty of their circumstances simmers below the surface of their lives and when it boils over, it forces this tight-knit community to confront what it means to be an outsider on the edge of the place they call home.
Hajiya Bilikisu, enslaved as a child and denied the royal title promised to her, learns that her son was secretly exchanged with the queen’s stillborn child. When her son becomes emir, she gives her life to perform the blessing required for his survival.
Writer Jake struggles to save his marriage to Maggie while interacting with women from his life, including some who exist only in his imagination.
A biographical play about 19th-century writer and philosopher Manilal Dwivedi, presenting his work as a scholar and advocate of women’s education, his illness, and the entanglement of lust, literature, and spirituality in his life.
James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire is an American stage play about author and activist James Baldwin. It was written by Howard Simon and first performed in 1999. Originally directed by Chuck Patterson, the first run starred Charles Reese as James Baldwin and Forrest McClendon as his counterpart, an ethereal force that takes multiple identities. The play uses themes from throughout Baldwin's life and writing, while also portraying 1963 as a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The setting is Baldwin's apartment on the morning of May 24, 1963, immediately before the Baldwin–Kennedy meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
A four-act comedy about the conflict between James VI of Scotland and Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, in the early 1590s, following key events of their historical conflict.
Servants William Tipson and Jane, secretly married and saving to open a store, agree to help their employer Charley Shackleton deceive his trustee by having Jane pose as Shackleton's wife. The scheme grows more complicated when Jane's cousin arrives with a baby, prompting a second mistaken claim about the child's parentage.
Jane is a play by the American writer S. N. Behrman, based on a 1923 story by Somerset Maugham. It was first staged in Britain December 1946 at the Grand Theatre in Blackpool. Its West End run at the Aldwych Theatre lasted for 274 performances from 29 January to 27 September 1947. The original cast included Yvonne Arnaud in the title role, as well as Irene Browne, Ursula Howells, Ronald Squire, Charles Victor. Arnaud was praised for her comic acting. In 1952 it was staged at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway, lasting for more than a hundred performances.
Jane Clegg, a lower-middle-class housewife, tends to her family as her feckless husband accumulates gambling debts and pursues illicit affairs.
The Tragedy of Jane Shore is a 1714 historical tragedy, written in blank verse after Shakespeare's verse dramas, by the British writer Nicholas Rowe. It was his penultimate play, and was inspired by the life of Jane Shore the mistress of King Edward IV. It premiered at the Drury Lane Theatre in London on 2 February 1714. The original cast included Anne Oldfield as Jane Shore, Robert Wilks as Dumont, Colley Cibber as the Duke of Gloucester, Barton Booth as Lord Hastings, Benjamin Husband as Catesby, John Bowman as Sir Richard Radcliff, John Mills as Bellmour and Mary Porter as Alicia. The play was a major success, and was performed eighteen times by mid-March. Rowe dedicated the published work to Charles Douglas, 3rd Duke of Queensberry, the son of the Second Duke who had employed Rowe as under-secretary when he was serving as Scottish Secretary between 1709 and 1711. Rowe wrote one further play Lady Jane Grey, another historical work set in England. In 1715 he was appointed as Poet Laureate by the new monarch George I, having been a strong supporter of the Hanoverian Succession that brought him to the throne.
A documentary historical play portraying five years in the lives of Jane and John Franklin in Hobart during Sir John's tenure as lieutenant-governor.
In an aging village in northwestern Bulgaria, an innovation brings conflict between the past and modernity, exposing tensions between communication and isolation through folklore and biblical allusions.
Jessica and Denny, though each married to someone else, meet in New York for a yearly romantic affair and write a best-selling novel together under the pen name Janus. When Jessica’s shipping-tycoon husband arrives unexpectedly, the arrangement faces disruption, compounded by a taxman investigating Denny’s false filings.
At a spa, painter Saint-Franquet pursues his friend’s wife, Micheline, who rejects him. Their shifting affairs and attempted deceptions converge in the painter’s studio and bedroom, where Bichon persuades Micheline’s husband that she only faked adultery in revenge, reconciling the couple and freeing Saint-Franquet to marry Miss Doty.
A Black veteran returns to his rural Southern home with an artificial leg and the skill to operate an adding machine, but the job he pursues is considered a white man's work. Facing relentless opposition, he ends up in Harlem, beaten but committed to returning South in a larger cause.
God sends Death to summon the wealthy bon viveur Jedermann. His friends, wealth and mistress abandon him as he faces death, in Hofmannsthal’s morality play drawing on several medieval mystery plays.
The plot revolves around Bertie Wooster deciding to stage a one-man show revolving around his recent experiences at a country house called Totleigh Towers (the events of The Code of the Woosters), only to discover, as he is starting the show, that he needs help to tell the story. He enlists his valet Jeeves to assist on very short notice, though Jeeves anticipated that Bertie would need help and has prepared some scenery. Jeeves has also asked Seppings, the butler of Bertie's aunt, to help stage the production. Problems arise both in the story Bertie is narrating and the play as it is being performed, and Jeeves intervenes to make sure all ends well. In addition to narrating, Bertie plays himself in the story. Jeeves and Seppings each play multiple characters. In addition to playing himself, Jeeves plays Sir Watkyn Bassett, an imposing silver-collector who, as a magistrate, once fined Bertie five pounds for stealing a policeman's helmet as a prank; Madeline Bassett, Sir Watkyn's excessively sentimental daughter; Gussie Fink-Nottle, a shy young man who studies newts and is engaged to Madeline; and Stiffy Byng, the scheming ward and niece of Sir Watkyn Bassett. Seppings plays himself as well as Bertie's Aunt Dahlia, the genial, loud-voiced woman who employs Seppings; Roderick Spode, a crony of Bassett and aspiring dictator; Constable Oates, the local policeman who feuds with Stiffy Byng over her dog; Butterfield, the polite butler employed by Bassett; and an unnamed antique-shop proprietor who sells a cow-creamer to Bassett. In the story recounted by Bertie, Bertie's uncle, a collector of silver and rival to Sir Watkyn Bassett, has arranged to buy a silver cow-creamer, but Bassett acquires the object first by underhanded means. Bertie's Aunt Dahlia tells Bertie to go Bassett's country house, Totleigh Towers, to steal the cow-creamer. She gets Bertie to agree by threatening to withhold her brilliant chef's cooking if he refuses, though Bertie is nervous about Bassett and his intimidating associate Spode, who are both suspicious of Bertie. Meanwhile, a rift occurs between Bertie's friend Gussie and Gussie's fiancée Madeline. This puts Bertie in danger since Madeline incorrectly believes Bertie wants to marry her, and he is expected to marry her if she drops Gussie. Gussie secretly writes insults about Bassett and Spode in a notebook, but loses the notebook and worries about what will happen if they read it. Stiffy Byng schemes to get her uncle's approval to marry a penniless curate whom she loves, and to divest her enemy Constable Oates of his helmet. Despite various challenges and mishaps, Bertie manages to tell the story of his weekend at Totleigh Towers with the assistance of Jeeves and Seppings. The conflicts in Bertie's narrative are resolved and the story is concluded. Lastly, Bertie, Jeeves, and Seppings perform a comical Charleston dance routine.
Spanning the American Revolution and its aftermath, the play contrasts Thomas Jefferson's role in writing the Declaration of Independence with slavery's continuation in the new nation and on his Monticello estate.
Jeffrey is a 1992 American play by Paul Rudnick. At first no theater would produce the play, because it was described as a comedy about AIDS, but after an acclaimed, sold-out run at the tiny WPA Theater in New York City, the show transferred for a commercial run. The play ran from December 31, 1992 to February 14, 1993 at the WPA Theatre.
Locked overnight in his favourite pub, journalist Jeffrey Bernard recounts anecdotes from his life to the audience. The autobiographical monologue includes the story behind the magazine's “Jeffrey Bernard is unwell” notice, though the production also features a supporting cast.
After Jephthah vows to sacrifice whoever first greets him on his return from war, his daughter Iphis meets him. Jephthah believes the vow binds him, while a priest and his wife urge him to spare her. Iphis moves from fear to acceptance, first framing her death as filial duty and then as Christ-like; she rejects Jephthah’s offer to die in her place and is sacrificed.
Abused peasant Jeppe is sent to buy soap, but the shoemaker’s innkeeper persuades him to spend his money on drink. A baron’s household finds him unconscious, dresses him as a nobleman, and stages a prank that makes Jeppe believe he is the baron. After he is returned to the roadside and later put through a mock trial, Jeppe becomes the village’s laughingstock.
Written during the First World War, Zweig’s nine-scene dramatic poem uses the biblical and Jewish story of Jeremiah to oppose wartime propaganda and imagine peace. Its central idea is the moral strength of the defeated, whose spirit can endure even when a people is put in chains.
Several years after the September 11 attacks, a family and their friends meet for Thanksgiving on Long Island. Their gathering grows confrontational as they discuss their experiences of the attacks, grief and their relationships.
In this one-person puppet play, David Brooks has learned puppetry in prison and, as part of his rehabilitation, reenacts the murders he committed with Dean Corll using glove puppets and ventriloquism. The performance includes audience reading of pamphlets presented as Brooks’s texts for the puppet play.
Two gay men, J.R., a disabled Vietnam veteran, and Bert, a businessman, begin as phone-sex partners and grow into caring friends through a series of telephone calls during the early AIDS epidemic. When J.R. can no longer reach Bert, he learns that Bert has died and declares his love.
Under a military regime, the opportunistic prophet Jero seeks control of religious services at public executions on Bar Beach. He brings rival prophets together in a uniformed church and appoints himself General, reshaping spiritual authority in the image of the rulers he hopes to exploit.
Jerry is a 1914 American play by Catherine Chisholm Cushing, written as a star vehicle for Billie Burke. It premiered on Broadway March 28, 1914 at the Lyceum Theatre, and the first time she played an American character onstage. They suggested that the play as first written by Cushman may have originally centered on the character of Joan Doubleday, and been rewritten to be more of a star vehicle for Burke, making it less of a comedy and more of a farce.
On St George’s Day in Wiltshire, local outsider Johnny “Rooster” Byron faces eviction from his woodland caravan as his son asks to go to the county fair, a local thug threatens him, and young friends gather for his drugs and alcohol. The day’s festivities and conflicts expose the fragile community around him and the mystery of a missing girl hiding in his caravan.
Set in a Rikers Island prison, the play follows Angel Cruz and Lucius Jenkins, who are facing murder charges. The work explores imprisonment and moral responsibility.
A young couple repeatedly declare their love until a hurricane separates them and a collision of stars unleashes a succession of grotesque, apocalyptic stage images. As the world collapses around them, the play overturns conventional figures of innocence, religion, and authority in a surreal spectacle of destruction.
A passion play and modern mystery drama performed outdoors in Bruges’s market square before the medieval cloth hall, traditionally returning every fifth year in July or August.
A satirical sotie in which the allegorical character Mother Fool represents the papacy, allowing the play to criticize it in a satire tolerated by the French king.
Two friends, one Jewish and one Gentile, help each other pursue partners from the group they each prefer, while seeking to avoid their own cultural roots or take advantage of stereotypes.
The play follows Jiang Qing from her early career as an actress in the 1930s to her political power in the 1970s, focusing on her relationships with the men in her life, including Mao Zedong. It compares her life with her best-known acting role as Nora in A Doll’s House.
Act I (Living room of Claire's penthouse at Hotel Harwich in NYC, a late spring afternoon.) Letty drops in to see Claire, but settles for the glass and bottle of gin Rosa brings her. Claire met Julie at the dock, but turned her over to Mr. Burnell for a shopping trip, and has since vanished. Del Marsh shows up with a suitcase, to be scolded by Letty on account of Julie's homecoming. He leaves to find a cot to sleep on the terrace. Claire returns in the throes of early love. She has a met another young man and given him her penthouse key, in lieu of a calling card. The door of the penthouse opens, and in comes Nathan Gifford, the young man. Letty is sent to fetch cocktails while Claire and Nathan gush over themselves. As they sip their drinks, Frank Mason comes in thru the terrace, dressed for sunbathing. Oblivious to his unwanted status, he grabs a cocktail and explains that his collaborator is writing the second act of a new play. Del returns, adding to the discomfort level. Claire introduces Nathan to Del as her instructor in Spanish. Del in turn introduces himself as Claire's dancing master. Julie enters; she remembers "Uncle Del" and "Uncle Frank" from childhood, but when Nathan proclaims himself "Uncle Nate", she contradicts him. She had encountered him at a Paris restaurant while dining with her aunt. She sent a note to his table and a photo the next day. Prompted, Nathan recalls the "schoolgirl". Claire is shocked that her daughter is as forward as herself. When asked to pass canapés to her mother's young man, Julie replies, "My young man, Uncle Del". (Curtain) Act II (Same as Act I, three weeks later at cocktail hour.) Del and Nathan arrive at the penthouse, each having been away for a few days. Del asks Nathan how he supports himself. Nathan says every so often a relative pops off: "Fortunately my ancestors were provident souls as my descendants will have to be". Del tasks Nathan about Julie's obsession with him and learns of his uneasiness at Julie's persistence. Claire, Letty and Frank join them from the terrace. Claire is upset with Del's presence, but reminds Nathan of their plans to visit Harlem that evening. Julie's arrival puts an end to cocktails and talk of Harlem. Instead, Julie reminds Nathan of his promise to take her to midnight mass at St. Nicholas'. Claire tries to forbid Julie from going out, provoking an argument. Frank takes this as a cue to move the cocktail party to his place; he and Letty leave through the terrace, but Julie won't let Nathan leave with Claire and Del. At last alone with him, she turns on the pressure. His charm and wit, effective with older women, are useless against Julie's willpower and tears. She leads him into one concession after another: he finds her attractive, he likes her, and finally he loves her. Claire and Del return to Julie's announcement of their engagement. Another mother-daughter brawl ensues, as Nathan sneaks out. Julie leaves to look for him. Del tries to get Claire to accept the inevitable, but only provokes her into calling it quits with him. (Curtain) Act III (Terrace of Claire's penthouse, three days later.) Frank, Letty, and Mrs. Finch are on the terrace, the latter two sitting at a garden table. On a table nearby is Claire's unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Their conversation reveals Julie and Nathan have disappeared, with Claire frantically trying find him. Rosa cautions Frank about putting his bottle of rye near the puzzle. Frank sneers: "A thousand pieces of nothing put together to make nothing", and tosses an unused piece over the terrace wall. Ethel calls to Frank from an upper balcony, so he and the two women go to join her in a rubber of bridge. Simpson steps out on the balcony for a moment, apologising to Ethel, then they both disappear inside. Nathan and Del arrive on the terrace, each surprised to see the other. Del twits Nathan for hiding from Julie, who has camped out in his apartment. But Rosa tells Del that Claire has ordered all his things tossed over the terrace wall. Julie shows up and puts the squeeze on Nathan, who finally tells her good-bye. Letty comes to commiserate with Julie, only to find her unmoved. Julie has told his apartment manager and all the newspapers that they will be married soon. She will run him down and manage him from here on out. Claire returns, and quarrels again with Julie, who is moving out to Nathan's. When she leaves, Del and Claire get into it, until he softens hers with blarney. The play ends as the bridge players come back to the terrace, with Claire leaning on Del's shoulder as he fits a piece into the jigsaw puzzle. (Curtain)
Time police teams Wecker and Pendel travel to eighteenth-century France to stop a crime that would prevent the French Revolution. They confront inspector Zambiel, who seeks to change history for his ideals and love of Marie Antoinette.
Jimmy Shine is a play with music. It was written by Murray Schisgal with music and lyrics by John Sebastian. The plot centers on its title character who is a struggling artist in Greenwich Village during the 1960s. Much of the story follows Jimmy's relationships with various women in his life and how he copes with love, sex, death, and rejection in relation to both himself and his art.
After Partition, Muslim refugee Sikander Mirza and his family move into a Lahore haveli and find an elderly Hindu woman who refuses to leave her former home. As communalist Yaqoob Pehalwan threatens her and a compassionate Maulvi urges coexistence, the Mirzas and neighbors form a bond with the woman and ultimately honor her Hindu funeral rites.
Regular taxi cabs will not travel to the Pittsburgh Hill District of the 1970s, and so the residents turn to jitneys—unofficial, unlicensed taxi cabs—that operate in the community. This play portrays the lives of the jitney drivers at the station owned by Jim Becker. We are rapidly introduced to the drivers at the station: solid, easy-going Korean War veteran Doub, gossipy hothead Turnbo, alcoholic Fielding, and Darnell (called Youngblood by the other drivers), an army veteran recently returned from Vietnam who is attempting to build a new life for his family. Flamboyant numbers runner Shealy is not a driver, but uses the station's phone as his base of operations. Conflict arises when Turnbo insinuates himself into Youngblood's love life, telling Youngblood's girlfriend Rena that he has been seen around town with her sister when he should have been at home with their young son. Despite his protestations of innocence, she accuses Youngblood, who has been acting secretively and has taken money needed for groceries to pay a vague "debt", of cheating on her, which he has done in the past. Youngblood attacks Turnbo for causing trouble and Turnbo pulls a gun on him, threatening to shoot him, but station boss Becker intervenes and defuses the situation. Becker's son, Clarence (nicknamed Booster) is released early from prison after serving 20 years for the murder of his college girlfriend, a white woman who had falsely accused him of rape. Becker has not visited him in prison once during that span, furious that he made sacrifices to provide for Booster's future only for him to throw it away on needless revenge. Booster comes to the station anxious to reconcile with his father, but Becker refuses to listen to him, furiously blaming him for his mother's death; she died of grief after Booster was sentenced to death. Angry recriminations are thrown on either side and Becker disowns his son. When Booster returns later to apologize, Becker pointedly ignores him. News arrives that the building housing the station is to be condemned and torn down by the city. The drivers contemplate renting new space elsewhere, or disbanding the jitney company, but later that evening Becker encourages them to resolve to fight the eviction. Youngblood admits to Rena that his secretive behavior has been because he has been saving up to buy a house as a surprise for her; her sister was helping him look at houses. Rena admonishes him for buying a house without consulting her, but acknowledges his intentions, and they reconcile. Tragedy strikes unexpectedly when Becker, who has taken a second job at the steel mill where he used to work before retiring, is killed in an industrial accident. Booster breaks down in agony on hearing his father is dead, but at the end of the play appears ready to take his place as the head of the jitney station.
Jitta, alienated from her husband, has an affair with his friend Bruno, who dies of a heart attack in a bordello. Before his death he asks her to publish his research under her husband’s name. As the truth emerges, Jitta’s husband struggles with both the betrayal and the proposed false attribution, before agreeing to edit the book; he later reveals his own affair.
A theatre company prepares to open a new Canadian play under the eyes of a visiting American producer. Ambition, backstage rivalries, faulty props, and stage fright threaten to turn the performance into a disaster.
An acting company stages a dramatization of Joan of Arc, and the story affects the performers. The fictional star Mary Grey, who plays Joan, clashes with the play's fictional director Jimmy Masters over how Joan should be portrayed; their conflict resolves during the drama.
Joanna of Montfaucon is an 1800 historical play by the British playwright Richard Cumberland. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London on 16 January 1800 and was inspired by a work by German writer August von Kotzebue. The original cast included Maria Ann Pope as Joanna, Alexander Pope as Albert, Lord of Thurn, Joseph George Holman as Lazarra, Charles Incledon as Darbony, John Waddy as Wensel, Henry Erskine Johnston as Philip, John Emery as Guntram, Charles Murray as Hermit, Joseph Shepherd Munden as Wolf, Thomas King as Ulrick, William Claremont as Mountaineer, Charles Klanert as Soldier and Nannette Johnston as Eloisa.
Content moderator Jane, placed on leave after a public breakdown, arrives for a session with therapist Loyd. Their conversation turns into a psychological confrontation when she believes he is among the users whose abusive online material she had to review, and she accuses him of crimes against his children. The play tests their conflicting accounts and the power between patient and therapist.
The biblical story of Job is combined with elements of Christ's Passion. Across seven acts and an epilogue, Job encounters repeated groups of beggars, messengers, friends, soldiers and entertainers.
In this verse interpretation of the Book of Job, Job's wife prepares to leave him, believing his suffering reflects sin. Her maid delays her with a false promise of a healer; when a mysterious healer arrives, he exposes her hypocrisy and redirects her attention from Job's lost prosperity to what his suffering reveals about her.
Showing 2,665–2,784 of 8,284 shows
Load more shows