8284 shows
Clear filtersA 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.
Philip Carey abandons his artistic ambitions for medicine but becomes consumed by an unhappy attachment to Mildred. His pursuit of love and beauty forces him to confront dependency, disappointment, and the possibility of a different life.
George, an affable migrant farm worker, and Lennie, a towering simple-minded pleasantly humble young man, are the subjects. They are bound by George's devotion and Lennie's "pathetic helplessness". George's guardianship keeps Lennie out of trouble, but we soon see this is a slippery slope. Lennie's displays of love result in several deaths ranging from mice and puppies to a beautiful woman. Eventually, in the face of a lynch mob, George kills Lennie to put him out of his misery.
Political satire follows presidential candidate John P. Wintergreen, who campaigns on a platform of love and is expected to marry a beauty pageant winner. He instead chooses Mary Turner, prompting a breach-of-promise suit and a diplomatic crisis with France; after Mary bears twins, the political and romantic complications resolve through the vice president’s unexpected role.
Ben Mercer returns home for his aunt’s funeral, two years after the events of Leaving Home.
In the basement of the Free People clothing store where they work, three women form a makeshift coven and welcome a new employee into their ranks.
Set in 1880s Nebraska amid an Indian boarding school, saloon, and brothel, the play recasts Measure for Measure around Pawnee teenager Momaday and Irish orphan Caitlin, whose forbidden marriage and pregnancy lead to his death sentence. Their community confronts the authorities’ abuse and the school’s destructive conditions.
Off the Record is a 1947 British comedy play by Ian Hay and Stephen King-Hall. It is a farce about the Royal Navy. It premiered at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh prior to its London run. In the West End it ran for 702 performances from 3 June 1947 to 12 February 1949, initially at the Apollo Theatre before transferring to the Piccadilly Theatre. The cast included Hugh Wakefield, Hubert Gregg, Roger Maxwell, and Tom Gill. In 1957 it was adapted into the British comedy film Carry on Admiral
An entertainment committee chairman gathers former vaudeville headliners for an annual show, as the farce moves between a Brooklyn living room and a Manhattan hotel room.
Actor Cathy falls for David.
Four speakers address the audience directly, repeatedly denying that events are being represented or that anything theatrical will happen. The anti-play turns attention to the audience’s presence and challenges assumptions about language and theatre.
Joey, a 17-year-old Irish-Canadian basketball player, is benched after his Chinese-Canadian girlfriend Christine suspects he took part in a racially motivated corner-store vandalism. Written for young audiences, the play examines racism through their relationship.
An overbearing mother travels to a Caribbean resort with her son and her deceased husband, preserved in his coffin. Kopit described it as a farce in three scenes.
The play is a spoof of the lives of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln. It is set in the days leading up to Lincoln's assassination, which occurred while he and Mary were watching Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. The show portrays Mary as a temperamental alcoholic, stuck in an unhappy marriage with the deeply closeted President Lincoln and desperate to return to her past glory days as a cabaret star.
Two men, Reader and Listener, sit at a table in silence. Reader reads a story about a bereaved man comforted night after night by a mysterious visitor; Listener knocks to make Reader repeat the last sentence, until the tale ends and they face each other as the light fades.
Ohio State Murders is a one-act play that revolves around racism, misogyny, and young adulthood. The play focuses on the life of Suzanne Alexander, a college student at Ohio State University from 1949 to 1950. As she goes back to her alma mater as a renowned Black author to speak, Suzanne addresses the reasons why she uses "violent" images in her works. This query gives Suzanne the platform to fully speak about her trauma experienced as a black woman at Ohio State University and the murder of her daughters Cathi and Carol by her professor, and the father of her children, Robert Hampshire. Suzanne is faced with systemic racism through the education system and peers, sexism by her professor and police, and internalized racism from her family members. Kennedy provides a powerfully crafted portrayal of Suzanne Alexander's isolation and the glass ceiling at Ohio State in the 1950s.
As a feud between two families is to be settled by the marriage of Olaf and Ingeborg, Olaf falls in love with Audhild, a young woman believed to be of elf-kind and linked to a plague-survivor legend.
Two childhood friends from Harrisburg, now successful writers, find their long friendship strained by romantic entanglements involving a publisher, their former husbands, and their daughters. When Milly discovers that Kit's lover has become involved with her daughter, she accuses Kit of trying to take her family; the women eventually begin to reconcile.
While studying at Heidelberg University, Prince Karl falls in love with Käthie, an innkeeper's daughter. His father's death calls him home to rule as king, forcing him to leave her.
Old Maids is an 1841 comedy play by the Irish writer James Sheridan Knowles. It was first staged at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London on 12 October 1841. The cast included John Harley as John Blount, George Vandenhoff as Thomas Blount, Walter Lacy as Robert, Robert William Honner as Harris, William Payne as Stephen, Alfred Wigan as Jacob, Lucia Elizabeth Vestris as Lady Blance and Louisa Nisbett as Lady Anne. It was produced towards the end of the theatrical career of Sheridan Knowles, before he turned to novel-writing.
At a party in an Upper East Side Manhattan townhouse, the play shifts between present-day guests and people of the early twentieth-century Gilded Era, examining materialism and contrasting social worlds.
At a converted farmhouse, married couple Kate and Deeley await Kate’s old friend Anna. Their competing stories about the past, sexual jealousy, and a shared young man leave the relationships and even the characters’ memories uncertain.
In Vienna in 1986, burned-out American pianist Stephen Hoffman is sent to study with Professor Josef Mashkan, first learning to sing Schumann’s Dichterliebe. Mashkan’s anti-Jewish insults strain their relationship until Hoffman’s visit to Dachau prompts him to tell the professor what he experienced there. The lessons uncover Mashkan’s own Holocaust-survivor past and connect sadness and joy in the poetry and music they study.
Lucy Marsden, once the child bride of a Confederate captain, recounts her life in the American South. One performer carries her stories of war, marriage, hardship and endurance.
In three acts, a university student and her professor meet privately after she struggles with his course. Her complaint of sexual harassment threatens his tenure; as their arguments over power and academic speech intensify, the confrontation ends in violence.
Oliver Twist is a 1905 dramatic adaptation by J. Comyns Carr from part of the 1838 novel by Charles Dickens. The five-act play with ten scenes was commissioned by Herbert Beerbohm Tree who wished to play Fagin, so the playwright built the work around that character. The play was first tried out in London's West End, for a single performance in July 1905. It had a more formal premiere in September. The production starred Tree, with Constance Collier and Lyn Harding in support. It ran through mid-December 1905. The London Oliver Twist was still going when F. F. Proctor produced the J. Comyns Carr version in New York, starring J. E. Dodson, with Amelia Bingham, and Hardee Kirkland. It made its Broadway premiere in November 1905 and closed after three weeks. The J. Comyns Carr version of Oliver Twist had a more successful Broadway revival in February 1912, which starred Nat C. Goodwin, with Constance Collier, Lyn Harding, and Marie Doro, and ran through to May 1912.
Ollantay, a common-born general, falls in love with Cusi Coyllur, the Inca ruler Pachacutec's daughter. When the ruler rejects the match and imprisons her, Ollantay flees and leads a rebellion. Years later, the new ruler captures him but pardons the rebels; Cusi's daughter reveals her mother's identity, and the ruler reunites the couple.
A man who has killed his daughter and forgotten his crime tries to find meaning in his life; the play examines the everyday, small-scale fascism Bond sees in ordinary people.
Pauline Morin, a Parisian courtesan who has faked her death to marry Henri, Count de Puygiron, attempts to sustain a respectable aristocratic life while her deception and Henri’s attachment to Genevieve come to light.
An aristocratic widow becomes involved with a cavalry officer whose social origins threaten her family’s standing. When their assumptions are challenged, a romantic encounter becomes a struggle over pride, class, and reputation.
Omai, heir to Tahiti's throne, is to marry Londina, daughter of Britannia, symbolically uniting their countries. To escape rivals seeking to prevent the match, the pair travel through places visited by Captain Cook.
At a sophisticated Manhattan dinner party after September 11, guests argue about capitalism, terrorism, feminism, food, wealth, heroism, morality and justice. Conversation shifts from comedy to satire and ends in chaos.
The exacting and difficult Maria Wislack is a widow who decides to take Richard away to her Scottish island for a month's trial "on approval" to see if they are compatible for possible marriage. The egotistical and difficult Duke of Bristol (who is Richard's friend) contrives to be there as well. While there they meet Helen, who is in love with the Duke, and circumstances make all four of them stay on the island for the month. Because of the bad behaviour of Mrs Wislack and the Duke, Helen and Richard decide not to marry either of them and they leave them stranded on the island. The Duke and Mrs Wislack pretend to be romantically involved to make the other two jealous, but end up marrying each other instead.
Yeats reworks the early Irish tale Aided Óenfhir Aífe around the mythic hero Cuchulain, adding significant changes and a comic subplot.
Aging couple Norman and Ethel Thayer return to their summer home at Golden Pond. Their daughter Chelsea arrives with her fiancé and his son, whom the Thayers host for the summer; as Norman and the boy bond, Chelsea confronts her father about their difficult relationship and reconciles with him. Norman suffers a possible heart attack as the couple prepares to leave for winter.
Grieving her absent father, Babe throws firecrackers from Lincoln’s head; ranger Annette intervenes to stop her.
During a drought, farmer Dad Rudd's neighbor seizes his stock and plots against him. The neighbor's son pursues Dad's daughter, and a murder leaves her boyfriend suspected until an eccentric local confesses. Dad later prospers and wins election to parliament.
On Sugarland is a 2022 American play by Aleshea Harris. The play is a loose adaptation of Sophocles's Greek tragedies Philoctetes and Antigone, and centers a teenage girl calling on her matriarchal ancestors to learn the truth about her mother who died in an unnamed, allegorical war. The play takes place in a historical Southern cul-de-sac of mobile homes. On Sugarland was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
A decorated Black war veteran tries to move his family into a white neighborhood, confronting discrimination in the renting and sale of housing.
Scientist Will Paxton returns to his family's Norfolk home above a coastal salt marsh to introduce Sarika and tell his father Robin that he is leaving Antarctic research for government service. As dangerous weather threatens flooding, Robin and his wife Jenny must decide whether to evacuate.
In a one-man PowerPoint lecture tour, Arthur Meek portrays author Richard Meros arguing that New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark needs a younger lover and that he is the ideal candidate. The performance turns his appeal into political satire, combining critiques of liberal individualism, Kantian theory and an imagined “pleasure dome.”
Mohsen Moeini's stage adaptation of Oman Samani's Ashura text Ganjinat al-asrar brings the religious narrative to the stage through live performance, voice acting, music and multimedia imagery.
As war breaks out between fictional Ostnia and Westland, parallel households occupy opposite halves of a shared stage but cannot perceive one another. Their son and daughter sense each other’s presence, and the play ends with the lovers meeting in a visionary scene.
At a town-hall lecture on tobacco's harmful effects, the smoking lecturer Nyukhin repeatedly turns to complaints about his domineering wife, his poverty, and his wish to escape, while scarcely addressing his assigned topic.
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland after a civil war, Al meets Angel, who is gagged and threatened with hanging. Angel takes over pulling a cart of art rescued from bombed museums in exchange for freedom and lessons in art and music. Later, a new government orders them to assassinate Jesus, who has returned as a cellist and is imprisoned in a monastery.
Two employees of a village grocery leave their work to enjoy Vienna, where disguises, mistaken identities and romantic complications entangle them with their employer, his fiancée and others before they slip back unnoticed.
In 1916 Cornwall, D. H. and Frieda Lawrence's turbulent relationship is strained by suspicion that Frieda is signaling German U-boats. Their friends John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield join them in Lawrence's hoped-for community, but conflict and Mansfield's departure leave Lawrence feeling betrayed.
In a near-future Britain facing economic collapse and social unrest, Prime Minister Arthur Chavender debates advisers, family members and public delegations over nationalization and dictatorship.
On the Shore of the Wide World is a play by the English playwright Simon Stephens. It opened 18 April 2005, at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, under the direction of Sarah Frankcom. On May 26, the production transferred to the Cottesloe space of the Royal National Theatre in London. The play focuses on three generations of the Holmes family in Stockport, England, examining the persistent dreams and struggles facing each generation. The play takes its title from the poem When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be by John Keats.
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