8284 shows
Clear filtersWhen performers begin dying during West End shows at Christmas, Sherlock Holmes finds a connection to the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. He races to stop the killer with help from Dr. Watson and rival detective Athena Faversham.
In the modern version, a warrior called Kamakura Gongorō Kagemasa interrupts the execution of imperial prisoners by an usurping lord. He defeats the lord's forces and secures the prisoners' release through a display of theatrical bravado, speech, and swordplay.
The play follows the years-long love story between Dre and Des (short for Destiny), who first met at high school in South London and brought together by the school's debating club. while his estranged mother lives in Nigeria. Des goes on to become a conceptual artist based in America while Dre remains in England, working as a restauranteur. Over a decade later, the two protagonists reconnect at Dre's grandmother's funeral back in England, bringing up sparks of the past and thoughts of the future.
A solo performer tells of two boys who befriend each other in a harsh Midwestern juvenile detention center in 1956. They invent a fantasy language called shimmer to endure the institution, but are eventually confined and plan an escape; the play draws partly on O’Keefe’s own experiences.
Widower John visits Ian, a therapist, claiming he has seen his dead wife in their home. Ian, a former priest struggling with lost faith, leaves his partner and child as both men try to understand their experiences and find another life.
Wondering what has happened to her youth and feeling stagnant and in a rut, Shirley feels as if her family treats her more like a servant and she finds herself regularly alone and talking to the wall while preparing an evening meal of "chips and egg" for her emotionally distant husband. When her best friend wins a competition for two to Greece, she packs her bags, leaves a note on the cupboard door in the kitchen, and heads for a fortnight of rest and relaxation. In Greece, with just a little effort on her part, she rediscovers everything she had been missing about her existence in England. She finds so much happiness, in fact, that when the vacation is over she decides not to return, ditching her friend at the airport and going back to the hotel where she'd been staying to ask for a job and to live a newly self-confident life in which she is at last true to herself.
A stage biographical portrait of Shirley Porter, adapted from the radio drama, with Jessica Martin playing Porter.
The show is a domestic comedic drama, and exploration into the relationships between three couples and the secrets they have behind their phones. One night at a party to watch an eclipse, they play a game in which they place their phones on the table and have to read aloud or show every text or message that comes in on their phone.
In the fictional Essex new town of Draylingstowe, two families’ lives unfold across roughly twelve years through 17 scenes presented out of chronological order. The nonlinear fragments expose fractures in families, friendships and community, and blur reality with fantasy.
A non-musical stage adaptation of Singer’s Chelm stories about the supposedly wise men of the legendary town and the fool Shlemiel.
Shmendrik is a clueless, poor student whose mother arranges his marriage to a young woman who is already in love with someone else. The play follows her efforts to evade the match and reunite with her beloved.
In consumerist London, a group of young people treat sex, drugs, violence and even intimacy as transactions, testing what remains of human attachment when buying and selling become their moral code.
Shore Acres is four-act a play written by James A. Herne. The play debuted at McVicker's Theater in Chicago on May 23, 1892, initially under the title Shore Acres Subdivision. Later in the Chicago run, it was retitled Uncle Nat. In February 1893, the play opened as Shore Acres at the Boston Museum, where it ran for several months. Following the play's success in Boston, Henry C. Miner staged it on Broadway, where it opened at the Fifth Avenue Theatre on October 30, 1893.
A comedy about a group of adulterous lovers facing complications.
The play is set in an unnamed House of Detention in New York City, the inmates of which are predominantly black or Latino. One day, a new prisoner is brought in: Clark Davis, a young, middle-class white man accused of raping a young girl. His fellow prisoners immediately turn on him — child molesters are considered the lowest form of prison life — except for Juan, one of the institution's older prisoners, who treats him with dignity. While Davis insists he doesn't remember raping the girl, he admits that he has molested several other children. It is eventually revealed that the police's case against Davis is weak, and he will likely be released. This puts Juan in a difficult position: on one hand, he feels a grudging pity for Davis, and "snitching" on another prisoner, even one as despised as Davis, could get him killed; on the other, there is no doubt in his mind that Davis will "scar up some more little girls' minds" if released. Before he can decide what to do, however, Davis is attacked and killed by the other prisoners. The play also revolves around other features of prison life, such as the day-to-day attempts to accumulate privileges from the guards and "rap sessions" in which prisoners joke, flirt, and threaten each other.
On the edge of London, the play follows troubled teenager Christine and her mother Mrs Forsythe as they struggle to survive together under the pressure of unemployment and recession. Suspended from school and facing possible detention, Christine’s defiance intensifies the conflict at home.
In this autobiographical performance, Lou Bennett recounts her life, including coming out to her family, her first live performance, moving to the city and her time with the band Tiddas.
Yashoda Borkar, a bank employee, presses her teenage son Shyam to focus on school because she wants him to become a doctor. Her husband Anand is an unsuccessful singer and music director, and Shyam's neighbor consistently earns better grades despite taking part in sports.
During a post-show discussion after controversy forces a production of The Merchant of Venice to close early, Jewish actor Jon Davies explains why he played Shylock as a villain. As he removes his costume piece by piece, he argues that theatre should remain provocative even when it challenges audiences.
The play starts in the 1950s and follows the family through the next 35 years. The play's narrator is Clifford Glimmer, the only son of Gene, a talented but self-absorbed jazz trumpeter, and his alcoholic wife Terry, who describes the tumultuous relationship his parents shared and the haphazard career journey Gene followed over the course of three decades. Dedicated more to his music than his family, he refuses to accept a regular job to support them, and their home life gradually unravels. Clifford eventually assumes the role of breadwinner his father has forsaken and offers his mother the emotional support Gene cannot. Scenes alternate between the family's Spartan New York City apartment and the smoke-filled nightclubs and cabarets of another era.
An idealistic pawnbroker is caught up in Germany's hyperinflation. Kaiser shifts from his earlier Expressionism toward rounded characterization, realistic clipped dialogue and a light-hearted story of the crisis.
War veteran Feuerstaak’s return to civilian life is disrupted when his former orderly Philipp gathers surviving comrades for a march back to Siebenstein, where their company’s dead lie. The summons sets loyalty to fallen comrades against remaining at home with family.
During the Spanish Civil War, a band of loyalists holds out in a mountain fortress near Madrid. Their resistance reimagines the historical siege of the Alcázar with the political loyalties reversed.
An amnesiac French soldier and writer becomes a celebrated German national hero after a nurse raises him as German. A French lover and a defender of German traditions try to restore his memory, exposing competing ideas of identity and belonging.
Sight Unseen is a play by Donald Margulies. The play premiered at South Coast Repertory in 1991, and then was produced Off-Broadway in 1992 and on Broadway in 2004.
In present-day New York, four friends in their late twenties search for relationships as their lives change. Jordan pines for a partner while the women in his close-knit circle pair off, forcing him to confront the life he hoped to have and the changes beyond his control.
This three-play cycle follows Sigurd, a 12th-century claimant to the Norwegian throne: he discovers his royal parentage and leaves for the Crusades, returns to Caithness and Orkney where his ambition brings disaster, then comes home to seek recognition, raises a revolt, and dies in defeat.
In 1122, the young Sigurd prays to learn who his father is. His mother reveals he is the illegitimate son of King Magnus Barefoot; Sigurd vows to claim his right to the throne and leaves to join the Crusades.
In 1136, Sigurd returns to Stavanger seeking recognition from his half-brother, King Harald Gille. After nobles imprison him and plot his death, Sigurd escapes, kills Harald, and raises a revolt; before his defeat and death in 1139, he bids farewell to his mother.
Five years after leaving Norway, Sigurd serves Harald, Earl of Caithness, and loves Harald’s niece Audhild. Sigurd’s ambition for power brings bloody disaster to the noble families, and he decides to leave on another Crusade.
A three-character one-act play that uses both spoken language and pauses to suggest an underlying, withheld communication. Pinter describes speech as a means of covering a deeper silence, leaving the characters’ relationships and unspoken meanings to resonate beneath their words.
Set in Canterbury and Cumbria in a reimagined Dark Ages England, the play follows Silence, Lord of Cumbria, a woman living in disguise, alongside a priest, a king, a Norman princess and her household. Buffini draws on medieval history while engaging concerns of the new millennium.
Two teenagers, one Aboriginal, attend a Sydney public school.
The play follows a peasant family in the Anatolian mountains through the turbulent decades of the 1960s and 1970s in modern Turkish history.
Five elderly residents of a Gravesend retirement home face the threat of flooding.
Sir Robert and Lady Lydia Marlowe have spent many years abroad in the diplomatic service. On the morning of their twenty fifth wedding anniversary she announces that they should go their own separate ways. Her present for the wedding is a series of love letters he had written to different women throughout his career, each of whom she befriended.
Marija and Salih’s love story unfolds against the Srebrenica tragedy, as they become victims of the war’s circumstances. The bilingual play seeks to tell a personal story without reducing its subject to political generalities.
Three young associates rig a horse race and blackmail an official. Twenty years later, the scheme resurfaces as one of them tries to recover the original blackmail material from his former partners.
Two street musicians are mistakenly appointed as bodyguards for a scientist carrying a supposedly vital invention. They blunder through disguises and spy threats in Dover, while incompetent army officers and MI5 agents compound the confusion until the invention proves to be a carpet shampoo.
A tragic incident exposes conflict between petty tradespeople and the nobility, contrasting the upright Krasnov with the weak-willed nobleman Babayev.
At a Christmas reunion, former Illinois college friends confront the consequences of their 1930s political beliefs. A brilliant mathematician who once supported Soviet Russia has become dispossessed and is shut out of jobs, housing and social life because of his associations.
Single Spies is a 1988 double bill written by the English playwright Alan Bennett. It consists of An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution, the former an adaptation of a television play the author had written for the BBC in 1983. Both plays depict members of the Cambridge spy ring and touch on their moral, political and aesthetic beliefs: the first shows Guy Burgess in exile in Moscow in 1958, seven years after absconding from Britain. The second focuses on Sir Anthony Blunt while he still holds high office in the Royal Household although known to the security services as a former Soviet agent. The title comes from a speech in Hamlet: ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.’ The double bill was presented at the National Theatre in December 1988, and transferred to the Queen's Theatre in the West End in February 1989.
Steven Berkoff’s verse satire dramatizes Margaret Thatcher’s decision to torpedo the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano during the 1982 Falklands War, using parodic figures representing British political and military leaders, sailors and farmers.
Sir Anthony Love; Or, The Rambling Lady is a 1690 comedy play by the Irish writer Thomas Southerne. It was originally staged by the United Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with a cast that included Susanna Mountfort in a breeches role as Sir Anthony Love, William Mountfort as Valentine, Joseph Williams as Ilford, William Bowen as Sir Gentle Golding, Anthony Leigh as An Abbe, John Hodgson as Count Canaile, Samuel Sandford as Count Verole, George Bright as Waitwell, Colley Cibber as Servant to Sir Gentle, Charlotte Butler as Floriante, Anne Bracegirdle as Charlote and Frances Maria Knight as Volante. The play's incidental music was composed by Henry Purcell.
Sir Barnaby Whigg; Or, No Wit Like A Womans is a 1681 comedy play by the English writer Thomas D'Urfey. It was first staged by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. A song for the play was composed by Henry Purcell. The original cast included Thomas Clark as Wilding, Cardell Goodman as Townly, Philip Griffin as Porpuss, Martin Powell as Whigg, John Coysh as Swift, Carey Perin as Benedick, Mary Corbett as Gratiana, Sarah Cooke as Livia and Susanna Percival as Winifred. The published version was dedicated to the politician Lord Berkeley.
Clamydes sets out to kill a dragon to win Juliana, while her brother Clyomon takes his place at knighting and embarks on his own adventures. Clyomon falls for the princess Neronis, who disguises herself as a boy; after magical dangers, mistaken identities and a rivalry between the knights, the two men reconcile and both couples plan to marry.
Sir Courtly Nice: Or, It Cannot Be is a 1685 comedy play by the English writer John Crowne. Rehearsals by the United Company were underway when the death of Charles II in February led to the closure of all theatres as a mark of respect. The play was eventually staged on 9 May at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It is the tradition of the Restoration Comedy. A popular hit, it became a stock part of the repertoire for more than a century, with Colley Cibber and Anne Oldfield appearing in a celebrated 1709 revival. The original cast included William Mountfort as Sir Courtly, Cave Underhill as Hothead, Thomas Gillow as Testimony, William Mountfort as Lord Beaugard, Philip Griffin as Surly, Anthony Leigh as Sir Nicholas Callico and Elizabeth Barry as Leonora. Crowne made an attempt to balance the politics of the time by creating a Hothead, a hardline Tory character to balance out the Puritan Whig zealot Testimony but the play still revealed the author's underlying support for the Tory position. The published version was dedicated to the Duke of Ormonde.
The melancholic poet-lover Clarence is helped by Lord Momford to recognize his bond with Countess Eugenia. Around them, humours-comedy figures include the Francophile Captain Foulweather and waggish servants.
Sir Harry Wildair is a 1701 comic play by the Irish writer George Farquhar. It is a sequel to the 1699 hit The Constant Couple, portraying the further adventures of the most popular character from the earlier play. The original Drury Lane cast included Robert Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair, John Mills as Colonel Standard, Benjamin Johnson as Captain Fireball, Colley Cibber as Marquis, William Pinkethman as Clincher, Henry Norris as Dicky, Henry Fairbank as Shark, Thomas Simpson as Lord Bellamy, Susanna Verbruggen as Lady Lurewell, Jane Rogers as Angelica and Jane Lucas as Parly. Farquhar, an Irish Protestant from Derry, dedicated the play to William of Orange.
The play portrays Oldcastle as a religious but politically loyal dissenter who remains faithful to the Crown and Henry V. The Bishop of Rochester and his summoner pursue Oldcastle and his wife, while conspirators remain separate from him; the Oldcastles evade imprisonment, ending the extant play on a temporary positive note. The planned second part, which would have depicted Oldcastle's execution, is lost.
To impress his mistress Millicent, foolish Sir Martin pretends to play the lute, miming and strumming silently while another character secretly supplies the music. His continuing performance after the concealed player stops exposes the fraud in this Restoration comedy.
Young Lucia marries the hypochondriacal Sir Patient Fancy because she and her lover Charles Wittmore are poor. Lucia and Wittmore carry on an affair under Sir Patient's nose, then reveal their relationship; Lucia, now in control of his money, looks forward to life with Wittmore.
Sir Salomon; Or, The Cautious Coxcomb is a 1670 comedy play by the English writer John Caryll. It has often been staged under the title Sir Solomon Single. It was first performed by the Duke's Company at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in London. It is part of the tradition of Restoration comedy. The original cast included Thomas Betterton as Sir Solomon, Henry Harris as Peregrine Woodland, William Smith as Single, Samuel Sandford as Wary, Cave Underhill as Timothy and Mary Betterton as Julia.
The play follows Thomas More through his response to the 1517 Ill May Day riots, his service as Lord Chancellor, his refusal to sign the king's articles, and his execution. It dramatizes law, obedience, and conscience while altering or expanding historical events.
Sir Thomas Overbury is a 1723 tragedy by the British writer Richard Savage. It is based on the life of Thomas Overbury an associate of the Jacobean royal favourite Robert Carr whose apparent murder while incarcerated in the Tower of London provoked a trial and major scandal. Savage played the title role himself when it was staged at the Drury Lane Theatre. Other cast members included Roger Bridgewater as the Earl of Northampton, Theophilus Cibber as the Earl of Somerset and a Mrs. Bret as Isabella. Aaron Hill produced and revised the text of the play. It was published in October 1723. Historian Richard Holmes said the work is "clumsy, sub-Shakespearean, historical melodrama". (Whether any historical play from that period is not "sub-Shakespearean" is, of course, debatable.) Before his death, Savage completed a new version of Sir Thomas Overbury. In his Life of Mr Richard Savage (1744) Samuel Johnson described this version of the play as preserving only "a few lines" of the original, as having "a total alteration of the plan"—with "new incidents, and introduc[ing] new characters; so that it was a new tragedy". This revised version of Sir Thomas Overbury was first produced and published in 1777.
After Edward VI’s death, Northumberland secures the throne for Lady Jane Grey, while Thomas Wyatt urges Mary to assert her claim. When Mary becomes queen and accepts a Spanish marriage, Wyatt rebels from Kent; the uprising fails, and Wyatt, Jane and Guildford Dudley are executed.
Sir Walter Raleigh is a 1719 tragedy by the British writer George Sewell. It is based on the downfall of Walter Raleigh a successful courtier and sailor in the reign of Elizabeth I who was executed in the reign of her successor James I. It was originally staged at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, one of the two patent theatres operating in London. The original cast featured James Quin as Walter Raleigh, Lacy Ryan as Howard, John Leigh as Young Raleigh, John Corey as Salisbury, Christopher Bullock as Gundamor, Thomas Smith as Sir Julius Caesar, John Egleton as Carew, John Ogden as Wade, Anna Maria Seymour as Lady Raleigh and Jane Rogers as Olympia.
Liz is hired to seduce local councillor Billy Nottle, who is suspected of taking bribes from developers.
A Tulu drama based on the Epic of Siri, covering the first part of the story through the death of Siri.
At a hotel in northern Italy, bored Englishwoman Lucy meets Sirio, a local painter, while her husband plans to leave for business. After falling in love with Sirio, she separates from her husband; when Sirio later leaves to help his mother, Lucy declares herself free but is uncertain about what comes next.
At a Christmas lecture, a nun named Sister Mary Ignatius explains to the audience the basic tenets of Catholicism. She is assisted by her favorite student, seven-year-old Thomas. From time to time, she asks him catechism questions and gives him a cookie for every right answer. Her speech is interrupted when four of her former students Gary Sullivan, Diane Symonds, Philomena Rostovich, and Aloysius Benheim enter dressed as Saint Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and two halves of a camel. The four remind Sister that she had asked them to come perform the pageant they had performed when they were students in her class. After the pageant, it becomes apparent that the four have strayed from Mary Ignatious's teaching: Diane has had two abortions (the first one from a rape at age 18); Philomena is an unwed mother; Aloysius is an alcoholic who beats his wife and contemplates suicide; Gary is gay. They reveal that they were never asked to come in and merely wanted Mary Ignatius, because they each have a reason for hating her: Aloysius was refused bathroom privileges frequently and now has bladder problems; Philomena was hit for being a poor student; Gary is there on behalf of his boyfriend Jeff; and Diane had believed Mary Ignatius's teachings until her mother died of breast cancer and she was raped the same day. Diane reveals that she has brought a gun to kill Sister, something the other three were not aware of. Sister grabs a gun from behind her lectern and shoots Diane in self-defense. She also shoots Gary, proclaiming that she has sent him to heaven, as he'd been to confession earlier that day. She then points the gun at Aloysius, who needs to go to the bathroom, before handing it to Thomas so she can take a nap. The play ends with Thomas pointing the gun at Aloysius while explaining the perfections of God, Diane and Gary's dead bodies on the floor, and Sister asleep.
Sisters Abigail and Dorcas compete for the attention of Simon, their brother’s fiancée’s brother. A coin toss and a later decision by the actors determine which sister ultimately ends up with him.
Ann and Evelina share a modest life in turn-of-the-century New York. The arrival of a clockmaker unsettles their close relationship, testing the sacrifices and expectations that have held the sisters together.
An Urdu stage dramatization based on the Ramayana and centered on Sita.
In rural County Kerry, poverty and greed lead relatives to arrange orphaned Sive's marriage to an elderly wealthy man against her wishes and separate her from her suitor; the tragedy ends with Sive's death by drowning.
The play concerns Joan, illegitimate daughter of King John of England, and her marriage to Llywelyn the Great. At their royal home in Abergwyngregyn in 1230, William de Braose is discovered with Siwan in Llywelyn's bedchamber and is hanged for adultery. The drama also treats reconciliation, forgiveness and marital harmony.
Six unfinished fictional characters interrupt a theatre company's rehearsal and ask its director to stage their story. As actors attempt to reproduce their scenes, arguments over truth and performance intensify, and the family's story ends with a child's drowning and a boy's suicide, leaving the director unsure whether the events were real.
Lily Harrison is a self-described "tight-arsed old biddy" As the lessons continue, an improbable friendship develops out of their shared testiness and solitude.
A young black man named Paul shows up at the home of art dealer Flan Kittredge and his wife Louisa, known simply as "Ouisa", who live overlooking Central Park in New York City. Paul has a minor stab wound from an attempted mugging, and says he is a friend of their children at Harvard University. The Kittredges are trying to get the money to buy a painting by Paul Cézanne, and now have this wounded stranger in their home. Paul claims he is in New York to meet his father, Sidney Poitier, who is directing a film version of the Broadway musical Cats. Paul continues to charm them with his story, though in reality, it is all a lie: Paul is no Harvard student and obtained details on the Kittredges from a male student he had seduced. Eventually Paul uses their home for an encounter with a hustler, but is caught red-handed. The police are called, but Paul escapes. Soon after, Paul starts up another con against a sensitive young man named Rick and his live-in girlfriend, Elizabeth. The naive young couple are new to the big city having just moved to New York from Utah and, based on Paul's con, invite him to live with them until he gets everything sorted out with his wealthy father—who Paul tells them is Flan Kittredge. The trio become good friends, with Paul spinning a tale of being estranged from his racist father, but still, the girlfriend tells Rick not to lend Paul any money. One night Paul takes Rick out on the town and seduces him in order to get the money. Later that night, Rick tells Elizabeth that Paul is gone, that he has all their money, and that he and Paul had sex. In a fit of fury, she cruelly suggests that Rick's father had always questioned his son's sexuality. Soon afterwards Rick commits suicide. In desperation, Paul calls the Kittredges for assistance. Partly due to strained relations with her children, Ouisa finds herself feeling emotionally attached to Paul, hoping to be able to help him in some way despite the fact that he has victimized them. Over a protracted and laborious phone call, he agrees to give himself up to the police; however, during the arrest, he and the couple are separated. Despite their efforts—Ouisa's more than Flan's—his fate is unresolved, except for a possibly tragic end. Towards the end of the play, in a climactic moment of reflection, she delivers the play's most famous monologue:
A theatrical set of 66 short plays, each responding to a book of the Protestant Bible, commissioned for the Bush Theatre’s reopening and the King James Version’s 400th anniversary.
A legendary-historical tragedy about young Siyavush, raised in heroic traditions and committed to fairness. He seeks truth in Iran and Turan, but dies understanding that justice can be found only through struggle against despotism.
The play opens in the photography studio of a man named Styles. The studio is located in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. After reading a newspaper article on an automobile plant, Styles tells a humorous story to the audience about an incident that occurred when he worked at the Ford Motor Company. Styles continues to read the paper and talks about his photography studio. His musings are interrupted when a customer, Sizwe Banzi, arrives. He asks to have his picture taken, but when Styles asks him for his deposit and name, Sizwe hesitates, then says his name is Robert Zwelinzima. Styles asks Sizwe what he will do with the photo, and Sizwe tells him he will send it to his wife. When the picture is taken, the moment is frozen into what the photograph will look like. It comes to life and Sizwe dictates the letter to his wife that will accompany the photo. In the letter, Sizwe tells his wife that Sizwe Banzi is dead. He writes that when he arrived in Port Elizabeth from their home in King William’s Town, he stayed with a friend named Zola who tried to help Sizwe find a job. His employment search was unsuccessful; as a result, he was told by the authorities that he must leave in three days. Sizwe went to stay with Zola’s friend, Buntu. The play returns to the present time. Staying at Buntu’s house, Sizwe tells Buntu about his problems — unless a miracle happens, he will have to leave town in three days. Buntu is sympathetic to the problem and suggests he work in the mines in King William’s Town. Sizwe rejects the idea as too dangerous. Buntu decides to take him out for a treat at Sky’s place, a local bar. The focus switches back to Sizwe as he continues to compose the letter to his wife. He describes his experiences at Sky’s shebeen, where he was served alcohol by a woman in a respectful manner. The scene shifts to the outside of Sky’s after Sizwe and Buntu have been drinking. Buntu decides that he needs to get home to go to work tomorrow. He goes into an alley to relieve himself and finds a dead man there. Sizwe wants to report the body to the police. Buntu rejects the idea, but he retrieves the dead man’s identity book to find his address. Buntu finds that the man, named Robert Zwelinzima, has a work-seeker’s permit — the very thing that Sizwe needs to stay in town. They take the book. At Buntu’s house, Buntu switches the photographs in the books. He proposes that they burn Sizwe’s book — effectively making him dead — and have Sizwe adopt the dead man’s identity so he can stay in Port Elizabeth. Sizwe is unsure about the plan; in particular, he worries about his wife and children. Buntu contends that they can remarry. After much discussion, Sizwe agrees to the switch. Sizwe finishes dictating the letter to his wife. In it, he tells her that Buntu is helping him get a lodger’s permit. The scene shifts back to Styles’ photography studio; Sizwe is getting his picture taken.
Set in Detroit in 2008, the play follows the workers of an automotive factory, known as the skeleton crew, led by Faye, currently experiencing homelessness. As a longtime employee and union representative who has spent 29 years on the line, she currently works alongside Dez and Shanita. When factory supervisor Reggie reveals that the factory is set to close, Faye must choose between protecting her own stability and standing in solidarity with her fellow workers.
An older woman’s relationship with a young surfer is opposed by her sister, placing the woman between desire, confusion and betrayal.
In 1938, Captain Joris Kuiper takes 146 Jewish refugees aboard his Dutch merchant ship. As ports refuse them entry and his crew grows desperate, Kuiper rejects smuggling them ashore and devises a plan to scuttle the ship during a yacht regatta so rescuers must take them in as distressed mariners.
Regent Skirgaila struggles to hold Lithuania's lands amid conflict with Poland and the Teutonic Order and pressure to Christianize. He forcibly marries Ona Duonutė to retain Lida, while the monk-knight Keller's attempted escape ends in sacrifice and Skirgaila's moral decline.
Marin Držić's Croatian adaptation of Plautus's Aulularia, retitled Skup and set in Dubrovnik.
At a railway settlement on the Nullarbor Plain, the arrival of a Jewish immigrant leads to his falling in love with a married woman.
East London school teacher Kyra Hollis is visited by Edward Sergeant and, later on the same night, his father Tom Sergeant. Kyra had been living with the Sergeant family years earlier but left after her affair with Tom was discovered by Tom's wife, who has since died. Edward now accuses Kyra of having left him as well, as he saw her as a big sister, and he demands to know why she left his life. Shortly thereafter, Tom, a wealthy restaurateur, with real-life references to Terence Conran, appears unheralded and for no apparent reason. Kyra's less-than-glamorous lifestyle leads him to poke fun at her to the point of insult, accusing her of self-punishment. After Kyra cooks a spaghetti dinner (which the actress cooks on stage), the talk turns to their relationship. It becomes clear that their chances to be rekindled rest on whether one of them can change preconceived notions of the other.
In Chicago, a group of people try to save an historic skyscraper from demolition; their lives converge on its rooftop amid memory, fantasy and a deepening mystery.
The three teachers at an isolated girls’ school vow to abstain from sex in protest against male dominance and abuse. Their competing motives and interpretations of the pledge create new power struggles, distract them from teaching, and leave the school without pupils.
In Liverpool nightclub The Palace, characters arrive expecting a night of fun and flirtation, but each has a different reason for being there. Their stories shift from comedy toward pathos, with problems resolved through a series of short vignettes.
At a modern slaughterhouse where work grows more dangerous as pay and benefits shrink, workers encounter Cod, a strange man urging them to act. The two-act drama moves nonlinearly through time as labor pressures disrupt relationships and Cod's conflict with the Sausage Man threatens the group.
At McGregor Plantation, a southern cotton plantation in pre-Civil War Virginia, the song "Work" by Rihanna plays in the overseer cottage. Kaneisha, a slave, begins to twerk to the song when Jim, a white slave owner, walks in holding a whip. Jim is repeatedly uncomfortable when Kaneisha calls him "Master," but berates her for not cleaning the room better and throws a cantaloupe on the ground and tells Kaneisha to eat it. As Kaneisha eats the cantaloupe, she begins to dance again, which confuses and arouses Jim. When she asks to be called a "nasty, lazy negress," he instead proceeds to perform cunnilingus. Phillip replies that he is unsure. Gary has Dustin lick Gary's boot clean; this causes Gary to orgasm. He starts crying and cannot be comforted by Dustin. They are on Day Four of the therapy, which focuses on fantasy play. Dustin begins by noting that Gary came, which he could not do before, but Gary counters that Dustin was uncomfortable in making his whiteness hyper-visible. Alana enjoyed the release of the fantasy and asks Phillip if he enjoyed it too, noting that he got an erection when he had trouble before. Jim begins to initiate foreplay and the music rises while Kaneisha continues that the relationship went downhill three years ago, when she stopped feeling sexual pleasure because she began to see him as foreign and frightening. She saw Jim's whiteness and power, and that he also has "the virus", because though he is not American, he benefits from being white while being unaware of the privilege that whiteness gives him. She says that Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy and the fantasy play gave her a sense of peace because she feels the elders watching her again; the elders do not care that she is with "a demon / who thinks he’s a saint", but simply want the two of them to know he is a demon.
In Algiers, American captives and their allies plan escapes from the dey's palace and the household of Ben Hassan. Rebecca resists pressure to become his wife, while Olivia offers herself to spare the others; a slave uprising ultimately frees the prisoners, and Frederic rejects replacing one form of enslavement with another.
A theatrical reinterpretation of the Orpheus myth that combines geopolitical themes, Slavic ritual, and science-fiction elements.
The action begins in Moscow in March 1985 as Mikhail Gorbachev succeeds Konstantin Chernenko as general secretary of the Communist Party. Katherina is a feisty lesbian security guard at a Soviet archive facility that holds the brains of the USSR's late leaders. After getting her the job at the facility, Popolitipov (Jones), an apparatchik, attempts to woo her. Unfortunately for Popolitipov, she has already fallen for the oncologist Bonfila (Schulz), a descendant of one of the fathers of the revolution. Serge is a Bolshevik whose obsession with the future has deadly results. Vodya is a young girl that is dying from nuclear waste poisoning. She appears as both an apparition during a man's inebriated state and again in 1992 in Siberia but this time alive and mute. It is there in Siberia where Katherina and Bonfila confront the fallout and human misery caused by nuclear waste.
In a London boarding house for theatrical performers, a Romanian ventriloquist and student of black magic leaves his doll to his wife; after a series of accidents, she suspects the doll is responsible.
An immersive retelling of Macbeth unfolds through a cinematic film-noir world. Audiences move through the performance environment and follow the action at their own pace, encountering Shakespeare’s tragedy through physical storytelling rather than a conventional seated production.
The play is set in the Wiltshire manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. Wyke's home reflects his obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing. He lures his wife's lover Milo Tindle to the house and persuades him to stage a robbery of her jewellery. This proposal sets off a chain of events that leaves the audience trying to decipher where Wyke's imagination ends and reality begins. Shaffer said the play was partially inspired by one of his friends, composer Stephen Sondheim, whose intense interest in game-playing is mirrored by the character of Wyke, and by mystery writer John Dickson Carr, whose stories featured complex plots and seemingly "impossible" crimes.
The play interweaves survivors’ accounts of domestic violence on Native lands with a dramatized campaign to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. It follows Department of Justice employee Terri Henry and reservation police officer Dennis as jurisdictional limits obstruct protection for survivors and advocates work to secure federal legislation.
The play dramatizes the Dorak affair, following archaeologist James Mellaart after allegations that he stole or fabricated a valuable collection of Neolithic artifacts. It focuses on Turkish press efforts to recover the treasure and expose alleged corruption in Western archaeology.
Sly Fox is a comedic play by Larry Gelbart, based on Ben Jonson's Volpone (The Fox), updating the setting from Renaissance Venice to 19th century San Francisco, and changing the tone from satire to farce. The play revolves around the character of the very wealthy Foxwell J. Sly, and his indentured servant Simon Able. Sly has the town duped into believing that he is dying, and four citizens vie for his inheritance. Jethro Crouch is willing to will away his son’s inheritance to Sly on the promise that he receives Sly’s money after Sly has died; Abner Truckle solicits his wife to Sly under the impression that it will sway Sly to name him as his heir; Lawyer Craven defends the dignity of Sly in court after the Captain discovers him molesting Mrs. Truckle, for the same promise of riches; Merrilee Fancy, the most popular harlot in the bay town, finds herself in the family way and hopes to marry Sly for his wealth. None of them realize the trick, and even Able, Sly’s closest confidant and student, is unable to outfox the master of deception. It premiered on Broadway December 14, 1976 at the Broadhurst Theatre. Directed by Arthur Penn, the play featured George C. Scott, Bob Dishy, Hector Elizondo, Jack Gilford, Gretchen Wyler, and Sandra Seacat. Scott was succeeded by Robert Preston. According to his biography at tcm.com, Jackie Gleason was touring in the lead role of Sly Fox in 1978 when he suffered a heart attack and had to permanently leave the show, undergoing a triple bypass. The play was revived on April 1, 2004 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, again directed by Arthur Penn, featuring Richard Dreyfuss, Bob Dishy, Eric Stoltz, René Auberjonois, Professor Irwin Corey, Elizabeth Berkley, Rachel York, Peter Scolari, and Bronson Pinchot.
A motley group gathers in a seedy Southern California coastal bar: a troubled beautician and her lover, an alcoholic doctor, a short-order cook, the bartender, a washed-up screenwriter and a young traveler. Their individual confessional monologues form a kaleidoscopic portrait without a single dramatic arc.
Three former high-school friends gather after hours at Frank's remote repair shop for reasons only Frank seems to know. When Chad, a connected college athlete, arrives, the meeting ignites a long-simmering animosity.
Hortense seeks a new life beyond rural Jamaica, Gilbert dreams of becoming a lawyer, and Queenie wants to escape her Lincolnshire roots; their intertwined stories connect Jamaica and Britain against the history of empire, migration and racism.
Small Miracle is a 1934 play by Norman Krasna, presented on Broadway with Joseph Calleia in the featured role. Directed by George Abbott with a single setting designed by Boris Aronson, the three-act melodrama opened September 26, 1934, at the John Golden Theatre, New York. It continued at the 48th Street Theatre November 11, 1934 – January 5, 1935. On February 7, 1935, the play began a run at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, with Calleia, Joseph King and Robert Middlemass reprising their Broadway roles. It was Krasna's second play, written in the evenings while he was working as a Columbia Pictures contract writer during the day. He adapted the play for the Paramount Pictures film Four Hours to Kill! (1935).
Small Mouth Sounds is a dramatic absurdist stage play written by American playwright Bess Wohl. The play tells the story of six adults who run away from their hectic inner city life to a silent retreat in upstate New York. They then have to make peace with the silence of their own minds while trying to find ways to connect without words. The play is unique in that there is very little dialogue and requires the actors to express their emotions and feelings physically rather than verbally.
Smilin' Through is a 1919 play by Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin, written under a pseudonym, Allan Langdon Martin. Cowl also starred in the play in a double role and co-directed it with Priestly Morrison. Smilin' Through was produced by The Selwyns and opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway on December 30, 1919. It included in the cast Orme Caldara as Kenneth and Jeremiah Wayne, Henry Stephenson as John Carteret and Ethelbert D. Hales as Dr. Owen Harding. Scenic design was by Joseph Urban. The play was a popular hit and ran for 175 performances. It also played for a long run on the road, and was one of Jane Cowl's greatest commercial successes. The story is a sentimental romantic tale of a young Irish woman, Kathleen Dungannon. Her romantic attachment to Kenneth Wayne is opposed by her adopted father John Carteret, who bears the painful memory of his thwarted love for her aunt, Moonyean Clare. Moonyean visits John as a ghost. The roles of Kathleen and Moonyean were both played by Jane Cowl. The popular story was first filmed in 1922 by First National Pictures, and was later remade twice by MGM, in 1932 and 1941. In 1932, it was also made into an unsuccessful Broadway operetta, Through the Years, with music by Vincent Youmans. The title song of the operetta, however, became a hit. Smilin' Through is also the title of a 1919 ballad with lyrics and music by Arthur A. Penn. The creation of the song and play were independent but intertwined. According to Isidore Witmark in his history of the Witmark and Sons publishing house, Cowl's play was partially rewritten after the song was published, based upon the imagery of the lyrics. Both the title and the music of the song were incorporated into the play when it was completed and produced.
After years farming in Rhodesia, Thomas Freeman returns to his sister Rose's fashionable London home intending to find a wife. He discovers the parlourmaid Smith has more merit than the idle social set; after rejecting unsuitable matches, they agree to marry.
At a BDSM party in a New York apartment, college student Julie and aspiring artist John form a connection that develops into a disturbing struggle over power, consent, and sexual assault. Davies gives Julie a voice and survival that differ from Strindberg's Julie.
Smoky Cell is a thriller play by the British writer Edgar Wallace first staged in 1930. In America a group of detectives hunt down a notorious racketeer. It ran for 103 performances at Wyndham's Theatre in the West End from 16 December 1930 to 14 March 1931. The original cast included Finlay Currie, Percy Parsons, Charles Farrell, Harold Huth, Roy Emerton and James Carew, and was directed by Carol Reed. It marked Canadian actor Alexander Knox's London stage debut. It was an inspired by a visit Wallace had recently made to the United States, which also led him to write his even more successful play On the Spot the same year. In 1935, following Wallace's death, his former assistant Robert Curtis wrote a novel of the same title based on the play.
After returning to the family home, Annabel meets Alice, the former nurse to her late father, who claims her sister Miriam hastened his death and demands money. As the sisters confront their past and Alice’s blackmail, staged hauntings and a murder scheme turn the garden into the setting for a dark family thriller.
A theatrical anthology of short scenes and monologues inspired by Lee Friedlander's photograph of tourists at Mount Rushmore. The playwrights approach the monument from comic to tragic angles, probing patriotism, democracy, and the stories that frame a historical image.
During a record blizzard in a Vermont town, fifteen teenagers search for Eva, a mysterious girl who emerges from a snowbank. Through journal entries and encounters, their conflicting stories turn the search into a mystery that helps outcast Frida find acceptance.
A stage adaptation of the Brothers Grimm stories, centered on Princess Snow White and featuring Queen Brangomar, Prince Florimond, and the seven dwarfs.
A young man waits five years to marry his absent fiancée, rejecting a typist’s love. When his fiancée chooses another man and the typist asks him to wait again, his search for love unfolds through dreamlike encounters with time and death.
In drag as Mia Dolan, performer Fowlie presents her character's account of childhood in Boulder City, failed theater studies, and attempts to build an acting career in Los Angeles, ending with a solo dance after her boyfriend fails to appear.
A wealthy American shoe manufacturer who dislikes the English arrives in London and discovers that his son plans to marry the daughter of British aristocrats.
Three years after Visiting Mr. Green, Ross has become the elderly widower’s close friend and helps care for him with his nurse boyfriend. Their routine is disrupted by the arrival of Mr. Green’s granddaughter.
A handful of survivors in an abandoned building face a zombie apocalypse.
Manhattan gallery owners Barbara and David take in her eccentric mother after her sister leaves to help their daughter. The couple introduce her to nonagenarian artist Maurice Koenig, who offers to paint her portrait and brings unexpected happiness to her later life.
An illiterate millionaire tries to introduce his son into London society, while society works to repel the newcomer. Set in Victorian literary and theatrical bohemia, the comedy drama uses realistic dialogue, behavior and domestic detail to expose social pretensions.
In a satirical account of Socrates' trial, the philosopher is framed by the priest Anitus and a small group of corrupt Athenian officials. Voltaire portrays Socrates as a moral monotheist persecuted by religious authority, with his wife Xantippe and adopted children among the characters.
A three-act drama follows Socrates from a comic portrayal of his influence on Strepsiades and his son, through his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, to his refusal to escape before execution. Audience members may serve as jurors and vote.
An angel declares that Sodom will be destroyed unless its people can demonstrate one example of true love. Lia and Jean are put forward as the best evidence, but their fidelity erodes; divine judgment condemns the cities and humanity for failing to prove that a happy couple exists.
In a five-act satirical closet drama, King Bolloxinion authorizes sodomy in Sodom, and erotic disorder spreads through the court. The Queen dies of venereal disease; as demons and fire appear, the King resolves to retire and die with his favorite, Pockenello.
Kris Kelvin arrives at a space station cut off from Earth, where an unfamiliar planet is bringing memories to life. The crew confronts figures from their past, including Kelvin’s dead lover, while trying to understand the intelligence beneath them.
The play alleges that Winston Churchill condoned the 1943 death of Polish prime minister Władysław Sikorski in order to appease Stalin, and also examines Churchill’s support for the bombing of German cities.
Solomon Kaus, a Jewish inventor in seventeenth-century Paris, succeeds in building a water-powered machine but becomes the target of intrigues. He is driven insane and dies after his invention brings him before Cardinal Richelieu and into imprisonment.
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