News from the New World Discovered in the Moon
A masque's heralds, printer, chronicler and correspondent debate new astronomy and news reporting, culminating in a report from the Moon whose imagined inhabitants and customs satirize earthly society.
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Clear filtersA masque's heralds, printer, chronicler and correspondent debate new astronomy and news reporting, culminating in a report from the Moon whose imagined inhabitants and customs satirize earthly society.
Middle-aged divorcé Marion Cheever is mistakenly called for military service and faces Sergeant Thech, an examining officer determined to enlist him. Their comic battle of wills turns into Cheever’s expression of hatred and contempt for his country.
Next Door Neighbours is a 1791 comedy play by the British writer Elizabeth Inchbald. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket on 9 July 1791. The Irish premiere took place at the Crow Street Theatre in Dublin on 29 April 1795. The original Haymarket cast included John Palmer as Sir George Splendorville, Stephen Kemble as Mr Manly, Robert Baddeley as Mr. Blackman, Robert Palmer as Mr. Lucre, Robert Evatt as Lord Hazard, James Aickin as Willford, John Bannister as Bluntly, Elizabeth Heard as Lady Bridget Squander and Elizabeth Kemble as Eleanor.
Luke believes in God. Adam believes in everything else. "Next Fall" portrays the ups and downs of this unlikely couple’s five-year relationship with sharp humor and unflinching honesty. And when an accident changes everything, Adam must turn to Luke’s family and friends for support... and answers. "Next Fall" offers a picture of modern romance, asking questions about commitment, love, and faith.
Returning to her East Coast marae after the First World War, Rongomai learns that her father was allowed to drown by the community leader Paikea. Seeking revenge, she lets Paikea’s young son die, then sets a chain of betrayal and violence in motion that ends with the marae burning and her own death.
In post-independence Kenya, peasant farmer Kĩgũũnda and his wife Wangeci face a visit from wealthy businessman Kĩoi, whose son has courted their daughter Gathoni. As the family considers a church wedding, Kĩoi uses their land deed to secure a loan, then rejects them when Gathoni returns pregnant and abandoned. Kĩgũũnda and Wangeci lose their land and livelihood, and the household’s private crisis becomes part of a wider struggle against elite exploitation.
Performer Trevor Jamieson recounts his family's story against the history of British nuclear testing at Maralinga and the displacement of Pitjantjatjara people. The bilingual work combines family testimony, Indigenous storytelling, tragedy, humor, popular songs, video, and audience participation to explore dispossession, cultural loss, and survival.
A tragedy in the traditional Thai lakhon nai form, Ngo Pa follows Sompla and Hanao as rivals for Lamhab's affection. Its conception draws on Chulalongkorn's impressions of the Maniq people of southern Thailand.
A comic, melancholy play adapted from Louis Jenkins's poems and inspired by an ice-fishing trip. Its original version uses comic counterparts of figures from Wagner's Das Rheingold.
Nice People was a 1921 Broadway four-act comedy written and staged by Rachel Crothers, produced by Samuel H. Harris and starring Tallulah Bankhead and Francine Larrimore. After working with Bankhead in 39 East, Crothers wrote Nice People expressly for her. The general manager was William G. Norton, the scenic was designed by Navon Bergman, and John Kirkpatrick was the stage manager. It ran for 120 performances from March 2, 1921 to June, 1921, at the Klaw Theatre. It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1920-1921. It was also Katharine Cornell's Broadway debut. It was adapted into the 1922 silent film Nice People, now believed to be lost.
An aging, talkative frontiersman takes the central role in this comic melodrama. Nick Whiffles’s fatherly leadership and verbal exuberance replace the youthful, physically heroic figure typical of frontier adventures.
In Paris, English composer Horace Villiers discovers that his former friend has stolen the opera he wrote while he was ill. Singer Héléne loves Horace and stages a deception to expose the theft and learn whether he loves her.
In Bithynia, Nicomède's Roman-backed half-brother Attale and their stepmother Arsinoé threaten his position as heir. After Nicomède is placed in Roman custody and the people rise in revolt, he returns, pardons his opponents, and negotiates an alliance with Rome.
A married couple in their forties sit over coffee and recall their first meeting and courtship, but their conflicting memories reveal an emotional distance in their present relationship.
At the Little Casino nightclub, manager Chris Miller cheats proprietor Ben Fischer and uses henchmen to rob customers. After a robbery ends in murder, Miller’s jealousy over hostess Buddy and attempts to hide his crimes lead to another killing, a tangled investigation, and his fatal fall down an elevator shaft.
Film-studio employee Steve Takis travels to New York to collect two trained monkeys and return them to Hollywood. When a monkey discards his wallet and papers, the ensuing confusion lands Steve in jail, where he befriends a detective and falls for a young actress.
Night Must Fall is a play, a psychological thriller, by Emlyn Williams, first performed in 1935. There have been four filmed adaptations: Night Must Fall (1937); a 1954 adaptation on the television anthology series Ponds Theater starring Terry Kilburn, Una O'Connor, and Evelyn Varden; a 1957 British television version; and Night Must Fall (1964).
The morning after an affair, two lovers scramble to find the man’s keys and conceal evidence from the woman’s husband.
Night Over Taos was a 1932 Broadway three-act drama written by Maxwell Anderson, produced by the Group Theatre and staged by Lee Strasberg. It was the Group Theatre's third production. It ran for 13 performances from March 9, 1936 closing that month at the 48th Street Theatre. It was revived off Broadway in 2007, directed by Estelle Parsons.
Astronomer Anna is struck by a car and develops aphasia, disrupting her academic career and relationships with her daughter and lover. She later tries to recover and deliver her research at a conference in Paris. The play was inspired by director Joseph Chaikin's experience of aphasia after a stroke.
Set in the fictional African nation of Kambawi, the play follows British journalists covering an impending internal war. Through reporter Ruth Carson's unspoken thoughts and the characters' wordplay, it examines colonialism, media objectivity, and the way language shapes events.
The plot of Night of January 16th centers on the trial of secretary Karen Andre for the murder of her employer, business executive Bjorn Faulkner, who defrauded his company of millions of dollars to invest in the gold trade. In the wake of a financial crash, he was facing bankruptcy. The play's events occur entirely in a courtroom; Faulkner is never seen. On the night of January 16, Faulkner and Andre were in the penthouse of the Faulkner Building in New York City, when Faulkner apparently fell to his death. Within the three acts, the prosecutor Mr. Flint and Andre's defense attorney Mr. Stevens call witnesses whose testimonies build conflicting stories. At the beginning of the first act, the judge asks the court clerk to call jurors from the audience. Once the jurors are seated, the prosecution argument begins. Flint explains that Andre was not just Faulkner's secretary, but also his lover. He says Faulkner jilted her to marry Nancy Lee Whitfield and fired Andre, motivating Andre to murder him. Flint then calls a series of witnesses, starting with the medical examiner, who testifies that Faulkner's body was so damaged by the fall that it was impossible to determine whether he was killed by the impact or was already dead. An elderly night watchman and a private investigator describe the events they saw that evening. A police inspector testifies to finding a suicide note. Faulkner's very religious housekeeper disapprovingly describes the sexual relationship between Andre and Faulkner, and says she saw Andre with another man after Faulkner's marriage. Nancy Lee testifies about her and Faulkner's courtship and marriage, portraying both as idyllic. The act ends with Andre speaking out of turn to accuse Nancy Lee of lying. The second act continues the prosecution's case, with Flint calling John Graham Whitfield—Faulkner's father-in-law and president of Whitfield National Bank. He testifies about a large loan he made to Faulkner. In his cross-examination, defense attorney Stevens suggests the loan was used to buy Faulkner's marriage to Whitfield's daughter. After this testimony, the prosecution rests and the defense argument begins. A handwriting expert testifies about the signature on the suicide note. Faulkner's bookkeeper describes events between Andre's dismissal and the night of Faulkner's death, and related financial matters. Andre takes the stand and describes her relationship with Faulkner as both his lover and his partner in financial fraud. She says she did not resent his marriage because it was a business deal to secure credit from the Whitfield Bank. As she starts to explain the reasons for Faulkner's alleged suicide, she is interrupted by the arrival of "Guts" Regan, an infamous gangster, who tells Andre that Faulkner is dead. Despite being on trial for Faulkner's murder, Andre is shocked by this news and faints. The final act continues Andre's testimony; she is now somber rather than defiant. She says that she, Faulkner, and Regan had conspired to fake Faulkner's suicide so they could escape with money stolen from Whitfield. Regan, who was also in love with Andre, provided the stolen body of his already-dead gang associate, "Lefty" O'Toole, to throw from the building. In cross-examination, Flint suggests Andre and Regan were using knowledge of past criminal activities to blackmail Faulkner. Stevens then calls Regan, who testifies that he was due to meet Faulkner at a getaway plane after leaving the stolen body with Andre; however, Faulkner did not arrive and the plane was missing. Instead of Faulkner, Regan encountered Whitfield, who gave him a check that was, according to Regan, to buy his silence. Regan later found the missing plane, which had been burned with what he presumes is Faulkner's body inside. Flint's cross-examination offers an alternative theory: Regan put the stolen body into the plane to create doubt about Andre's guilt, and the check from Whitfield was protection money to Regan's gang. In the play's Broadway and amateur versions, the next witness is Roberta Van Rensselaer, an exotic dancer and wife of O'Toole, who believes Regan killed her husband. This character does not appear in Rand's preferred version of the play. Stevens then recalls two witnesses to follow up on issues from Regan's testimony. The defense and prosecution then give their closing arguments. The jury retires to vote while the characters repeat highlights from their testimony under a spotlight. The jury then returns to announce its verdict. One of two short endings follows. If found not guilty, Andre thanks the jury. If found guilty, she says the jury have spared her from committing suicide. In Reeid's amateur version, after either verdict the judge berates the jurors for their bad judgment and declares that they cannot serve on a jury again.
The action takes place aboard a spacecraft returning from the first crewed Moon landing, the crew of which witnesses nuclear war break out on Earth. In his foreword to the published edition of the play, Oboler expressed the hope that its vision of a potential future would prove to be "a playwright's fancy".
In post-Crimean War Adelaide, teacher Marcus Higson seeks to marry Victoria Beauchamp and promote public education, while her father, Colonel Beauchamp, prioritizes defense. A rumored Russian invasion lets the colonel whip up public fear to fund a standing army.
At a remote mountain retreat, an ascetic academic who writes erotic fiction lives with his alcoholic wife. Her young nurse, seeking purpose in caring for her, becomes entangled in their troubled household, while an eccentric goatkeeper observes from outside it.
Prologue (A Pullman car traveling to New York from Washington, D. C. Noon.) Trixie and Billy are on the same train; him returning from a tryout to his wife of one year, and she going to a new acting job on Broadway. Trixie teases Billy about throwing her over for his new wife. She then confesses her impulsive second marriage to Jimmie Blythe, and of his abandonment of her when he discovers she was married before. Billy agrees that Jimmie is a hothead, his temperament not improved by long years making his fortune in South America. Trixie wheedles Billy into promising to tell Jimmie that she is a stage actress with a baby, which she also neglected to reveal before the ceremony. She then passes her broken bracelet, Jimmie's wedding present, to Billy, so he can have it fixed. Unknown to them, Ernestine has witnessed this last exchange. (Two-minute Curtain); Act I (Living room of the Moffat's apartment. That evening.) Act II (Same as Act I. The next morning.) Act III (The Moffat's kitchen. The next second.)
A young couple struggle after the birth of their first child: the man wants to become a writer but faces continual rejection, while the woman grows weary of their life together.
A Bengali social drama about village farmers and indigo planters whose exploitative practices provoke resistance, bringing rural cultivators and urban intellectuals into a shared political conflict.
During the Jamaican nine-night mourning ritual, a family grapples with the death of a loved one and the tensions that surface as they gather. The play centers on grief, family, and the shared rituals surrounding loss.
A one-person stage adaptation of Hungarian journalist Béla Zsolt’s Holocaust memoirs, performed by David Prince, with music composed and performed by Bethan Morgan.
An elderly upper-caste Hindu's transition toward communism brings the play's anti-feudal political conflict into focus.
After Artemis and Apollo kill Niobe’s children, she sits silently beside their tombs while her father Tantalus arrives unaware of the tragedy. He learns what happened and tries in vain to comfort her; the surviving fragments suggest the tragedy centers on mourning and human limits before the gods.
Sophocles' lost tragedy shows Niobe boasting of her children before Apollo and Artemis kill them. Surviving fragments suggest one daughter survives, while the final lines and ending are lost.
The Edwardian values of a household are tested when an electrical storm brings its marble statue of Niobe to life.
In Masum Reza’s reworking of the Ekalavya story, the low-born archer surpasses celebrated warriors including Arjuna and challenges the Pandavas’ social order.
Three deceased people—Joseph Garcin, Inèz Serrano, and Estelle Rigault—are confined together in a room in Hell. As they reveal the crimes and betrayals that brought them there, each becomes a tormentor to the others; even when the door opens, they choose to remain and continue their psychological struggle.
The poet Spooner is invited to spend the night at the home of Hirst, an older man of means, and meets Hirst's younger employees Foster and Briggs. Through intoxicated talk, uncertain memories, and shifting power between the men, Spooner attempts to connect with or rescue Hirst, but the four remain in an unresolved, isolated standoff.
A middle-class British housewife struggles through the war years. The original West End production ran for 740 performances.
No More Ladies was a 1934 Broadway three-act comedy written by A. E. Thomas, produced by Lee Shubert, and staged by Harry Wagstaff Gribble with scenic design created by Watson Barratt. It ran for 162 performances from January 23, 1934 to June 1934 at the Booth Theatre. The play was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1933-1934. It was adapted into the 1935 film No More Ladies directed by Edward H. Griffith and starring Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone.
In 1949 Halifax, North Carolina, Jewish writer Yaveni Aaronsohn interviews the Cheek family about Black and Jewish experiences of prejudice. Their growing trust is tested when Rawl leaves to find work, Mattie is raped by a white man, and she falsely claims an affair to keep Rawl from seeking revenge and facing a possible lynching.
After a robbery goes wrong, wealthy Miss Blandish is kidnapped by a gang led by Ma Grisson and her son Slim. While her family secretary hires detective Dave Fenner to rescue her, Slim falls in love with her and she with him; a bloody rescue attempt ends in Slim's death and Blandish's suicide.
No Place to Be Somebody is a 1969 play written by American playwright Charles Gordone. It was during his employment as a bartender in Greenwich Village that Gordone found the inspiration for his first major work, No Place to Be Somebody, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Gordone's Pulitzer signified two "firsts": he was the first African American playwright to receive a Pulitzer, and No Place to Be Somebody was the first off-Broadway play to receive the award. Written over the course of seven years, the play explores racial tensions in a Civil Rights-era story about a black bartender who tries to outsmart a white mobster syndicate. In his final speech, in June 1995, delivered at the Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, Gordone described the play as being "about country folk who had migrated to the big city, seeking the urban myth of success, only to find disappointment, despair, and death." After an experimental production directed by Gordone, in November 1967, the play was produced in a showcase of three weekends at The Other Stage in Joe Papp's Public Theater in South Manhattan by director Edward Cornell. The play was then launched on May 4, 1969 by Joseph Papp on a 248-performance run at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theater, followed by an acclaimed limited engagement at Broadway's ANTA Theatre.
An assistant bank manager, Peter Hunter, lives in a flat above his bank with his new bride Frances. When Frances innocently sends off a mail order for some Scandinavian glassware, what comes back is Scandinavian pornography. The two, along with the bank's frantic chief cashier Brian Runnicles, must decide what to do with the veritable floods of pornography, photographs, books, films and eventually girls that threaten to engulf this happy couple. The matter is considerably complicated by the presence of Eleanor (Peter's mother), Mr. Bromhead (his boss), Mr. Needham (a visiting bank inspector) and Vernon Paul (a police superintendent).
During the Great Depression, the Millimurra family struggles to survive under colonial administration in Western Australia. Authorities reduce their rations, jail family members, and forcibly transfer them from Northam to Moore River Native Settlement, separating the family and restricting what they can bring.
After the death of a wine-merchant proprietor, executors try to find a missing heir, a quest that carries them from London wine cellars to the Mediterranean and the winter Alps amid danger, mistaken identity and treachery.
After an atomic accident leaves only two men alive, women hold power across the world. The two survivors are confined at the Prime Minister’s country home while officials consider whether they can repopulate the earth; the men try to escape in search of women of their choosing.
Ira Levin’s expanded stage adaptation of Mac Hyman’s military comedy follows country bumpkin Will Stockdale, drafted into the Army Air Forces during World War II, through misadventures in military life.
Miller's first play explores Marxist theory and inner conflict through an individual facing ruin because of a strike. Its opening introduces the immigrant Simon family, once successful and now fallen on hard times, awaiting their son’s return from university.
A servant's schemes create a tangle of mistaken identities and arranged marriages after a son secretly marries a woman he is told is his sister. Separately, Mistress Low-Water disguises herself as a man to recover her family's fortune and expose the hypocrisy of a wealthy widow's suitors; the deceptions finally reveal the true family relationships.
After his release from prison in 1946, Japanese American draft resister Ichiro Yamada returns to Seattle and struggles with his choices as his family and community rebuild after the war.
In this verse drama, Jewish prisoner Adam befriends Guardist commandant Vraciu. When Eva kills herself rather than be raped by Kiropol, Adam chooses death with the Jewish prisoners, who suspect him of being a Christian missionary and prepare to lynch him.
A satire of the US television industry set in the Beverly Hills living room of television writer Nathaniel Bentley.
In a fantasy world divided between the Eastern and Western Planets, Jeanne Kaguya d'Arc travels east with Leonardo da Vinci after foreseeing the rise of a Savior-King. There she encounters Oda Nobunaga, a young warlord seeking power to change a war-torn world; their meeting sets opposing visions of salvation and destruction in motion.
In Shirley, Vermont, a depressed young man recovering from a breakup stays with his mother and her video-game-obsessed boyfriend, then invites a local poet’s-house museum curator to dinner, exposing the strain in the household.
After an old theft scandal links them, adventuress Leonia plots revenge against Leslie Harcourt by manipulating his new secretary Noel into helping frame him for forgery. Leonia later falls in love with Leslie and confesses, but a jealous Noel attacks him; Leonia steps between them and dies in Leslie’s arms.

While helping pack her late grandmother’s belongings, Abby discovers that an old stuffed lemur can speak. Ordinary objects lead them through stories of her Nohkom, family memory and Cree heritage as Abby prepares to move.
Each of the three acts of Noises Off contains a performance of the first act of a play within a play, a sex farce called Nothing On. The three acts of Noises Off are each named "Act One" on the contents page of the script, though they are labelled normally in the body of the script, and the programme for Noises Off will include, provided by the author, a comprehensive programme for the Weston-super-Mare run of Nothing On, including spoof advertisements (for sardines) and acknowledgments to the providers of mysterious props that do not actually appear (e.g. stethoscope, hospital trolley, and straitjacket). Nothing is seen of the rest of Nothing On except for the ending of its Act 2. Nothing On is the type of farce in which young women run about in their underwear, men drop their trousers, and many doors continually bang open and shut. It is set in "a delightful 16th-century posset mill", modernised by the current owners and available to let while they are abroad; the fictional playwright is appropriately named Robin Housemonger. Act One is set at the dress rehearsal at the (fictional) Grand Theatre in Weston-super-Mare. It is midnight, the night before the first performance and the cast are hopelessly unready. Baffled by entrances and exits, missed cues, missed lines, and bothersome props, including several plates of sardines, they drive Lloyd, their director, into a seething rage and back several times during the run. Act Two shows a Wednesday matinée performance one month later, at the Theatre Royal in Ashton-under-Lyne. (Designed by Frank Matcham in 1891, the Theatre Royal, Ashton-under-Lyne was demolished in 1963.) In this act, the play is seen from backstage, providing a view that emphasises the deteriorating relationships between the cast. Romantic rivalries, lovers' tiffs and personal quarrels lead to offstage shenanigans, onstage bedlam and the occasional attack with a fire axe. Act Three depicts a performance near the end of the ten-week run, at the (fictional) Municipal Theatre in Stockton-on-Tees. Relationships between the cast have soured considerably, the set is breaking down and props are winding up in the wrong hands, on the floor, and in the way. The actors remain determined at all costs to cover up the mounting chaos, but it is not long before the plot has to be abandoned entirely and the more coherent characters are obliged to take a lead in ad-libbing towards some sort of end. Much of the comedy emerges from the subtle variations in each version as character flaws play off each other off-stage to undermine on-stage performance, with a great deal of slapstick. The contrast between players' on-stage and off-stage personalities is also a source of comic dissonance.
None But the Brave is a 1925 farcical melodramatic play by the British writers Bernard Merivale and Brandon Fleming in which a man inherits the estate of a wealthy uncle, and has to avoid being framed for murder by his relatives. It enjoyed a West End run of 106 performances, beginning initially at the Garrick Theatre before transferring to the Royalty Theatre and then subsequently to the Haymarket Theatre.
The play is a sexual farce involving five very different people lured to a New York loft in expectation of a sexual adventure.
When soldiers abduct Noor, a bright college student, her three brothers search for her through contrasting paths: Sufi counsel, government connections and calls for violence. Noor’s return challenges their divisions over Islam and brings the family toward peace.
This Sarajevo reworking of A Doll’s House places Nora and Torvald in a wealthy modern marriage. Their lives are disrupted when Christine returns and, with her lover Helene Krogstad, uses blackmail to climb the social ladder; Dr. Rank confesses his love for Nora as Torvald faces financial crisis.
At a bus stop one night, middle-aged war veteran Norm encounters Ahmed, a Pakistani student.
In a spoken-and-sung performance piece, a screenwriter and stenographer work through a retelling of Euripides' Helen on New Year's Eve 1963. The screenwriter overlays Helen's story with reflections on Marilyn Monroe, casting Monroe as a parallel to the legendary figure.
An eight-page opera parody inspired by Bellini's Norma, recasting the opera's characters as contemporary politicians.
This fictional account of Peter Kürten's life is told through his lawyer's perspective.
Ben Chambers, a drycleaner, and his wife Beatrice are having marital problems. Beatrice leaves her husband for his brother and Ben decides to take off for New York City to visit his son, Norman. Ben finds his son in a romantic relationship with another man, Garson Hobart. Determined to set his son on the straight and narrow path of heterosexuality, Ben hires Mary, a prostitute, to try to entice his son into pursuing women. The attempt backfires and Ben ultimately comes to the conclusion that his son is gay and that there is nothing he can do to change that. At this point, Beatrice shows up and, unaware of the prior events that have transpired, is shocked to learn her son is gay. She too ultimately comes to accept her son. When Norman joins the Navy, the couple invites Garson to come and live with them, an offer which he accepts.

Advertising executive Roger Thornhill is mistaken for a spy and pursued across America. An encounter with the enigmatic Eve Kendall draws him deeper into a conspiracy as he tries to survive and clear his name.
A young college graduate known as Frodo joins other unmoored thru-hikers on a journey from Georgia to Maine, where they struggle with nature, one another and their own pasts. The group’s connections culminate in a nighttime rescue and Frodo’s ascent of Katahdin.
In London and nearby Ware, two gallants use a stolen ring to make Mayberry suspect his wife, while Mayberry and his friend Bellamont plot revenge. Parallel schemes involving a con artist, Doll, and an adulterous couple unravel as the travelers head north, exposing the deceivers and forcing them into unintended marriages.
During the Mexican Revolution, the conservative minister Don Justo orders the arrest and execution of demonstrators, including his son Carlos's friends. After Huerta's government falls, Don Justo goes into hiding in the family home, where his children and son-in-law debate whether to help him escape. He refuses safe passage, choosing to face arrest and death rather than betray those who trust him.
An older Siegfried Sassoon recalls his friendship with Wilfred Owen, beginning when Owen approaches him at Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917. Through flashbacks, diary and letter excerpts, they trace their relationship to their final meeting as Sassoon recovers from a head wound and Owen prepares to return to the Western Front.
In a brutal prison, inmate Jim and secretary Eva fall in love as prisoners begin a hunger strike against abusive conditions. When inmates are sent to a boiler room used for torture, a revolt erupts; Jim escapes toward the river while Eva is taken away, leaving his fate uncertain.
In darkness, a spotlight isolates a woman's mouth as she rapidly recounts disjointed memories from a life of deprivation and trauma. Her repeated denial that these experiences happened to her gives the monologue its title; some productions include a silent Auditor.
Not Now, Darling is a romantic comedy featuring a cast size of six women and five men. It is 120 minutes long in two acts.The farce takes place in a London fur salon. A man attempts to win a married woman's favor, but his scheme spirals out of control.
Lord Wilmot, an aristocrat, pretends to be immoral to enhance his fashionable reputation, while self-made Hardman feigns honesty to advance socially. Their rivalry satirizes assumptions about gentility and villainy.
Not for Children is a 1934 play by Elmer Rice. It was premiered in 1935 at the Fortune Theatre in the West End of London. The work was performed for the first time on Broadway on February 13, 1951 at the Coronet Theatre; closing four days later after only seven performances. Incidental music was composer by Robert Emmett Dolan. The production starred Elliott Nugent as Ambrose Atwater, Betty Field as Theodora Effington, J. Edward Bromberg as Timothy Forrest, Ann Thomas as Prudence Dearborn, Keene Crockett as Elijah Silverhammer, Alexander Clark as Clarence Orth, and Joan Copeland as Evangeline Orth.
A respectable family man's life is thrown into jeopardy when he is approached by a shady South American who attempts to blackmail him about his misspent youth there. He decides the only way to escape from his predicament is to murder the blackmailer, but things go wrong.
A solo documentary performance built from more than 200 interviews with people caught in the school-to-prison pipeline. Smith embodies 17 speakers across two acts, drawing on real events and footage; the second act invites audience call and response.
A power struggle develops between an older editor and her younger rival in publishing, as both women contend with losing power and status with age.
In 1859 Russia, Arkady returns with the nihilist Bazarov to his father's failing estate, where emancipated serfs remain dependent on the land and the father's relationship with a servant unsettles the household. Bazarov tries to provoke social change, while ideological and romantic conflicts test his revolutionary certainty.
Notoriety is a 1791 comedy play by the British writer Frederick Reynolds. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden on in London on 5 November 1791. The original cast included William Thomas Lewis as Nominal, John Quick as Colonel Hubbub, Richard Wilson as Sir Andrew Acid, Joseph Shepherd Munden as Lord Jargon, William Farren as Clairville, Charles Farley as James, John Henry Johnstone as O'Whack, Mrs Webb as Lady Acid, Mary Wells as Sophia Strangways and Harriet Pye Esten as Honoria.
November is a play written by David Mamet which premiered on Broadway in 2008.
A British prison drama centered on a variety of inmates, including new arrivals, old hands and a convicted murderer sentenced to hang.
Amanullah Khan, his wife Soraya Tarzi and her father Mahmud Tarzi are trapped in a car in the snow while escaping Kabul in 1929.
On an American election night, Democratic campaign headquarters becomes the setting for a dispute over free expression and the depiction of Muhammad. The short description ties the conflict to contemporary political tensions.
Set in the anteroom of Hell, the play is described as a tale of madness, depravity, and death.
On an abandoned showground in the declining town of Dry Torrent, an elderly former communist and a homeless Vietnam veteran live among memories of their past. A young Aboriginal woman fleeing an abusive life in the city disrupts their isolation and changes their makeshift community.
A border vigilante, Gary Dobbs, finds Roberto Castillo beside a body in the Arizona desert while Castillo searches for his missing daughter Pilar. As they wait for Border Patrol, they bond over family and the dead, then realize the corpse is Pilar. A parallel story follows Pilar’s dangerous crossing with smugglers.
Hiranyakashipu vows revenge after Vishnu's Varaha avatar kills his brother. His son Prahalad remains devoted to Vishnu despite his father's threats; when Hiranyakashipu orders him to embrace a hot iron pillar, Nrusinh emerges from it and kills the king. The Gujarati play combines the myth with a jester's household and Sanskrit-style dramatic conventions.
After painter Paul Sorodin dies, his family learns he painted none of the celebrated works sold under his name. His valet Sebastien manages the artists who secretly created the works and manipulates the family’s efforts to protect Sorodin’s reputation.
Number 17 is a 1925 thriller play by the British writer Joseph Jefferson Farjeon. It premiered at the Winter Gardens Theatre in New Brighton before beginning a West End run of 209 performances, initially at the New Theatre before transferring to Wyndham's and then the Duke of York's Theatre. The original cast included Nicholas Hannen, Fred Groves, Leon M. Lion and Nora Swinburne. The following year he wrote a novelisation of the play, published by Hodder and Stoughton.
When strong-willed, high-class call girl Claudia Draper is indicted for manslaughter in the first degree after killing a client in self-defense, her mother Rose and stepfather Arthur attempt to have her declared mentally incompetent, which would prevent a trial and cause Claudia to be institutionalized. Public defender Aaron Levinsky is assigned to her case, but Claudia is angry and distrustful of everybody, and she resists his help, disrupting both her examinations by psychiatrist Herbert Rosenthal and her court hearings. As findings progress, new insights into Claudia's entire life experience, including sexual abuse by her stepfather, begin to surface.
A theatrical portrait of Aneurin “Nye” Bevan uses flashbacks and hallucinations to trace his life and the difficult birth of the National Health Service, emphasizing the political and personal obstacles he faced.
Antiquarian Daniel Bachelet suspects his second wife Madeleine of an affair and announces a divorce. His first wife, Valentine, sees a chance to win him back, while Madeleine challenges Daniel to judge the men courting her.
A two-act comedy built around a love triangle among Dayse, her husband Hermes and her lover Dondoco, with two contrasting neighbors. The work uses the triangle to criticize consumerism and treats Dayse as an object of consumption.
A Christmas tea party goes spectacularly wrong when James and Jamesy imagine a flood of tea covering the world. Physical comedy and audience participation turn their search for a way to stay afloat into a shared adventure.
A family is confined to an isolated mansion for twelve years to await an inheritance governed by a disturbing will. When a young man arrives on behalf of the deceased uncle's lawyers, apparently accidental deaths begin, raising the question of murder or coincidence. The characters are marked by compulsions and fixations.
During a provincial election, a love letter from prefect Tipătescu to Zoe is stolen and used by opposition candidate Cațavencu to demand the party nomination. The letter changes hands amid arrests and a chaotic campaign meeting; when Cațavencu loses it again, the party's chosen candidate from the capital wins, and the letter is ultimately returned.
A decorated Irish soldier returns to his village to recruit for the British army, but admits he enlisted to escape poverty and domestic hardship rather than for patriotism, provoking conflict with his Fenian mother and self-interested girlfriend.
A village passion play dramatizing the final days of Jesus, his trial and crucifixion, and the resurrection. The community stages it periodically, traditionally every ten years.
A moonlit crag opens to reveal Silenus prophesying the arrival of Oberon, who will bring order and beneficent rule. Prince Henry enters as the fairy prince in a chariot drawn by white bears, followed by songs, dances and a concluding dance with his mother, Anne of Denmark.
Eight Ulster unionists volunteer for the 36th Division in the First World War. An elderly survivor recalls their lives in a flashback that culminates at the Battle of the Somme, exploring the Boyne and Somme in unionist memory, loyalty, masculinity and sexuality.
In a hypothetical posthumous interview, sculptor Louise Nevelson recounts her childhood, failed marriage and artistic career while an unnamed interviewer challenges her account and probes her life.
When Étienne leaves for military service, he asks his friend Marcel to look after Amélie. Marcel plans to pose as her fiancé to secure his inheritance, but their bedroom encounter and a fake wedding set off a chain of farcical deceptions before Amélie and Étienne are reunited.
This Roman tragedy follows three days in 62 CE as Nero divorces and exiles Octavia and marries Poppaea. Seneca warns Nero without success; as the populace protests, Nero orders Octavia sent to Pandataria to be killed.
Manjula Nayak, an unsuccessful Kannada writer, achieves success with a novel written in English. Her doppelgänger challenges her choice of language and accuses her of betraying her own tongue.
Laid-off factory worker Tim Arends takes yard and household jobs for elderly widow Leonora Phipps, whose memory is slipping. Their companionship grows through her math tutoring, even as Tim's wife Ginette prepares to move for work and Mrs. Phipps must decide whether to accept their help.
Alice marries the direct Ryan and discovers that he has Asperger's. Their relationship becomes an unconventional romantic comedy about differences in social understanding, love and acceptance.
At Troy, Greek envoys seek Helen's return to avert war. Antenor and other statesmen support them, but Paris's faction prevails; the ensuing tragedy critiques weak leadership, demagoguery and political failure. The five-act blank-verse drama stages the deliberations through speech and reports of offstage events.
In Sophocles’ lost tragedy, Telegonus arrives in Ithaca to meet his father Odysseus. They fight without recognizing one another, and Telegonus kills Odysseus with a spear tipped by a stingray spine; the surviving fragments also refer to Odysseus’s oar and an oracle at Dodona.
After twenty years away, Odysseus returns to an impoverished Ithaca ruled by reformers who court Penelope. Haunted by war dead, he tries to restore order through violence and draws his son Telemachus into killing, leaving Penelope to confront what Odysseus has made of him.
In Euripides’ lost tragedy, fragments describe Oedipus defeating the Sphinx and being blinded by a servant of Laius. As the truth about his parentage emerges, Jocasta supports him and accompanies him into exile.
As plague ravages Thebes, King Oedipus seeks the killer of Laius, unaware that he himself committed the crime while fleeing a prophecy. Oracles and witnesses reveal his parentage and incestuous marriage to Jocasta. Oedipus tears out his eyes; Jocasta then kills herself, and he leaves Thebes. Seneca’s tragedy emphasizes fate, guilt and a violent, horrific reckoning.
Voltaire reshapes the Greek myth of Oedipus as a French tragedy, making the investigation of Laius’s murder and the recognition of the oracle’s meaning more rationally motivated. He adds a love plot in which Philoctète loves Jocaste and reduces the incest theme’s prominence.
Oedipus is a politician on the verge of winning a landslide election. As his family gather for an evening together, and as the polls close, Oedipus' life starts to fall apart. As a clock ticks down to his victory in real time, the truth about who he is emerges.
When a plague strikes Thebes, King Oedipus investigates the unsolved murder of his predecessor Laius. Evidence reveals that Oedipus himself killed his father and married his mother, fulfilling a prophecy; Jocasta dies by suicide and Oedipus blinds himself.
Shelley recasts the Queen Caroline divorce proceedings as grotesque political satire: King Swellfoot, a corrupt George IV figure, and his ministers try to suppress the pig-chorus and prosecute Queen Iona Taurina. The pigs challenge parliamentary and clerical hypocrisy; Iona and the Minotaur briefly ally against the royal court, which is transformed and driven away as the people gain freedom.
Blinded and exiled, Oedipus arrives at Colonus with Antigone and Ismene and seeks refuge in a sacred grove. Theseus protects him from Creon’s attempt to seize the daughters; Oedipus rejects Polynices, then dies secretly after promising Athens the blessing of his burial place.
As plague afflicts Thebes, Oedipus investigates the murder of the former king Laius. Creon schemes to seize the throne and pursues his niece Eurydice, whose love for the Argive prince Adrastus becomes a tragic subplot; the adaptation ends in a bloody series of deaths.
Three sisters and the men in their lives gather at the family home for a summer weekend, where the reunion rekindles passion and humor while setting off unexpected upheavals.
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