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Clear filtersPhilip 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.
An aid worker becomes involved in Afghan women's rights when a land-rights dispute is to be settled by betrothing two young girls to older men.
On the Spot is a 1930 Chicago-set play by the British writer Edgar Wallace. Wallace was inspired by a visit to the United States and, in particular, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Known as a prolific author, he reportedly dictated the manuscript for the play in just four days. It was his greatest theatrical success. The lead role of a Capone-like gangster Tony Perelli was played by Charles Laughton with Emlyn Williams as his henchman and Gillian Lind playing Perelli's Chinese mistress. Other cast members included W ronin Wilson, Roy Emerton, Carol Reed, Dennis Wyndham and Gladys Frazin. It transferred to America in October 1930, with Crane Wilbur as Perelli and Anna May Wong as Minn Lee, and ran for 167 performances at the Forrest Theatre in New York. In 1931, Wallace novelised the play using the same title.
The basic plot of the play follows the adventures of three Victorian women explorers into what they believe to be Terra Incognita, a new, unexplored land. The three are from very different exploration backgrounds but all exhibit their own form of independence. From the world in general and specifically men. The three together discuss many aspects of their pasts in exploring, with Mary and Fanny frequently trying to outdo each other. As the ladies progress on their travels it becomes apparent that they are not on an ordinary journey. Mary reaches the conclusion at the end of the first act that the three of them are in fact traveling forward through time and that, while doing so, they are beginning to absorb knowledge from the future. Alex dubs this phenomenon osmosing and from that point forward in the play, the ladies actively, and often fruitlessly try to osmose what the things they are encountering are, e.g. In the scene where Alex first encounters Cool Whip she takes several guesses at the item's identity: "(Osmoses) 'Mo hair'. No. 'Jello mold'. No. (Tastes) Noxzema! Yes! Heaven!"
A stage adaptation of Yumie Hiraiwa’s Edo-period story centered on Shōji Rui, the proprietress of an inn.
A comedy about an egotistical orchestra conductor and his harpist wife as their relationship strains under his demands and infidelity.
A public-relations man finds his picture in a newspaper beside a curvaceous model wearing only his client’s product.
A comedy looking back at the values of 1950s Catholic convent schools and the responses of female adolescents to those values.
Will Drummond faces the loss of his father and the imminent loss of his mother as familiar certainties give way. The play moves between the 1950s and present, West Berlin and Byron Bay, using appearing characters from other plays to explore family, aging, grief, social change and theatre itself.
A satirical comedy, Once in a Lifetime focuses on the effect talking pictures have on the entertainment industry. When the New York City vaudevillean team of Jerry Hyland, May Daniels, and George Lewis find themselves in a faltering vaudeville act, they decide to head west and present themselves as elocution experts in the hope someone will hire them to train actors unaccustomed to speaking on screen. On the train they meet gossip columnist Helen Hobart, who introduces them to megalomaniac film mogul Herman Glogauer when they arrive in Hollywood. The trio's misadventures include encounters with Lawrence Vail, a New York City playwright driven to distraction and eventually a sanatorium by studio bureaucracy and a lack of work to keep him busy; silent screen beauties Phyllis Fontaine and Florabel Leigh, whose voices sound like nails on a blackboard; two pages in 18th-century dress who periodically arrive carrying placards with announcements about Glogauer's latest doings; a ditzy receptionist who wears an evening gown to work; and aspiring actress (and proverbial dumb blonde) Susan Walker and her chaperoning stage mother. Dimwitted George becomes a director who shoots the wrong script, forgets to turn on the soundstage lights, and audibly cracks nuts during filming, yet his movie is called a masterpiece and he is declared a genius by trend-conscious journalists who believe he is ahead of his time.
The play opens in a fisherman's hut near a lake in the forest. Outside a storm rages. Here live the old fisherman Auguste and his wife Eugenie. And here lives Ondine whom the old couple found as a baby at the edge of the lake, and brought up in place of their own daughter who was mysteriously snatched away as an infant. Auguste is upset because Ondine is out somewhere in the storm. As Auguste rages, naiads, the wind, and even the King of the Ondines himself (throughout the play referred to as the Old One) peer in at the windows gently mocking Auguste. Evidently this is not unusual—the old couple are well aware that Ondine is "not like anyone else". A knight-errant, Hans von Wittenstein zu Wittenstein, arrives seeking shelter and he is welcomed. While he is in the midst of telling Auguste and Eugenie about his betrothal to the princess Bertha, Ondine appears. On seeing Hans she says, "How beautiful he is!" In spite of taunts from Ondine's sister naiads, and against the advice of Auguste, Hans immediately falls in love with Ondine. All thought of Bertha, his "dark angel" — the woman who sent him off on his quest — is banished. Ondine in turn swears eternal love for Hans. The Old One warns her, "The man will deceive you. He will abandon you." Ondine does not believe him. He gives a final warning "You will remember our pact." Ondine reluctantly agrees. In the great hall of the king's palace, it is the day that Hans is to present his bride Ondine at court. The Lord Chamberlain, who needs to arrange an entertainment for the day's ceremonies, is in conference with the director of the royal theater, the trainer of the seals, and the Illusionist (in actuality the King of the Ondines). Soon they are joined by the poet Bertram and several ladies of the court. The Illusionist says he will arrange a little private entertainment while they are waiting. As to what they would like to see, everyone is curious to see what will happen when Hans and the embittered Bertha finally meet after avoiding each other for three months. The Illusionist says he can arrange for this event to take place at once. Bertram objects asking, "Why are we doing this evil thing?" The Chamberlain cynically replies, "Sooner or later it would have to happen. That's life." They all conceal themselves behind a pillar and watch as the inevitable events unfold. Hans and Bertha meet. Bertha manipulates Hans with guilt. The Illusionist gives the spectators a further glimpse into the future showing them the scene when Hans realizes that he married the wrong woman. Bertha intimately knows the Wittenstein family history, she plays the lute, she recites, she illuminates manuscripts—she is the perfect woman. When Bertha asks Hans what Ondine does that might advance her husband's interests at court, he replies, "Oh, she swims. Occasionally." Continuing the play-within-a-play structure, the Illusionist presents the remaining events of the day in scenes which the astonished participants themselves watch from behind the pillar. The Chamberlain just has time to prepare Ondine for her reception with the king. Ondine is particularly advised not to mention the wart on the king's nose. Ondine tactlessly mentions that the Chamberlain's hand is damp and constantly interrupts him to talk to Bertram with whom she immediately establishes a rapport. At the king's reception Ondine cannot take her eyes off Bertha. She accuses Bertha of trying to steal Hans from her. The King says, "Bertha only wants to be your friend." Ondine replies, "You are entirely mistaken! Bertha is a hypocrite. She flatters you constantly. Has she ever dared to speak to you about...the wart on your nose?" In panic, the Chamberlain clears the room. Ondine is alone with the king. The king asks, "Who are you, Ondine?" Ondine explains everything and says that she weeps because "they are trying to take Hans away from me." "But what if they did", the king asks. "Would that be such a misfortune?" Ondine answers, "Oh yes. If he deceives me, he will die." The king says, "Men have been known to survive such things." "Not this one", Ondine replies. The Illusionist has one more scene. Bertha is revealed to be not a princess, but the long lost daughter of Auguste and Eugenie. When Bertha refuses to acknowledge her true parents, the king banishes her until she apologizes. She leaves sobbing, but at Ondine's urging, she is soon forgiven. After the events of this disastrous day, Ondine laments, "Oh, how difficult it is to live among you, where what has happened can never again not have happened. How terrible to live where a word can never be unspoken and a gesture can never be unmade." Act Three takes place in the courtyard of castle of the Wittenstein. Five years have passed. Hans has deceived Ondine with Bertha, and Ondine has long since vanished. It is the morning of the day of the marriage of Bertha and Hans. But Hans is troubled. He tells Bertha, that she should have married a man full of pride and joy. He complains, "Oh Bertha, how she lied to me, that woman!" Bertha points out that Ondine was no woman, "you married a creature of another world. You must forget her." Hans remembers the day that Ondine left and asks, "But why does she proclaim to the world that she deceived me with Bertram?" In addition to being preoccupied with Ondine, Hans is worried because the servants are starting to speak in poetry and there is a Wittenstein legend that this always happens just before misfortune strikes. Two fishermen arrive. The second fisherman is the Old One. They have caught Ondine. Two judges from the inquisition are summoned and immediately put her on trial. Ondine is brought in draped in the net in which she was caught. She does not deny being an Ondine and proclaims to all who will listen that she deceived Hans with Bertram. The judge asks Hans to clearly state the exact nature of his complaint. Hans says, "My complaint? My complaint is the complaint of all mankind. I claim the right to be left in peace in a world that is free of intrusions by these creatures. Has there never been an age when they did not afflict us?" The judge answers, "An age? There has never been a moment." But the other judge says, "Yes, there was once a moment. For that instant, the whole world was single-hearted, at play, at peace — and yet I tasted for the first time a certain loneliness." As the trial progresses it becomes clear that Hans is still in love with Ondine. Ondine, in a vain attempt to get out of her pact with the Old One (Hans must die because he deceived Ondine with Bertha) continues to insist that she deceived Hans first with Bertram. Bertram is summoned and supports Ondine's story. But no-one believes them, least of all the second fisherman. Ondine is accused of sorcery. The Old One leaps to her defense saying, "This woman could call upon the earth and the heavens to do her bidding. But she gave up her power to be human. Write this into your record, Judge — this Ondine was the most human being that ever lived. She was human by choice." In the end the judges decide that Ondine transgressed the boundaries of nature, but in so doing she brought only kindness and love. So they are compassionate in merely sentencing her to death while sparing her a public execution. The earthly judges have no power over Ondine, however, and as the executioner attempts to lead her away, the Old One waves him off. But Hans must die because of the original pact between the Old One and Ondine. The Old One says kindly to Ondine, "If you wish, I will let him die at the same moment that you forget him." Hans and Ondine have one last moment of tenderness. Her sisters will call Ondine three times, and then she will forget everything. Hans laments that their parting will be "a real farewell, a farewell forever. Not like those lovers who part, but are destined to be reunited again in the afterlife. We part for eternity, we go to different worlds." They recall their first meeting, the night Hans came out of the storm. Ondine recalls that she said, "In after years we shall have this hour to remember. The hour before you kissed me." Hans says, "I can't wait. Now, Ondine. Kiss me now." As they kiss, the third Ondine calls. Hans dies. Ondine looks around in puzzlement. She asks, "Who is this handsome young man lying here, can you bring him back to life, Old One?" He replies, "Impossible." As the curtain falls Ondine says, "What a pity! How I should have loved him!"
A New England pharmaceutical manufacturer learns that his company’s patent medicine may have caused a child’s death and could endanger other patients. He must choose between recalling the drug at the risk of bankruptcy or concealing the danger; the dispute divides the company and its family.
In plague-stricken 17th-century London, a wealthy couple, a sailor, and a young girl are quarantined together in a boarded-up house, testing boundaries of morality and survival.
The plot revolves around mental hospital patient Randle McMurphy who leads a revolt against cold Nurse Ratched.
During a Harlem funeral service in the 1960s, mourners reflect on their relationships with the deceased patriarch.
Charles Ross performs a one-person parody of the original Star Wars trilogy, portraying all characters, recreating sound effects and singing from John Williams’s score. The solo show condenses the films into a comic stage performance.
In 1963 Brighton, out-of-work musician Francis Henshall secretly works for both gangster Roscoe Crabbe and upper-class Stanley Stubbers, trying to stop the two from meeting. Roscoe is actually his twin sister Rachel in disguise, and Stanley killed her brother; local gangsters, an engagement, a heavy trunk and Francis's appetite compound the confusion.
Set in 1970s Philadelphia, the play examines the clash of values between middle-class and working-class African Americans.
On the night Cassius Clay wins the world heavyweight title, he celebrates at Miami’s Hampton House with Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown. The one-act drama imagines their conversation and the choices facing four emerging Black American figures.
During the Coventry Blitz, aspiring teacher Katie Stanley meets Michael, an Oxford language tutor who works at Bletchley Park and knows the city is under threat. As her family faces the bombing, the play examines whether Churchill knew of the attack and whether Coventry was sacrificed to protect the Enigma codebreaking secret.
In the aftermath of a plane crash, three interwoven stories connect six characters; a brother and sister survive, as the action moves between New York’s Museum of Modern Art and New Hampshire across past and present.
A nude ambassador escapes discovery in a love affair by hiding in a road sweeper’s bin. A sweeper helps him recover his evening clothes, and the ambassador’s status makes the worker question the social hierarchy that treats him as less important in his own clothes.
In an absurdist household, Kirby Groomkirby tries to teach stolen talking weighing machines to sing Handel's Hallelujah chorus while his father builds a replica Old Bailey in the sitting room. Kirby is put on trial for murder, and the family pursues its own eccentric obsessions.
Two feuding neighbors, a barrister and a bookmaker, join forces to try and prevent their secret pasts from coming back to haunt them.
In a new middle-class housing development, Dennis and Pauline Cain wait for his parents, lost among identical streets, while the neighborhood blames the “Parnes Kids” for a wave of absurd garden vandalism. Their guests Jane and Roger join the conversation as the play teases whether the culprit is closer to home—and what Dennis is hiding in his bureau.
In an unspecified country, officer Nicolas interrogates imprisoned couple Victor and Gila and their young son Nicky. Through threats and insinuations, he reveals the torture and sexual violence inflicted on the family and signals that Nicky has been killed, exposing the regime's abuse of power.
Estranged twins run rival seaside fish-and-chip shops that become finalists for a coveted award. Their competing traditions and ambitions attract a journalist whose search for a scoop uncovers more than a culinary contest.
A Living Newspaper dramatization of housing conditions and slum growth in the United States, focused on New York. Through an impoverished “little man” who witnesses a century of landlord power and housing corruption, it criticizes the limited impact of the Housing Act of 1937 and ends with a pledge to continue campaigning for decent housing.
A parody of Shibaraku that follows its plot with a female role in place of the hero.
At an urban college, sophomore Calvin Jefferson reads at a fifth-grade level but earns Bs and faces a future for which his diploma alone will not prepare him. He asks Ginny Carlsen, an overworked speech teacher, for help building the basic skills he lacks. The play examines equal opportunity in admissions and the strain on both student and teacher.
Four fictional steelworkers are trapped in the cellar of Sheffield’s Marples Hotel when the building is destroyed during the Sheffield Blitz. The play examines their struggle to survive the bombing and its immediate aftermath.
Ten-year-old Malcolm, convinced he is Elvis Presley reincarnated, runs away toward Memphis and instead meets Michael, a boy with severe brain damage who cannot speak; with help from their friends, the boys find a way to take Michael sailing, and Malcolm no longer needs to pretend to be Elvis.
A postmodern response to Heiner Mueller's Hamletmachine, the play fragments Hamlet and Ophelia into multiple characters and voices. Through nonlinear scenes, collage and pastiche, it examines sexuality, gender, power, violence and identity in a globalized, media-saturated world.
In a postcolonial present, Hamlet and Macbeth are actors stripped of their Shakespearean stature and confined by paralysis, censorship and fractured identity. Across two acts of repeating micro-dramas and changing confined spaces, Macbeth and Hamlet perform multiple roles; Ophelia remains absent, and Hamlet ends alone, waiting for her and for change.
A biographical drama about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist whose work led to the atomic bomb.
A three-act drama set in St. Petersburg and Kronstadt during the Russian Civil War, with scenes aboard a Red Navy ship on the Baltic near the city.
When the Lazara String Quartet fires its violist Dorian, the remaining members recruit talented young musician Grace as they prepare for a White House performance. Relationships and tensions within the group intensify around the quartet’s violin, Dorian’s return, and cellist Carl’s illness.
Puppetry connects two men’s imagined old age in Port Elizabeth in 2036 with their younger selves falling in love in 1971. Their real-life counterparts stand between the remembered beginning and imagined ending of their life together.
David and Beth, each married to someone else, begin an affair that destabilizes both families. As their spouses confront the betrayal and separate, Beth becomes pregnant with David's child, and the couple considers building a home together.
Princess Orbecche has secretly married Oronte and borne two children. Her father Sulmone discovers the marriage and exacts a brutal revenge, prompting Orbecche to retaliate against him before she and her nurse take their own lives.
Orders Are Orders is a 1932 comedy play by the British writers Ian Hay and Anthony Armstrong. A Hollywood film crew takes over a British Army barracks for a film shoot, with chaotic consequences. It premiered at the King's Theatre in Southsea, before transferring to the Shaftesbury Theatre in London's West End where it ran for 193 performances from 8 August 1932 to 21 January 1933. The cast included Reginald Purdell, Marjorie Corbett, Kathleen Kelly, Olive Blakeney and Michael Shepley.
A Cornish mystery-play trilogy spanning biblical history from Creation through the Passion and Resurrection, interwoven with the Legend of the Holy Cross.
During an economic recession, a character suffers a breakdown and fantasizes about becoming Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Ordinary People is a dramatic stage play written by American playwright Nancy Pahl-Gilsenan. Gilsenan published the adaptation in 1983, three years after the successful film version was released in 1980. The original novel was published by Judith Guest in 1976.
The Fleury drama combines Rachel’s lament with the Flight into Egypt, shepherds, Herod’s order for the massacre, and the return of the holy family. Rachel sings four laments; two comforters fail to console her, and the piece concludes with the Te Deum.
Rachel opens by singing a lament over her children’s bodies. A female comforter arrives but cannot console her; the drama incorporates the Flight into Egypt and shepherd themes alongside the Rachel lament.
The Soul is drawn from the Virtues by the Devil toward worldly life, then returns repentant. The Virtues accept her, bind the Devil, praise God and join a final procession. The allegorical morality drama uses sung roles and plainchant, with the Devil limited to shouts and grunts.
Aeschylus’s three-play tragedy follows Agamemnon’s murder after his return from Troy, Orestes’s revenge against his mother, and the trial that replaces the family’s cycle of vengeance with a civic judgment.
After killing his mother Clytemnestra, Orestes is tormented by the Furies and faces execution. With Electra and Pylades, he plots revenge against Menelaus, but Apollo intervenes and orders a trial in Athens.
Orestes is a 1731 tragedy with musical elements by the British writer Lewis Theobald, based on the Ancient Greek story of Orestes. The original Lincoln's Inn Fields cast included James Quin as Thoas, Lacy Ryan as Orestes, Thomas Walker as Pylades, Thomas Chapman as Barzanes and William Milward as Araxes, Charles Hulett as Magician, William Pinkethman and John Hippisley as sailors, Elizabeth Younger as Hermione, Anne Berriman as Circe, and Elizabeth Mills as Laodice. The epilogue was written by Henry Fielding. It was dedicated to the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole.
A three-act tragedy relocates the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to a contemporary Rio de Janeiro favela during Carnival. The stage work combines drama and music, with a score by Antônio Carlos Jobim.
An experimental, ritual-oriented performance that weaves a comprehensive myth around Prometheus. It uses an invented language alongside Classical Greek and Avestan, developed through improvisation and sound experimentation.
Orlando begins life as an Elizabethan nobleman and travels through centuries before becoming a woman in the modern world. Love, poetry, and shifting social expectations shape this theatrical adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel.
Two grown orphan brothers live in an old dilapidated row house in North Philadelphia—deserted in childhood by an unfaithful father and by the death of their mother. Older brother Treat, brutal and violent, provides for his younger brother Phillip by being a petty thief—interpreting the role of father. With the love and protectiveness of an older brother and an orphan's fear of abandonment, Treat takes away Phillip's chances to grow up, depriving him of knowledge and forcing him to live in a world of illiteracy and innocence: relegating him to their lost childhood. As Treat is out stealing to put food on the table, Phillip never leaves the house, thinking he will die from something outside because of a near deadly allergic reaction he had as a child. Haunted by the death of their mother, he spends his time lying in her closet filled with unworn clothes. Curious about the world, he secretly attempts to understand things by watching reruns of The Price Is Right and underlining words in newspapers and old books he finds lying around. Treat kidnaps and ties up a Chicago gangster named Harold. Harold, an orphan himself, with the prowess of an escape artist, loosens the ties that bind him, turns the tables around, and with gun in hand, puts himself into the role of teacher, healer and surrogate parent.
Helen and Danny’s quiet celebration of her pregnancy is interrupted by her blood-covered brother Liam, who says he found an injured boy. As his story shifts, Helen and Danny suspect that Liam committed a racist assault; Helen then pressures Danny to intimidate the victim to prevent police involvement, fracturing the family over the course of the night.
A young orphan moves to St. Petersburg and becomes entangled with revolutionaries and government spies. Attempting to please everyone, he struggles to survive the rival ideologies surrounding the approach to Bloody Sunday.
Orpheus follows a supernatural horse’s cryptic messages and enters its verse in a contest, provoking scandal. After the Bacchantes murder Eurydice, he travels through a mirror to rescue her, but a rule forbidding him to look at her makes their reunion impossible.
In a Mississippi town, a wandering singer named Val takes a job at a store run by Lady Torrance, whose husband Jabe is dying. Their relationship and hopes for a new life collide with the town's hostility and Jabe's violence.
The play, based on true events, is set in 1960 London. In his declining years, Orson Welles is directing a production of Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright. Olivier is fresh from his triumphant theatrical portrayal of vaudevillian Archie Rice in John Osborne's The Entertainer and is about to reprise the role in the film adaptation. He and Plowright are in the early stages of a romantic liaison; Olivier's tumultuous marriage to Vivien Leigh is all but ended. Critic Kenneth Tynan also figures in the plot, which debates the merits of stage versus screen, the internal struggle that theatrical performers endure when contemplating a leap to films, and the ways that the studio system frustrated the careers of individual artists. It is a study of theatrical egos, each of the protagonists living more on the stage than in real life, each one feeling insecure while jockeying for power.
A Greek comedy named for the sausage term orya, which Epicharmus also uses in the work.
When seventeen-year-old Gary writes a school project defending Osama bin Laden, his frightened neighbours turn on him, mistake him for a local vandal and work themselves into a frenzy that threatens his safety.
A historical play about John Brown's attack on slaveholders in Kansas and his subsequent raid on Harpers Ferry.
Oscar Wilde is a 1936 play written by Leslie Stokes and Sewell Stokes. It is based on the life of the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in which Wilde's friend, the controversial author and journalist Frank Harris, appears as a character. The play, which contains much of Wilde's actual writings, starts with Wilde's literary success and his friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas, turns into a courtroom melodrama, and ends with Wilde as a broken alcoholic after two years in prison.
Oslo is a play by J. T. Rogers, recounting (in dramatized, partially fictional form) the true-life, previously secret, back-channel negotiations in the development of the pivotal 1990s Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The play premiered Off-Broadway in June 2016 and then transferred to Broadway in April 2017. In May 2017, Oslo won the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Play, the 2017 Drama League Award for Outstanding Production of a Play, and two 2017 Obie Awards, one for Best New American Theater Work and the other an Ensemble Award (shared by the director and the entire Off-Broadway cast). At the 71st Tony Awards, Oslo won the Tony Award for Best Play and Best Featured Actor in a Play award for Michael Aronov. It also won the 2017 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play and the 2016-2017 New York Drama Critics' Circle award for Best Play – for a sweep of the 2016-2017 awards season.
On a shore on the coast of Granada, Maria, the orphan ward of Velez, reaffirms her fidelity to Velez's son, Albert, who is missing. Velez urges the case for his other son, Osorio, the younger brother of Albert, but Maria dislikes Osorio. Velez believes Albert is dead because of Osorio's (false) report that he witnessed Albert's ship founder in a storm after it was captured as a prize by a Moorish pirate. Velez and Maria are interrupted by Francesco, an inquisitor, who has arrested and imprisoned a Moresco, Ferdinand, on suspicion of relapsing to Islam. Alhadra, the Moorish wife of Ferdinand, pleads for Osorio to intervene on his behalf. Osorio declares he will question Ferdinand. He then departs, followed by Francesco and Velez. Albert enters disguised as a Moor and wearing forbidden Moorish garments. He has been ‘loitering’ in the area for three weeks with a view to arousing the pain of remorse in Osorio and Maria for jointly plotting to have him murdered. When he encounters Maria, she fails to recognise him. Under the veil of a dream account, Albert relates the attempt on his life by a hired assassin. Maria's reaction to his account suggests to Albert that she was innocent of the assassination plot. After arranging Ferdinand's release from prison, Osorio asks Ferdinand to trick Maria using a mock incantation to convince her that Albert is dead. Ferdinand was the assassin hired by Osorio to kill Albert. Osorio, convinced of Albert's death, is persuaded by Ferdinand to ask the "stranger" to trick Maria instead. Ferdinand relates how the stranger (the disguised Albert) has identified himself as "He that can bring the dead to life again". Osorio goes to Albert's cottage and fails to recognise his disguised brother. He demands that Albert perform a fraudulent séance before Maria in which her portrait, which Albert used to wear around his neck, materialises. Osorio obtained the portrait from Ferdinand as proof of Albert's assassination. Osorio "returns" the portrait to Albert so that it can be used in the "dark trick". This will convince Maria that Albert is dead and encourage her to accept Osorio as husband. Albert performs his act of sorcery before Maria, Velez and Osorio. Instead of using the portrait of Maria, however, Albert reveals a picture he has painted of his own assassination. Albert does this to show Osorio that his scheme to have his brother killed is known. Maria swoons and Velez is delighted by what he regards as a harmless manoeuvre by Osorio to convince Maria of Albert's death. Upon seeing the painting of Albert's assassination, Osorio immediately assumes that he has been betrayed by Ferdinand. He allows Francesco to imprison Albert for his sacrilegious act of sorcery. Osorio confronts Ferdinand in a dark cavern. The two men fight with swords before Ferdinand is disarmed and hurled down a chasm by Osorio to die. In the court before Velez's castle, Maria and her Foster-Mother discuss the stranger (Albert). The Foster-Mother recounts a tale of a baby boy found by a woodman. The boy was a wild child of nature but became a learned youth. He was imprisoned for heresy but escaped to the New World where it is believed "he lived and died among savage men". The tale awakens sympathy within Maria for the imprisoned Albert. Velez condemns Maria for stubbornly refusing Osorio, and Francesco suggests that Maria should enter a convent. Maria's response is to mock Francesco's faith and oppressive behaviour. At night, Alhadra and her cohort of Moors meet in the mountains. In defiance of the Christian laws, they wear Moorish garments and proclaim their adherence to Mahomet. Alhadra reveals to the group that she followed Ferdinand to the cave and, after seeing Osorio leave the scene, entered the cave to hear Ferdinand's death groan in the chasm. She calls on the group to avenge his death. Alhadra and the Moors capture Francesco but are prevented from killing him by Albert's companion, Maurice, who has joined the group. Alhadra and the Moors then proceed to the castle of Velez. In the dungeon, Osorio visits Albert and reveals a tortured sense of remorse for Albert's disappearance. Maria enters with the intention of helping Albert escape and Albert finally reveals himself to Osorio. Although Osorio begs for forgiveness, he nevertheless craves punishment for his crimes. When Alhadra enters, Osorio openly admits to murdering Ferdinand, whereupon he is dragged away and killed by the Moors.
This two-part play moves among Washington, London, Sarajevo, Kigali, and Grozny during the 1990s conflicts. It follows the Zimmer family: Vietnam veteran Joseph confronts his past, his daughter Nola reels from an attack that killed her family, and war photographer Alan travels through Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya. The work examines recurring war and human suffering.
The ensign Iago manipulates the Moorish commander Othello into believing that his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful. Othello kills her, then learns the truth and dies by suicide as Iago is exposed.
The play's name refers to a control city guide sign on eastbound Interstate 10 in California, which indicates that the freeway is headed towards Indio, California, and "Other Desert Cities" (that is, the rest of the Coachella Valley and onward towards Phoenix, Arizona). The play's events occur around Christmas Eve 2004, when the family of Polly and Lyman Wyeth gather in Palm Springs, California. Their daughter Brooke Wyeth returns home after six years in New York writing magazine pieces. Polly's sister Silda is also visiting, out of a time spent in rehab. Polly and Lyman are Republicans, while Silda is a liberal who has fallen into alcoholism. The sisters co-wrote a series of MGM comedies in the 1960s, but have since become estranged chiefly due to Silda's resenting Polly for shifting social worldviews over time. Brooke announces and presents to her family a memoir recounting a pivotal and tragic event in the family's history: the suicide of her late brother Henry, who had been involved with the radical underground subculture in Venice, and a horrific incident resulting from their advocacy. During the course of the story, Brooke experiences bitter conflict between her yearning for independent understanding and reliance, and her parents' doting yet secretive motives towards her. During this, she also comes to terms with her family's sorrowing frustration in dealing with her post-divorce depressive episode, even years after Henry's disappearance. Nonetheless, after absorbing the family's perspectives, Brooke insists the memoir is vital for her continuing on in life, whether her family continues to embrace her or not. In an act of submission from Lyman, he and Polly finally recount the specifics surrounding the recruitment center bombing Henry was implicated in, after years of personal clashes and rejection from both parents and son. Henry showed up disheveled, begging for help and insisting he was unaware of his friends' terrorism. When Lyman insisted Henry turn himself in nonetheless, another argument broke out and Lyman slapped him. Henry disappeared into the night, and wasn't found until three weeks later by Polly. She reveals that she made an interstate trip with Lyman and her son to the northern border, and the ferry he disappeared from. But Lyman painfully reveals they had also doctored Henry's suicide note themselves, and stuck it in his shoes with a tearful goodbye. With their darkest secret unearthed, Lyman and Polly come to terms with their grief, and give Brooke their consent for publishing. Brooke, in the play's penultimate moment, launches all the pages of her memoir into the air in anguish, screaming of her internal suffering since Henry left her life, and trying to spare her parents the potential pain of her suicide despite her continual grief. Lyman embraces his daughter in remorse. An epilogue reveals Brooke at her memoir's publishing, years after Polly and Lyman's passing, per their initial request. She recounts a memory of her brother, wondering when she will see him again.
Other Men's Wives is a 1928 comedy play by the British-American writer Walter Hackett set in a French hotel. After premiering at the Theatre Royal in Brighton it transferred to the West End where it ran for 143 performances between 9 April and 11 August 1928, initially at Wyndham's Theatre before moving to the St Martin's Theatre. The original London cast included Fay Compton, Leslie Banks, Dino Galvani, Bruce Belfrage and Marion Lorne. The following year it appeared at the Times Square Theatre on Broadway, running for twenty three performances.
In 1970s Toronto, student Beverly becomes involved with Black civil-rights activists. In contemporary Toronto, Nicole is stopped by police while with her ex-boyfriend at a basketball court. The play connects their experiences and the effects of incarceration on women and relationships.
Publisher Simon Hench plans a quiet afternoon listening to Parsifal, but tenants, friends, relatives and aspiring writers repeatedly interrupt him. As his composure falls away, he emerges as a selfish, cruel and lonely bully, and his wife announces she is leaving.
In an Italian mountain town, the mysterious German traveler Oulanem arrives with his companion Lucindo. In the surviving first act, Oulanem confronts mortality and the world’s destruction, and considers whether he must destroy in defiance.
When Asa Trenchard, a boorish but honest Vermont cousin, arrives in England to claim a family estate, he helps his aristocratic relatives escape financial ruin and thwart the scheming Coyle. Asa burns the inheritance that would displace his impoverished cousin Mary, and the play ends with several couples marrying.
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