8284 shows
Clear filtersOstrovsky's social drama probes bribery and corruption as a system embedded in everyday life, rather than as isolated wrongdoing. Officials and citizens justify their behavior within that system, putting honesty and moral responsibility under pressure.
A theatre-in-education work prompted by the murder of Leigh Leigh, focused on the victim’s peer group and conflicting responses to the crime; the murder itself is omitted.
This social drama, subtitled Pictures of Rural Life, centers on Nadya and depicts abuses of power and the immorality of Russian landowners. Its restrained portrayal of the heroine drew praise from literary critics, while censors barred the work from the Imperial Theatres for its depiction of the gentry.
Darya Ivanovna, the wife of a poor provincial official, wants to escape her provincial town for life in the capital. She schemes to draw Count Lubin, newly arrived from St Petersburg, into a love affair so he will help advance her husband's career and secure the family's move; the count accepts her promises.
Jonathan Wilson revisits the people and places of his queer youth in Toronto. Personal memories and shifting characters trace the Village’s past and its legacy for a new generation.
In the form of a screenplay written and performed by Walt Disney about himself, the play depicts his last days and his plan to build EPCOT as a city that will change the world.
In a contemporary queer retelling, Ebenezer “Ben” Scrooge is a successful but stingy interior designer who denies health benefits to his assistant Bob Cratchit and Bob's HIV-positive partner Tim. The ghost of Scrooge's former lover and business partner Jake Marley warns him; Christmas spirits reveal his past, his lover's AIDS-related death, and Tim's and Scrooge's possible futures, prompting him to change.
In this imagined inquiry into Anthony Blunt's divided life as an art expert and Soviet agent, Blunt supervises a restoration, discovers a concealed figure beneath paint, and faces questions of art, secrecy and loyalty.
A Question of Fact is a 1953 play by the British writer Wynyard Browne. A schoolteacher questions his beliefs and his career when he discovers that his father was hanged for murder. It was first staged at the New Theatre, Oxford before transferring to the Piccadilly Theatre in London's West End where it ran for 242 performances between 10 December 1953 and 10 July 1954. The original cast included Pamela Brown, Paul Scofield, Gladys Cooper, Henry Hewitt, Maureen Delany and Edith Sharpe.
A slightly perplexed tour guide introduces visitors to Mount Rushmore.
Three gay men living with HIV share a Manhattan apartment as illness, homophobia, faith and strained relationships shape their final months. After Tony dies, Billy returns to his family and Max accepts the support of his former partner Jason.
The Younger family in Chicago hopes to improve its circumstances with a life-insurance payment. Walter plans to invest in a liquor store, while his mother uses part of the money to buy a home in a white neighborhood; after the remaining funds are stolen, the family faces a buyout offer intended to keep them from moving in.
In a nonchronological, magical-realist dialogue, Black siblings Kay and Blake—figured as Sister Rat and Brother Rat—recount their circumstances in a house they call a cathedral and their longing for Rosemary, a white child. Their dreamlike, violent world uses racial and religious imagery to explore identity and power.
This early Brecht play critiques bourgeois society through a wedding and the people gathered around it.
Patrick Garland's stage adaptation presents Virginia Woolf's argument that women need financial independence and private space to write fiction. Woolf frames the discussion through a speaker's reflections on women's exclusion from education and literary history, including the imagined life of Shakespeare's sister Judith.
Jane Prowse’s stage adaptation presents selected real-life encounters from Jane Juska’s late-life adventures in sex and romance, following Juska’s newspaper advertisement seeking a man with whom to have sex and the replies it elicited.
A Safety Match is a 1921 play by the British writer Ian Hay, adapted from his own 1911 novel of the same title. It ran for 229 performances at the Strand Theatre in London's West End between 13 January and 3 August 1921. The cast included Herbert Marshall and Clifford Mollison.
John McGrath's contemporary morality adaptation of Lindsay's political satire confronts abuses in Scotland's clergy, lords, and burgh representatives through a demand for reform.
Young King Humanity is led away from moral rule by Sensuality and corrupt counsellors, while figures representing the clergy, lords, and burghs evade accountability. In the second part, the Poor Man and John Commonweal demand reform; Divine Correction frees the virtuous and advises the king to call Parliament.
A School for Greybeards is a comedy play by the British writer Hannah Cowley that premiered on November 25, 1786. The original cast included Thomas King as Don Alexis, John Philip Kemble as Don Henry, William Parsons as Don Gasper, John Bannister as Don Sebastian, John Palmer as Don Octavio, Mary Ann Wrighten as Rachel, Ann Maria Crouch as Donna Maria, Sarah Maria Wilson as Carlota, Margaret Cuyler as Donna Clara and Elizabeth Farren as Donna Seraphina.
Sir Arthur and Lady Stanmore have been married for five weeks and are very happy. However, her friend Miss Raven persuades her to behave in a capricious manner to her husband leading to a falling out. A similar story follows Sir Arthur's acquaintance, the wealthy Revel and his spendthrift son who he decides to teach a less by pretending he has lost his fortune.
A drama about the personal relationship between the poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.
Martin Lynch-Gibbon's marriage and affair unravel when his wife Antonia reveals she is leaving him for her psychoanalyst, Palmer Anderson. As Martin's relationships with Georgie and Palmer's half-sister Honor entangle the families, hidden affairs and shifting attachments lead to an unexpected final pairing.
In 1946 New York, two sisters reunite after the older survived Nazi camps while the younger emigrated with their father before the war. The elder sister's memories of family and wartime separation confront the younger's Americanized life and the father's guilt as they try to rebuild their family bond.
In Roman Britain, princes Elred and Offa flee after their father’s defeat and disguise themselves as shoemakers. Offa, as Crispin, secretly marries Princess Leodice; Elred, as Crispianus, becomes a Roman military hero, while the Christian officer Albon and hermit Amphiabel are martyred. The subplot follows Winifred’s religious vocation and martyrdom, which inspires shoemakers’ honorific 'the gentle craft.'
Josefa, a maid found unconscious beside her Spanish lover's body and the gun that killed him, repeatedly changes her account while an inexperienced examining magistrate investigates. He discovers that she is trying to protect her other lover, her wealthy employer, and pursues the mystery despite pressure to obtain a quick confession.
A duet performance work based on the life of Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the United States Congress.
Four English soldiers trapped overnight in a bombed cathedral quarrel, then sleep and experience dreams shaped by their attitudes to life and death. The dreams take on an Old Testament character.
Hereditary evil runs through three generations of a medical family, in the 'conflict of social morality and natural desires' - the dissolute and murderous Camerons (from 1867 to 1935) - before a son and daughter finally redeem the family name.
A married couple's dreams and desires center on Edward's fears of the unknown, aging, and the matchseller as a threat to his identity.
Jack McCracken takes charge of his family’s furniture business hoping to establish honest practices. He discovers that the relatives around him have much to gain from keeping its dishonest dealings intact.
Mrs Ferguson issues an invitation to a local Canadian Army base for one of the soldiers to spend Christmas with them. When he arrives he finds the house overwhelmed with the emotional issues of both of the Ferguson's daughters, plus a WAAF girl who has been billeted on them. The arrival of the easygoing Canadian leads to further turmoil in the Ferguson household.
In 1944 at the United States Army's Fort Neal in Louisiana, a light-skinned black man Sergeant Vernon Waters is murdered by an unseen shooter. Just before his death, Waters utters the enigmatic cry, "They still hate you!" Captain Richard Davenport is a black Army officer; a rarity. He arrives to investigate the killing. Initially, the primary suspects are local Ku Klux Klansmen. Later, bigoted white soldiers fall under suspicion. Ultimately, Davenport discovers the killer was one of the black soldiers under Waters' command. Waters' men hated him because Waters himself treated Southern black men with disdain and contempt. As Davenport interviews witnesses and suspects, flashbacks show what Sergeant Waters was like, and how he treated his men. The light-skinned Waters was highly intelligent and extremely ambitious. He loathed black men who conformed to old-fashioned racist stereotypes. Waters dreamed of sending his own children to an elite college where they would associate with white students, rather than with other blacks. In Waters' mind, Uncle Toms and "lazy, shiftless Negroes" reflected poorly on him, and made it harder for other African-Americans to succeed. For that reason, Waters persecuted black soldiers like Private C.J. Memphis, whose broad grin and jive talk infuriated Waters. Waters' cruelty and vindictiveness drove Memphis to suicide, which alienated the rest of Waters' men and turned them against him. Shortly before he was murdered, Waters came to realize how futile and foolish his lifelong attempts to behave like a white man had been. His dying words, "They still hate you," reflected his belated understanding that white hatred and disdain of black men like himself had nothing to do with stereotypical black behavior, and that whites would probably always hate him, no matter how hard he tried to emulate "white" ways.
An elderly writer's former mistress confronts him with letters revealing the truth about his past relationships, including his love for a deceased man. His wife helps negotiate the return of the letters as the former lovers revisit their history.
A Song of Sixpence is a 1930 British comedy play by the writers Ian Hay and Guy Bolton. Set in Scotland, it tells the story of three wives who rebel against their tight-fisted husbands. The play premiered at the Kings Theatre, Southsea, before transferring to the West End. It ran for 79 performances at Daly's Theatre between 17 March and 25 May 1930. The cast included Ian Hunter, Olive Blakeney, Jack Lambert and Campbell Gullan.
Chiappino offers to take the blame after his friend Luitolfo strikes the ruler of Faenza. When the townspeople acclaim him as their liberator instead of condemning him, he accepts the credit. The prospect of power tests his professed principles as the papal legate Ogniben draws out his self-deception.
On an outback property, the Dennison family faces illness, separation and thwarted plans. Margaret, who is dying of brain cancer, falls in love with the family’s boarder, poet Peter; Helen leaves for Sydney, while Kerry’s love for grazier’s son Geoff is constrained by her responsibilities at home.
At the remote island home of their adopted father, Myles Fletcher and Randal Devlin Scout are joined by their caretaker, Fletcher’s former lover and other houseguests. The reunion grows tense as a fashion designer exposes their secrets, until their father’s corpse appears from behind the curtains; the whodunnit uses a Faust-inspired killer, adoption secrets and a cast linked to the seven deadly sins.
Chicago police officers Joey and Denny are longtime partners and best friends. Joey is single and lonely, and Denny is married with children, but both men have flaws and serious problems. Denny cares deeply for his family, and that provides the justification for his criminal actions. Introverted Joey struggles with a drinking problem and secretly loves Denny's wife, Connie; angry tough-guy Denny can barely disguise his racism and cheats on Connie with a prostitute on his beat. The two men offer contrasting descriptions to Internal Affairs interrogators of their harrowing experiences. They relate how Walter Lorenz, a pimp that Denny has harassed over the years, shoots a bullet through Denny's front window, causing the flying glass to sever an artery in Denny's son's neck. Denny pursues Lorenz relentlessly, drawing Joey into a series of dangerous and incriminating activities. During a domestic disturbance call, the two return a frightened Vietnamese boy to a man who says he is the boy's uncle. The uncle turns out to be a cannibalistic serial killer, who eats the boy.
In a Bucharest neighborhood, Guard captain Dumitrache mistakes law clerk Rică Venturiano for a man pursuing his wife Veta, unaware that Venturiano has entered the wrong house while courting her sister Zița. As the household chases him through the night, the secret affair between Veta and Dumitrache’s assistant Chiriac is exposed to the audience, while Dumitrache remains largely oblivious.
Lermontov’s romantic drama follows poet Vladimir Arbenin, a protagonist partly modeled on the author. The play uses Arbenin’s story to examine the intellectual burdens and social concerns of a new generation in Russian society.
In this monodrama, the reclusive, misanthropic Monk O’Neill reflects on his past and tries to remake himself through solitude, memory and creative imagination.
Morgan Cervieng grows toward adulthood amid family life, grief, and the transformation of 1950s Luleå. As familiar neighborhoods disappear under industrial change, the family chronicle asks what people can preserve of a childhood, a city, or even a beloved dog.
On a quiet Sunday morning, Sue Jones prepares breakfast for her grandsons as they get ready for church. After a white woman is attacked, police arrest Sue's grandson Tom on her uncertain identification; before help arrives, a mob lynches him.
A Tailor-Made Man is a 1917 American play by Harry James Smith, which ran for 398 performances at the Cohan and Harris Theatre. It debuted on August 27, 1917, and played through August 1918. The play was adapted from the 1908 Hungarian play A Szerencse Fia ("Son of Luck") by Gábor Drégely. The Playbill and press referred to Dregely's play as The Well-Fitting Dress Coat, which derives from the play's German title (Der gutsitzende Frack), so presumably Smith worked from that translation. Grant Mitchell starred in the 1917 Broadway production, which was staged by Sam Forrest, and in an October 1929 revival. The play ran for just shy of an entire year at the Cohan and Harris Theatre in New York. The play was Smith's greatest success, but he did not live to see the full run, as he died in a train and automobile accident in March 1918 while working for the Red Cross. Actor Theodore Friebus, who played Dr. Sonntag, died in the wings during a performance on December 26, 1917, while awaiting his second act cue. The thirty-eight year-old actor succumbed to heart disease; an understudy finished that night's performance. The play later led to a 1922 silent film and 1931 film.
Rattigan and Gielgud's dramatization of Dickens is set during the French Revolution in London and Paris, using a flexible ensemble to portray its many roles. Gielgud planned to play Sydney Carton and several other characters.
On St Valentine’s Day, several suitors pursue Audrey Turfe, daughter of a constable. Squire Tub tries to break her engagement to John Clay by falsely accusing him of theft, while Justice Preamble uses a similar ruse against Tub. In the confusion, Pol-Marten marries Audrey, and a wedding masque retells the play’s story.
In the first scene, Helen and her teenage daughter Jo are moving into a shabby flat. Within a few minutes, the audience learns that they have little money, living off Helen's immoral earnings—money given to her by her lovers; she is not a true prostitute, being more of a "good time girl." Helen is a regular drinker, and she and Jo have a confrontational and ambiguously interdependent relationship. As they settle, Helen's surprise at some of Jo's drawings both suggests Jo's talent and originality and shows Helen's lack of interest and knowledge about her daughter. Jo rejects the idea of going to an art school, blaming Helen for having interrupted her training all too often by moving her constantly from one school to another. Jo now only wants to leave school and earn her own money so that she can get away from Helen. After this conversation, Peter (Helen's younger boyfriend) comes in. Jo assumes that Helen has moved here to escape from him, but the audience never is told the reason. Peter had not realised how old Helen was until he sees her daughter. Nonetheless he asks Helen to marry him, first half-jokingly, then more or less in earnest. In the next scene, Jo is walking home in the company of her black boyfriend. During a light-hearted, semi-serious dialogue, he asks her to marry him, and she agrees, but he is in the navy and will be away on his ship for six months before they can marry. He gives Jo a ring that she hangs around her neck under her clothes to hide it from Helen. Jo tells him that she is really leaving school and that she is going to start a part-time job in a pub. At the flat, Helen informs Jo that she is going to marry Peter. Peter enters, and a dialogue ensues among the three. Instead of only Jo and Helen attacking each other, a more complex pattern evolves: Jo attacks the others, the others attack Jo, and Helen attacks both Peter and Jo. Jo is truly upset at the thought of Helen marrying Peter, but pesters and provokes him in an effort to antagonise him. After Helen and Peter leave her on her own for Christmas, Jo weeps, and she is consoled by her boyfriend. She invites him to stay over Christmas, but she has a feeling that she never will see him again. The action moves to the occasion of Helen's wedding, the day after Christmas. Jo has a cold and will not be able to attend at the wedding. Because she is in her pyjamas, Helen catches a glimpse of the ring around her neck and learns the truth. She scolds Jo violently for thinking of marrying so young, one of her occasional bursts of real feeling and concern for her daughter. Asked by Jo about her real father, Helen explains that she had been married to a "Puritan" and that she had to look elsewhere for sexual pleasure. Thus she had her first sexual experience with Jo's father, a "not very bright man," a "bit retarded". She then hurries off to her wedding. Several months later, Jo is living alone in the same shabby flat. She works in a shoe shop by day and in a bar in the evenings to afford the rent. She is pregnant, and her boyfriend has not come back to her. She returns from a funfair to the flat in the company of Geoff, an art student, who has possibly been thrown out from his former lodgings because his landlady suspected he was gay. Jo offends him with insensitive questions about his sexuality, and he in turn maliciously criticises her drawings. She apologises and asks him to stay, sleeping on the couch. Geoff develops genuine concern for Jo's situation, and they develop a friendly, light-hearted relationship. The audience next sees Jo irritable and depressed by her pregnancy, with Geoff patiently consoling her. Then, seeking reassurance, he kisses her and asks her to marry him. Jo says that, although she likes him, she cannot marry him. She makes a sexual pass at him which he fails to recognise, confirming that "it is not marrying love between us". At this point, Helen enters. She has been contacted by Geoff, who wishes to keep this fact secret from Jo. Jo, however, guesses as much, and she is angry with both Helen and Geoff. Geoff tries to interfere in the quarrel between the two women, but each time, he is attacked by one or the other or both. As Helen is offering Jo money, Peter comes in, very drunk, and takes back the money and Helen's offer of a home to Jo. He leaves, insisting that Helen come with him; after a moment's hesitation, she runs after him. In the next scene, the baby is due at any moment. Jo and Geoff seem happy. He reassures her that Helen was probably mistaken about or exaggerating the mental deficiencies of Jo's father. Geoff has bought a doll for Jo to practise handling the baby, but Jo flings it to the ground because it is the wrong colour: Jo assumes that her baby will be as black as its father. Her momentary outburst against the baby, motherhood and womanhood is short-lived, and she and Geoff are about to have tea when Helen enters with all her luggage. Apparently, she has been thrown out by Peter and now plans to move in with her daughter. To get rid of Geoff, she behaves rudely to him while overwhelming Jo with advice and presents. Jo defends Geoff, but while she is asleep, Geoff decides to leave because Helen is determined and he does not want Jo to be pulled between them. Jo wakes, and Helen pretends that Geoff is out doing the shopping. When her mother learns that the baby will be black, she loses her nerve and rushes out for a drink, even though Jo's labour pains have begun. Alone, Jo comforts herself by humming a tune Geoff used to sing, still not realising that he has in fact gone.
Nat Weiss (played by Mason himself in the Broadway production) is a Jewish widower who learns that his son is in love with a black woman. Eventually Nat himself falls in love with the woman's mother. The play's title is not explained in the play itself.
Romeo and Juliet are imagined as an elderly couple facing illness, memory, and the prospect of separation. Rearranged passages from Shakespeare create a new account of enduring love and the demands of caring for another person.
A satirical comedy caricatures American politics through the story of Maverick Brander, a Texan thrust into politics, and his wife Bossy's ascent into society.
A cycle of three plays set in a mythical West Texas town, using distinctive language and characters to depict small-town Texas life.
A Thousand Clowns is a comedic stage play written by American playwright Herb Gardner. The play premiered on Broadway in 1962 and was a critical and commercial success. The play was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play and since the original production has been revived twice on Broadway in 1996 and 2001.
As an apocalypse approaches in a fortnight, a mother gathers her five sons at their family farm near Middlesbrough. With the universe beginning to crumble, family secrets emerge and a lost love may be renewed as they prepare to face the unknown.
A comedy revue of James Thurber sketches, fables and satires, including “The Night the Bed Fell,” “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “File and Forget,” which recounts his unwanted-book correspondence.
In 1804, women organize a play to entertain George III and the troops amid the threatened Napoleonic invasion. Against local class divisions and smuggling, a well-born young woman falls passionately in love with the youngest son of a notorious smuggling family.
Using Brechtian epic-theatre techniques, Jack Hibberd's popular play presents the life of opera singer Nellie Melba from her childhood in Melbourne to her death in Egypt. The role calls for an actor who can sing arias and parlour songs, alongside essential recorded music.
In 1828 Massachusetts, ageing tavern owner Major Cornelius Melody is a braggart and social climber, struggling against the American class system and the loss of his self-image.
A Touch of the Sun is a 1958 play by the British writer N.C. Hunter It premiered at the Grand Theatre in Blackpool before moving to the West End, initially at the Saville Theatre before transferring to the Princes Theatre. Its original run lasted for 202 performances between 31 January and 26 July 1958. The cast included Michael Redgrave, Diana Wynyard, Vanessa Redgrave and Ronald Squire Michael Redgrave won the Best Actor award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
Ivan Tolkachov asks his friend Murashkin for a revolver and vents about the burdens in his life. When Murashkin also asks him to deliver a sewing machine and canary, Tolkachov snaps and chases him around the room, demanding blood.
Indebted gentleman Witgood disguises his former mistress as a wealthy widow to trick his usurer uncle into restoring his estates. The rival usurer Hoard steals the supposed widow, unaware she is penniless; she persuades Lucre to return Witgood’s property, while Witgood uses a feigned precontract to make Hoard pay his debts and marries Joyce. At the wedding, Hoard discovers the deception, but the parties reconcile.
Two poor middle-aged aristocrats, Lady Filmot and Lord Stewkly, try to arrange marriages between their younger children, Lucy Tryfort and Edward Bull, for the younger characters’ money.
Jenny Minnikin elopes to France with her father's assistant, Dick Drugget, to avoid an arranged marriage. She hides in a convent while her family pursues her, and Lady Kitty Crocodile proposes that Jenny marry both Dick and her other suitor, Kit Codling; a parallel courtship concerns Lady Kitty's maid and Colonel Crosby.
Penniless Tom Fashion schemes to marry the wealthy Miss Hoyden before his brother Lord Foppington can, enlisting friends and exploiting a mistaken identity to secure a bride and fortune. Parallel romantic deceptions complicate the plan.
A True Widow is a 1678 comedy play by the English writer Thomas Shadwell. It was first staged by the Duke's Company at the Dorset Garden Theatre in London. The names of the original cast are unknown. The prologue was written by Shadwell's colleague John Dryden. It was published the following year and dedicated to Charles Sedley.
In the fictional Texas town of Tuna, residents prepare for the annual Christmas yard-display contest, repeatedly disrupted by a vandal called the Christmas Phantom. Side stories follow Stanley's probation, Bertha's family and Joe Bob's troubled amateur production of A Christmas Carol.
A Tutor for the Beaus: Or Love in a Labyrinth is a 1737 comedy play by the British writer John Hewitt. It drew inspiration from an earlier one-act play Le Français à Londres by the French writer Louis de Boissy. The original cast included James Rosco as Lord Manly, Benjamin Johnson as Sir Charles Freelove, Thomas Wright as Belville, William Giffard as Heatly, Henry Woodward as Young Manly and Anna Marcella Giffard as Pinup.
A short play about the imprecision of DNA technology, presented within a program of plays exploring ancestry, identity, and confusion.
A Very Good Wife is a 1693 comedy play by the English writer George Powell. It was first performed by the United Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with a cast that included Powell as Courtwitt, John Hodgson as Wellborn, William Bowen as Squeezwit, George Bright as Venture, Joseph Haines as Sneaksby, Colley Cibber as Aminadab, Susanna Mountfort as Annabella, Frances Maria Knight as Widow Lacy, Elinor Leigh as Mrs Sneaksby.
In Palm Beach, a writer modeled on Bob Ellis is left alone while his wife and child are away. He entertains a public-service worker, a poet friend, and a journalist whose child he fathered; the episodic, music-filled play frames their private jokes and relationships against political crises and the end of the Whitlam decade.
In Copenhagen, Hans Christian Andersen’s celebrated children’s stories have a hidden source: a woman kept secret in the attic of his townhouse.
In Spanish-ruled Palermo, two pairs of young lovers face conflict after Almira rejects Prince Antonio, who then wounds her intended suitor Cardenes. Antonio returns disguised as a Turkish slave and becomes a go-between; after a pirate attack, his identity is revealed and the couples’ marriages are resolved, though Cardenes has changed through his recovery from injury and depression.
The action is narrated by Alfieri, who was raised in 1900s Italy but is now working as an American lawyer, thereby representing the "Bridge" between the two cultures. In the opening speech, Alfieri describes the violent history of the small Brooklyn community of Red Hook and tells us that the second-generation Sicilians are now more civilized, more American, and are prepared to "settle for half" and let the law handle their disputes. But there are exceptions, and he then begins to narrate the story of Eddie Carbone, an Italian American longshoreman who lives with his wife Beatrice and her orphaned niece Catherine. Eddie is a good man who, although ostensibly protective and fatherly towards Catherine, harbors a growing passion for her as she approaches her 18th birthday. We learn that he has not had sex with his wife for nearly three months. Catherine is studying to become a stenographer and Eddie objects to her taking a job she has been offered until she finishes her coursework, expressing a dislike for the way she dresses and the interest she is beginning to show in men. Beatrice is more supportive of Catherine's ventures and persuades Eddie to let her take the job. Eddie returns home one afternoon with the news that Beatrice's two cousins, brothers Marco and Rodolpho, have safely arrived in New York as illegal immigrants. He has agreed to house them saying that he is honored to be able to help family. Marco is quiet and thoughtful, possessing remarkable strength, whereas Rodolpho is more unconventional, with plans to make a career singing in America. Marco has a family starving in Italy and plans to return after working illegally for several years, whereas Rodolpho intends to stay. Although Eddie, Beatrice, and Catherine are at first excellent hosts, cracks appear when Rodolpho and Catherine begin dating. Eddie convinces himself that Rodolpho is homosexual and is only expressing interest in Catherine so he can marry her and gain status as a legal citizen. He confronts Catherine with his beliefs and she turns to Beatrice for advice. Beatrice, starting to realize Eddie's true feelings, tells her that she should marry Rodolpho and move out. In the meantime, Eddie turns to Alfieri, hoping for help from the law. However, Alfieri tells him that the only recourse he has is to report Rodolpho and Marco as undocumented. Seeing no solution to his problem, Eddie becomes increasingly desperate and takes his anger out on Rodolpho and, in teaching him to box, "accidentally" injures him. Marco reacts by quietly threatening Eddie, showing his strength by holding a heavy chair above Eddie's head with one hand and "smiling with triumph". A few months have passed and Eddie reaches a breaking point when he discovers that Catherine and Rodolpho have slept together and are intent on marrying. Drunk, he kisses Catherine and then attempts to prove that Rodolpho is gay by suddenly and passionately kissing him. After a violent confrontation, Eddie orders Rodolpho to leave the apartment. Eddie visits Alfieri and insists that the kiss has proved Rodolpho is gay and that he is only marrying Catherine for citizenship, but once again Alfieri says the law cannot help. Out of desperation, Eddie phones immigration services but in the meantime, Beatrice has arranged for Marco and Rodolpho to move in with two other undocumented immigrants in the flat above. Eddie learns that Catherine and Rodolpho have arranged to marry within a week and about the two new immigrants that have moved into the building and, with both anger and fright, frantically urges Catherine and Beatrice to move them out. When immigration officials arrive and arrest Marco, Rodolpho, and the two other immigrants, Eddie pretends that the arrest comes as a complete surprise to him, but Beatrice and Marco see through this. Marco spits in Eddie's face in front of everyone and accuses Eddie of killing his starving children. Eddie tries to convince the neighborhood of his innocence but they turn away from him. Alfieri visits Marco and Rodolpho in custody, obtaining their release on bail until their hearing comes up. Alfieri explains that Rodolpho will be able to stay once he has married Catherine but warns Marco that he will have to return to Italy. Vengeful, Marco confronts Eddie publicly on his release, and Eddie turns on him with a knife, demanding that he take back his accusations and restore his honor. In the ensuing scuffle, Eddie is stabbed with his own knife by Marco and dies, as his stunned family and neighbors stand around. When he witnesses Eddie's death, Alfieri trembles because he realizes that, even though it was wrong, something "perversely pure" calls to him and he is filled with admiration. But, he tells the audience, settling for half-measures is better, it must be, and so he mourns Eddie with a sense of alarm at his own feelings.
John Mortimer’s autobiographical play portrays his father Clifford, a blind barrister determined to ignore his blindness, and the son who recalls their relationship with humor and affection.
The play revolves around the true-life story in 1926 of a visit by famed violinist Jascha Heifetz to British Mandatory Palestine, where he performed in a stone quarry at the Ein Harod kibbutz. After the concert, Heifetz goes on a long walk with Yehuda Sharett, the kibbutz movement pioneer, composer and brother to Zionist leader (and later first Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister of Israel) Moshe Sharett. The play deals with the reverberations of that visit on the Sharett brothers and the implications of Yehuda's conversation with Heifetz on the creation of Israel, as 20 years later the brothers meet as war looms on the horizon.
Over a year of arms-limitation negotiations, a Soviet diplomat and an American negotiator meet for walks in the woods above Geneva. Their contrasting temperaments gradually give way to a personal relationship amid the strain of diplomacy.
In three acts, Michael Carney confronts his father and brothers, an Irish immigrant family in Coventry whose hard-drinking criminal violence threatens to engulf them. Michael attempts to resist the family's destructive tribal code.
King Frederick offers the chaste Evanthe riches to become his mistress; when she refuses, he arranges her marriage to Valerio for a month and threatens to execute each husband. Valerio hides the king’s coercion while he and Evanthe remain loyal to one another, until a rebellion overturns Frederick’s rule.
A Wife to be Lett is a 1723 comedy play by the British writer Eliza Haywood. Better known for her novels, it was Haywood's first theatrical play. Staged at the Drury Lane Theatre the cast included Theophilus Cibber as Toywell, William Wilks as Sir Harry Beaumont, Roger Bridgewater as Captain Gaylove, James Oates as Courtly and John Harper as Shamble. Haywood herself played the part of the wife Mrs. Graspall, due to an illness of the original actress.
Cleo, a respected founder of a women’s health center in Northampton, tries to move forward after her daughter Jo is imprisoned for killing a man. The play reimagines All My Sons through a contemporary woman leading her community.
As Sir John Worldly arranges wealthy husbands for his daughters, Nevill stages sham weddings to thwart the matches. The daughters pursue their own loves, while the comedy exposes the men’s slander and deceit and brings about love matches against their father’s wishes.
When Frankford discovers that his wife Anne has had an affair with his friend Wendoll, he expels her to live apart rather than execute her, and eventually forgives her as she lies dying. A parallel plot follows the poverty-stricken Charles and Susan and Sir Francis's shift from vengeance to love.
Mrs Arbuthnot faces Lord Illingworth, the man who abandoned her after they conceived their son Gerald. When Illingworth offers Gerald a position as his secretary, old secrets and a new courtship force the family to confront the consequences of his past conduct. Mrs Arbuthnot rejects his proposed marriage and chooses life with Gerald and Hester.
Beginning as an abused orphan in 1905, Kei enters the Tsutsumi household as a maid and proves gifted in the family's China trade. She marries Shintarō at his mother's request, though she loves his brother Eiji; later business and political disagreements divide her from her husband, while her decision to report Eiji's activism drives away her daughter.
A Woman's Revenge, or a Match in Newgate is a 1715 comedy play by the British writer Christopher Bullock. It was originally performed as an afterpiece to another work The Lucky Prodigal. With its Newgate Prison setting and cynical references to corruption, it could be regarded as a precursor to John Gay's hit The Beggar's Opera of a decade later. The cast included William Bullock as Thinkwell, John Thurmond as Bevil, Christopher Bullock as Vizard and Sarah Thurmond as Corinna. George, Prince of Wales attended the first performance.
A Word for Nature is a 1798 comedy play by the British writer Richard Cumberland. It is also known by the alternative title of The Passive Husband. The original Drury Lane cast included James Aickin as Lord Glenadry, Richard Suett as Sir Toby Truckle, William Barrymore as Clifton, John Bannister as Leonard, Robert Palmer as Starling, William Dowton as Runic and Jane Pope as Lady Truckle.
A Word to the Ladies or A Word for the Ladies is an 1818 comedy play by the British writer James Kenney. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden on 17 December 1818. The original cast included William Macready as Winterland, Charles Mayne Young as Larum, Charles Kemble as Dorrington, Elizabeth Yates as Miss Singleton, Harriet Faucit as Clara Winterland, Charles Connor as Adamant, William Abbot as Young Bowerscourt, William Farren as Old Bowerscourt, John Liston as Silvertongue and John Emery as Snugg.
Meg Murry travels through space and time with her brother and a friend to find her missing father.
An anonymous student, signing as X, writes her mathematics teacher about infinity. The teacher initially resists but becomes drawn into their exchange of 33 letters across the school year; the student reveals her struggles, treatment and the reason she stopped wearing a yellow butterfly brooch, while the correspondence increasingly unsettles both lives.
A Yorkshire gentleman's husband becomes consumed by drink, gambling, debt, and violence. In a fit of despair over his family's poverty, he stabs his children and wounds his wife and servants; he is captured before he can kill his youngest child and is taken to trial.
A realistic drama of Hungarian peasant life.
Two angels use music in an effort to persuade a despairing person to keep living. Their unusual assignment becomes a reflection on human connection and the power people invest in songs.
A bilingual English-Yoruba adaptation of Macbeth.
Across eight loosely connected scenes, a humanoid robot encounters a dying creator, a boy, a sex worker, an engineer, a psychologist, an employment clerk and an actress. The scenes move through death, humor, desire, violence, work and relationships as the robot searches for love.
Framed by a postwar meeting between Anne Frank and her childhood friend Peter Schiff, the play follows the Frank family’s years in hiding in Amsterdam’s Secret Annex, from Anne’s thirteenth birthday through the family’s arrest and deportation. Anne moves between the wartime story and the frame to reflect on her diary and ambition to write.
A sequence of encounters outside an automatic teller machine builds into a satirical, episodic portrait of urban life, with six performers playing more than fifty characters.
A couple sit apart on a bare stage and answer an unseen interrogator, recounting their troubled lives and the killing of their two children. The play draws on trial and media material, while its ending casts doubt on the reliability of the couple’s testimony.
Two neighboring couples, one older and one younger, clash over marriage, live-in relationships, and family expectations. The first act has the older couple observe the younger pair; in the second, the younger couple watch the older pair, with actors also addressing the audience.
An Urdu drama about treachery and the harms of prostitution.
Captive Moor Abdelazer seeks revenge on the Spanish king who killed his father and becomes the Queen’s lover. They poison the King and Prince Ferdinand, but Abdelazer later betrays the Queen, courts Princess Leonora and falls from power; Prince Philip ascends the throne, and Abdelazer is captured and killed.
Abe Lincoln in Illinois is a play written by the American playwright Robert E. Sherwood in 1938, based principally on the 1926 biography Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years by Carl Sandburg. The play, in three acts, covers the life of President Abraham Lincoln from his childhood through his final speech in Illinois before he left for Washington. The play also covers his romance with Mary Todd and his debates with Stephen A. Douglas, and uses Lincoln's own words in some scenes. Sherwood received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1939 for his work.
A Genesis-inspired tramelogedia bringing together the first humans after creation—Adam, Eva, Cain and Abel—and spiritual beings including God, Beelzebub, Sin, Envy, Death, angels and demons.
King Duṣyanta marries Śakuntalā, then forgets her after a sage's curse; a lost signet ring eventually restores his memory and reunites the couple with their son.
A long-suffering young wife endures a miserable marriage to Henry Marsden, a drunken sadist. A doctor takes her away from the household; the final scene brings Madame Marsden together with the old nurse.
Nichols' original Broadway play has the couple meeting in France during World War I. The young man is a wounded soldier and the girl a nurse who tended him. The priest and the rabbi from the wedding are veterans of the same war, and recognize one another from their time in the service. The rest of the plot was summarized by Judge Learned Hand in his opinion on the copyright lawsuit filed by Nichols: There have been some variations of the plot, as to setting, or how the characters meet, in later versions of the play or in adaptations for film.
A suburban comedy of manners in which Beverley and her husband host new neighbours and another neighbour for drinks while the guests navigate strained social expectations; the evening ends with Laurence suffering a fatal heart attack.
An elderly couple, identified as Old Man and Old Woman, talk and argue in four short scenes named for meals, set in their condo kitchen. Their conversations revolve around preparing and eating food, aging, their past, marriage, sex, and death.
Hermit Abraham and his companion Effrem guide his orphaned niece Mary into a life of chastity. After Mary is seduced and leaves the religious life to become a prostitute, Abraham finds her years later disguised as a lover. He persuades her to return, and she undertakes severe penance as the hermits celebrate her redemption.
John Drinkwater’s play follows Abraham Lincoln’s presidency from his election in 1860 through his assassination, omitting most of his private life.
A verse drama retelling Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and the test of Abraham's faith.
When Colin returns to his circle of friends after his fiancée's death, Diana hosts a tea party. Colin appears euphorically happy while the others' marital tensions and secrets threaten to erupt.
Across three successive Christmas Eves, three married couples gather in different homes as their fortunes shift: socially awkward Sidney rises in status while the others' careers and relationships falter.
In 1860s Wyoming, mail-order brides Macon Hill and Bess Johnson form a lasting friendship while their marriages and hopes for frontier prosperity founder. After Bess disappears and returns with a public story of captivity, the women confront betrayal, hardship, and the distance between material success and emotional abundance.
A four-act poetic tragedy about people facing social injustice and being left alone with their experiences.
Accent on Youth follows a lazy, middle-aged playwright who is spurred to write by his new young secretary.
A quick-witted fraudster known as the Maniac impersonates officials to expose police accounts of an anarchist's death in custody. By forcing the officers to reenact the interrogation and contradict themselves, he reveals the Superintendent's role in the fatal fall. The play presents alternative endings and leaves the audience to judge what should happen to the corrupt policemen.
Accolade is a 1950 play by the Welsh playwright Emlyn Williams. Accolade was first presented in London by H. M. Tennent Ltd, in association with Leland Hayward and Joshua Logan, at the Aldwych Theatre, on 7 September 1950, with Emlyn Williams as Will Trenting and a cast including Diana Churchill, Anthony Nicholls, Dora Bryan, John Cavanah and Noel Willman. It ran for 180 performances. The play was revived in 2011 at the Finborough Theatre with a cast including Graham Seed, Aden Gillett and Saskia Wickham, and again in 2024, with a cast including Ayden Callaghan and Honeysuckle Weeks.
A stage reconstruction presents three Trojan War tragedies: Myrmidons concerns Patroclus’s death, Nereids follows Achilles’s mourning and return to battle against Hector, and Phrygians depicts Priam seeking his son’s body from Achilles.
Set in the Athens of Pericles, this satirical play pits artistic and intellectual culture against the forces of war.
Act One is a play written by James Lapine, based on Moss Hart's 1959 autobiography of the same title. The play premiered on Broadway in 2014.
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