8284 shows
Clear filtersLate at night, Eva Artless visits the home of Willis Parkham, a wealthy bachelor seeking political office. When a reporter arrives and her presence threatens his campaign, Parkham proposes marriage; Eva rejects him and asserts her right to choose her own future.
Dr. Thomas Stockmann discovers that the town's spa water is contaminated and tries to publish the evidence. Local leaders and newspaper allies turn against him when disclosure threatens the town's economy; at a public meeting he denounces the majority, and the town retaliates against his family. Stockmann refuses to leave and resolves to persist.
A foreign power called Nearland invades England and besieges an ordinary middle-class family in its home. The father shoots an enemy officer and is executed; the original ending had the invaders triumph, before J. M. Barrie and Gerald du Maurier revised it to a British victory.
At Theobalds, the Genius of the House learns from Rumour that Robert Cecil is leaving. A prophecy welcomes King James, Queen Anne and two princes; the Fates reassure the Genius that Cecil willingly gives the house to Anne. The Genius accepts the change and delivers the keys to the queen.
During the 1990 World Cup semi-final between England and West Germany, Bill wants to watch the match while Monica wants to discuss their relationship. Their conflict unfolds during a holiday in Ibiza.
The play is based on a real life encounter the playwright Laura-Jane Foley had with the artist Lucian Freud. In the 65-minute one-act play with video cameos, the character Laura recounts the evening she spent with the 82-year-old artist. The narrative is broken up with five video cameos from characters including Dora Maar and Leigh Bowery.
In a pre-Watergate examination of Richard Nixon's career and presidency, two present-day pundits debate his merits and convene a tribunal of deceased presidents to judge him. The historical scenes are presented as drawn from the public record, with their words preserved in context.
The action of the play takes place in Madrid on the last night before Lent, 1665, and involves two young English gentlemen, Wildblood and Bellamy, and their comic servant Maskall, who fall in love with two beautiful young Spanish ladies, Donna Theodosia and Donna Jacinta, and their clever servant Beatrix.
Set in the same Newcastle house in 1799 and 1999, the play parallels a physician’s ethical questions about dissection with modern geneticists’ debate over embryo research. A skeleton discovered in the later household turns the drama into a mystery about identity and death.
Chapman's early humors comedy depicts characters ruled by extremes of temperament—melancholy misanthropy, fashion, unstable Puritanism and jealousy—while Lemot presides over their follies like a ringmaster.
A blackmail plot forces politician Sir Robert Chiltern to confront the corrupt secret behind his fortune. His wife Lady Chiltern's idealized view of him, Mrs Cheveley's schemes, and Lord Goring's intervention drive the play's conflict over public and private honour.
The play is set in 1912 at the Birlings' large home in the fictional industrial town of Brumley. Arthur Birling, a wealthy factory owner, magistrate and local politician, celebrates his daughter Sheila's engagement to Gerald Croft, son of a rival magnate. Also present are Birling's wife Sybil and their son Eric (whose drinking problem the family discreetly ignores). After dinner, Sheila and Sybil leave the dining room to go into the drawing room, while Birling lectures the young men on the importance of self-reliance and looking after one's own, and talks of the bright future that awaits them (which, he believes, will include a knighthood for himself in the next honours list). The evening is interrupted when the maid Edna announces the arrival of a man calling himself Inspector Goole, who explains that earlier that day he had seen the dead body of a young woman named Eva Smith, who had died by drinking disinfectant. He has been given the "duty" of investigating her death and the Birlings' involvement in it. He has seen her diary, which mentions members of the Birling family. Goole produces a photograph of Smith and shows it to Birling, who confirms that she worked in one of his factories. He reveals he dismissed her for leading a strike action demanding higher wages. Despite acknowledging that he left Smith without a job, Birling denies any responsibility for her death. Sheila, having been sent by her mother to bring Birling, Eric and Gerald to the drawing room, is shown a photograph of Smith. She explains that once, when she was out shopping with her mother, Sheila saw a dress she liked and tried it on, even though her mother and an assistant thought it was not right for her. Smith, now employed at this shop, also helped with the trying-on. Sheila realised that the dress did not suit her; Smith held the dress against herself, and Sheila could see that it looked much better on her. Seeing Smith smiling at the other assistant, Sheila took umbrage and angrily ordered the manager of the department store to fire her. Sheila's real motivation, which she ashamedly confesses, was the jealousy that she felt towards Smith, perceiving her as prettier than herself. Eric leaves the dining room. Sybil enters the dining room. The inspector mentions that Smith subsequently used the name Daisy Renton. Gerald is noticeably startled and admits to having met a woman named Daisy Renton in the Palace Bar, where Smith had resorted to prostitution to sustain herself. Seeing that Smith was hungry and struggling to cope financially, and was out of place there, Gerald gave her money and arranged for her to move temporarily into a vacant flat belonging to one of his friends. Gerald reveals that he began a relationship with Smith over the summer but parted with her after a few months. Sheila, disheartened, returns her engagement ring to Gerald, who leaves the house, saying he will return. The inspector turns his attention to Sybil, a patron of a charity that helps women in difficult situations, which Smith, by then pregnant and destitute, had turned to for help, using the name "Mrs. Birling". Sybil, seeing this as a deliberate mockery of herself, convinced the committee to deny her a grant. She argued that Smith had been irresponsible and suggested that she find the father and get him to face his responsibilities; Smith said that she had refused to accept any more money from the father once she knew it had been stolen. Despite vigorous cross-examination from the inspector, Sybil denies any wrongdoing. Goole plays his final card, forcing Sybil to lay the blame on the "drunken young man" who had got Smith pregnant. It slowly dawns on the rest of the family, except Sybil, that Eric is the young man in question, and "Mrs. Birling" was the first name that had come to Smith's mind because he had fathered her child. Eric enters, and after brief questioning from Goole, breaks down and admits responsibility for the pregnancy: he had raped Smith after a drinking spree at the Palace Bar. After finding out that Smith was pregnant, Eric stole from his father's business to support her and their child, but she refused the stolen money and cut contact with Eric. Birling and Sybil are outraged by Eric's behaviour, and the evening dissolves into angry recriminations. The inspector reminds the family that actions have consequences and that all people are intertwined in one society, stating: "if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish." He leaves. Birling's greatest worry is the scandal that will arise from Eric's theft of his firm's money, which will come out at the inquest. The family begins to question if "Goole" was a real police inspector. Gerald returns and reveals that he had met a police sergeant he knew, who did not know of any police inspector named Goole. To confirm this, Birling makes a phone call to his friend, the chief constable, who confirms that there is no Inspector Goole on the force. Gerald points out that they could not be sure that Goole had shown the same photograph to the different members of the family; there could have been several young women, and they did not know that any of them had died. Gerald phones the infirmary, and they confirm that no one has died there that day, and they have not had a suicide in months. The family concludes that the inspector was a fraud and that they have been the victims of a hoax. Gerald and the elder Birlings celebrate in relief, but Eric and Sheila continue to rue their own and the others' actions. The phone rings: it is the police, who tell Birling that a young woman has just died on her way to the infirmary in a suspected suicide, and that a policeman is on his way to question the family.
Two friends take opposing paths on the night of an anti-war protest: one attends, gets very drunk, and the other stays home watching television and thinking about the future. The play explores what happens when they hate each other.
In this autobiographical one-woman play, fifteen-year-old Margalit meets Ami in 1942 and repeatedly crosses paths with him as he joins the Palmach and helps found Kibbutz Beit Keshet. Their romance begins just before the 1948 war, when an ambush kills seven kibbutz members on what was to be their wedding day.
A contemporary playwright named BJJ attempts to stage Dion Boucicault’s melodrama, taking on its white characters when white actors quit. The play retells the plantation plot of inheritance, forbidden love and an auction, while interrupting it to expose theatrical racial stereotypes and the mechanics of melodrama.
After learning that his wife betrayed him, a wealthy man leaves his children with her, provides for the family, and disappears under the name Julius Sterne. Years later he returns to find his daughter forced onto the stage and his son’s prospects blocked by unscrupulous journalists and patrons; he uses his fortune to protect them and ultimately forgives his wife.
A three-act comedy-drama intertwines the debts and ambitions of the Calthorpe family, merchant James Casby, and governess Mary Waters. Colonel Calthorpe expects repayment for helping Casby, while his son Harold leaves home to marry Mary; Casby later reveals that he has paid the Colonel’s forged loan guarantees and will not expose him, settling their old score. Ethel’s feelings and marriage prospects shift as the conflict resolves.
Set in 1960s Ireland, the play follows Máire, a young woman rejected by her family after an affair with a married teacher leaves her pregnant. In Dublin she faces further marginalization as a single mother; the drama moves between her memories and a trial, exposing social and religious hypocrisy.
A former Cossack 'prince', now taxi-driver Bounine, discovers Anna an amnesiac in a Berlin asylum. Anna is mixed up in a plot to exploit Anastasia's inheritance of $10 million pounds, which is being held in a trust for any surviving heirs of the Romanov dynasty. As the scheme grows and the conspiracy prospers, Anna is trained for the last test of meeting the Imperial Grand Empress Maria, Anastasia's grandmother. Her acceptance of Anna is an essential obstacle in pulling off the conspiracy to obtain the money.
Across seven acts set in late nineteenth-century Vienna, the shallow, immature playboy Anatol cycles through relationships with women while evading intimacy and commitment. His friend Max observes and sometimes intervenes as Anatol's self-image and control over his relationships erode.
In 1880 Indiana, June Muldoon asks God to send a doctor after her father's death. A mysterious physician arrives as a plague marks and kills townspeople; June and the doctor uncover the likely source while the survivors confront grief, faith and suspicion.
The play follows three women, Carol, Anna and Bonnie, who, through the course of the play, are revealed to be mother, daughter, and granddaughter. The three women's stories play out simultaneously, while each exists in her own timeline. At the start of the play, Carol has just been released from the hospital after trying to die by suicide, Anna is a heroin addict, and Bonnie is a doctor. Carol and Anna are treated with electroconvulsive therapy. Carol dies by suicide offstage. Anna electrocutes herself in the bath, while her infant daughter, Bonnie, sleeps in the next room. At the end of the play, Bonnie sells the family home.
Ruth and Jack dance in their apartment while an unseen telephone repeatedly interrupts, rewinds and redirects their conversation. As their relationship becomes more fraught, the restarted exchanges expose opposing views about religion, ambition and marriage; a final argument ends their relationship even as they remain unable to function apart.
Paul Zindel's dark comedy explores the relationship among three very different sisters after the death of their mother in the early 1960s. Having been abandoned by their father in early childhood, Catherine, Ceil, and Anna Reardon were raised in a small apartment by their mother. The three ladies are educated and become members of their local school community. Anna Reardon becomes a chemistry teacher, Catherine Reardon the assistant principal, and Ceil (Reardon) Adams is the superintendent of schools. The scene of the play is in the Reardon family apartment sisters Catherine and Anna are living following the death of their mother. Several months of caring for her sick mother only to see her pass has left Anna suffering a severe nervous breakdown. She has become a complete hypochondriac, obsessed with animals and rabies. She is also on an extended break from school for allegedly molesting a male student. Catherine's reaction to both her mother's death and her sister's ailment has been to drink "a little". She is consistently drunk throughout the show. Ceil did not have any sort of contact with the family while her mother was suffering, but rather ran off to marry her sister Catherine's boyfriend, Edward Adams (who never appears on stage). Ceil has come to the Reardon home to coax Catherine into having Anna committed. Neither Anna nor Catherine is interested in anything their sister has to say. Halfway through dinner, which consists of zucchini and kiwi, Fleur Stein invades the family conversation. Fleur works in guidance at Anna and Catherine's school, and wishes to butter up Mrs. Adams in attempt to gain a better salary. She is very colorful and somewhat obnoxious, which her husband, Bob, makes perfectly clear once he arrives. After a humorous, but often bitter evening, Ceil demands that Anna be locked up. Catherine refuses this demand, and Ceil essentially abandons the two women to take care of each other.
After decades of a loving marriage, Pam’s illness forces her to make a decision that will change both her and Don’s lives. Together they struggle, with humor and pain, to begin saying goodbye.
Candy Delaney, a successful interior decorator and landlord who is transgender, navigates his private life.
Eight guests arrive at an isolated island mansion, where a gramophone recording accuses them of past crimes and they begin dying one by one. Christie’s stage version changes the novel’s ending: two characters are innocent, survive the ordeal and reunite.
A multimedia ensemble work combining recorded interviews with Anne Frank's friends and survivors Ed Silverberg and Eva Schloss with live actors recreating scenes from their lives. It joins oral history, drama and remembrance.
In a vaguely apocalyptic future, a family confined to its basement turns on one another through suspicion, threats and cruel games. When idealistic visitor Clarence arrives, they try to destroy his hope, while the irritable grandfather remembers a less fearful past.
And This Was Odd is a 1951 comedy play by the British writer Kenneth Horne. It was a reworking of an earlier play Wasn't It Odd that had first been staged at the Intimate Theatre in Palmers Green in 1940. It involves an elderly lady who uncovers her family's secrets while supposedly ill in bed. It ran for 54 performances at the Criterion Theatre in London's West End. The cast included Raymond Huntley, Peter Hammond, Avice Landone, Mary Jerrold and Mignon O'Doherty. It was directed by John Clements.
A Mississippi church congregation waits for Congress to pass an anti-lynching bill while learning that Joe Daniels has been accused of murder. They witness his lynching; news of the killing finally moves a senator to insist that the bill pass.
During World War II in Newcastle, Helen Stott’s family muddles through home-front life. Her younger sister Joyce vacillates over marrying Eric before he is posted abroad, while Helen hides her own romantic frustration and the elders pursue their diversions; the family mistakes a kettle whistle for an air raid.
To rescue his failing football team, coach J.J. Forbes and assistant Wally recruit the powerful but reluctant Achilles Jones from the country. They manipulate his rivalry with neighbors to keep him playing, until he learns of their lies and chooses to return to the farm after the team forces a drawn grand final.
On neighboring farms in Depression-era California, the Murata family meets Oka’s newly arrived daughter Kiyoko and the troubled Emiko, who longs to return to Japan. As the Japanese American families navigate poverty, racism and immigration restrictions, Masako witnesses Oka’s abuse of Emiko and the adults’ differing hopes for life in America; Emiko’s dancing to a nostalgic song exposes the force of homesickness and longing.
During the Eichmann trial, prosecutor Nohi Carmi argues over whether Auschwitz survivor Anda Freund should testify. Political officials seek to suppress her testimony because of her and her family’s political history, while Carmi’s colleagues debate the prosecution’s ethical duty to hear survivors’ stories.
On the final day of the Mahabharata war, survivors on both sides blame one another for the devastation. Ashwatthama unleashes the Brahmastra in revenge, while Krishna stands as the play's moral center; the tragedy ends with Krishna's death.
A Mahant warns two disciples to avoid a city where everything costs the same and virtue and vice receive equal treatment. One disciple stays for the cheap food and is caught in a chain of absurd blame after a goat dies beneath a merchant's collapsed wall. The king's attempt to find someone to execute for the death ultimately leads him to order his own hanging, satirizing autocratic rule and incompetent justice.
Andri, raised as the Jewish son of a teacher in a town steeped in prejudice, is gradually misled about his parentage. When the neighboring Blacks invade, the townspeople’s complicity leads to his death and the family’s ruin.
Pamphilus loves Glycerium, who is pregnant with his child, but his father Simo is arranging his marriage to Philumena. The cunning slave Davus schemes to stop the wedding, yet his plan backfires and leaves Pamphilus in danger of betraying Glycerium and his friend Charinus. When Crito arrives and reveals that Glycerium is the daughter of Chremes's lost brother, Chremes consents to her marriage with Pamphilus and Philumena is free to marry Charinus.
In a hidden room beneath the governor's mansion, a secret society plots to seize the colony. Its members are duped into disguises as they attempt to seduce the governor and kidnap him, exposing the conspirators and driving them from town.
The Christian tailor Androcles removes a thorn from a lion's paw. Later condemned to die in the Colosseum with other Christians, he is reunited with the lion, who recognizes and spares him; Androcles then persuades the animal to spare the emperor, who ends the persecution.
This lost Roman tragedy follows Andromache after the Trojan War. Surviving fragments include her lament over Troy’s destruction and fragments concerning the deaths of Astyanax and possibly Polyxena; the fragments cannot be arranged into a complete plot.
Andromache, enslaved after the Trojan War, takes sanctuary with her son Molossus when her master's wife Hermione and Menelaus threaten them. Peleus saves them; Orestes takes Hermione and arranges Neoptolemus's death, while Thetis reveals the survivors' futures.
Andromana, the Prince of Iberia’s commoner lover, becomes queen and stepmother when the king marries her after her husband’s death. After the prince rejects continuing their affair, she engineers his imprisonment and death, then kills the king, his friend, and herself.
Orestes seeks to recover Andromaque's son Astyanax, while hoping Hermione will leave Pyrrhus and return with him. Hermione longs for Pyrrhus, who desires Andromaque. Andromaque agrees to marry Pyrrhus to save her son but plans to die afterward; Pyrrhus is killed by Orestes' men, Hermione takes her own life and Orestes goes mad.
Chained to a rock as a sacrifice to appease Poseidon, Andromeda laments her fate to the responding echo. Perseus arrives after defeating Medusa, falls in love with her and defeats the sea monster; after further conflict with her father, the story likely ends with Athena announcing their marriage and future as constellations.
In this verse tragedy, Andromeda is chosen as a sacrifice to the sea monster Cetus. Perseus kills the monster, while Phineus plots against him with Juno's aid; in the final act the characters ascend to heaven and become gods. The original staging used elaborate machinery and special effects.
Dunlap's fictionalized tragedy presents the American debate over whether to spare or hang British officer Major John André, with the decision's human and political consequences at its center.
Based on Warhol’s recorded conversations with people in his circle, the play presents B. Marlowe, a voyeuristic Warhol stand-in, and an abrasive group of associates including Amanda Pork and drag performer Vulva. Their gossip, sexual exploits, and scandalous behavior are staged in a setting combining Marlowe’s studio, Pork’s bedroom, and Max’s Kansas City.
A one-act Portuguese auto reworks the Amphitryon myth by adding a comic character and emphasizing that love can affect even immortal gods. It uses Portuguese redondilha menor and switches to Castilian in the slave Sósia's speech.
Playwright Rabbit Brown is recruited by two Hollywood producers to rescue their eight-million-dollar film and save them from bankruptcy. One producer's green rash, a metaphor for greed, eventually spreads to Rabbit as well.
Paul Capsis tells the story of his grandmother Angela, who left Malta with her five children in 1948 to make a new life in Sydney, alongside his own return to Malta to reconnect with his family past. Beginning at a kitchen table, the autobiographical piece unfolds into a family history and tribute to Angela.
A historical drama about Angelo, the podestà of Padua, set in northern Italy.
After a nuclear accident in New Mexico, two couples shelter at a Catholic mission while awaiting news. The group includes a disillusioned professor, his younger wife, a wealthy widow and her younger lover, alongside a priest and his Native American foster son, whose plans for their lives are suspended as they wait to learn whether the crisis will be resolved.
Set in New York City, the play takes place between October 1985 and February 1986. The first part begins at a funeral, where an elderly rabbi eulogizes the deceased woman's entire generation of immigrants who risked their lives to build a community in the United States. Soon after, the deceased's grandson, Louis Ironson, learns that his lover Prior Walter, the last member of an old stock American family, has AIDS. As Prior's illness progresses, Louis becomes unable to cope, and he abandons Prior during a health episode that lands him in the hospital. Prior is given emotional support by their friend Belize, a hospital nurse and ex-drag queen, who separately also deals with Louis's self-castigating guilt and myriad excuses for leaving Prior. Joe Pitt, a Mormon Republican clerk in the same judge's office where Louis holds a word-processing job, is offered a position in Washington, D.C. by his mentor, the McCarthyist lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn. Joe hesitates to accept due to his agoraphobic, Valium-addicted wife Harper, who refuses to relocate. Feeling adrift and undesired by Joe, Harper retreats into drug-fueled escapist fantasies, including a dream where she crosses paths with Prior even though the two of them have never met in the real world. She confronts Joe about his deeply-closeted homosexuality, which he views as a sin. Torn by pressure from Roy and a burgeoning infatuation with Louis, Joe drunkenly comes out to his conservative mother Hannah, who reacts by changing the subject and hanging up the phone. Concerned for her son, she sells her house in Salt Lake City and travels to New York. After Joe confesses his homosexuality to a drug-addled Harper and leaves her, she flees their apartment and wanders the streets of Brooklyn, believing she is in Antarctica. Joe sets out to look for her, but follows Louis to Central Park, where they tentatively begin an affair. Meanwhile, Roy Cohn discovers that he has advanced AIDS and is dying. Defiantly refusing to publicly admit he is gay or has AIDS, Roy instead declares he has liver cancer. Facing disbarment for misappropriating money from a client, Roy is determined to beat the case so he can die a lawyer in good standing, and he attempts to position Joe in the Department of Justice to ensure the case is quashed. When Harper disappears and Joe refuses his offer, Roy flies into a rage and collapses in pain. As he awaits transport to the hospital, he is haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, whom he prosecuted in her trial for espionage, and who was executed after Roy illegally lobbied the judge for the death penalty. Prior begins to experience intense dreams and visions as his health worsens. He hears the voice of an angel telling him to prepare for her arrival, a flaming book erupts from the floor during a medical check-up, and he receives visits from the ghosts of two ancestral Prior Walters, informing him that he is a divine prophet. Prior does not know if these visitations are hallucinations caused by an emotional breakdown or if they are real. At the end of Part One, a glorious winged Angel crashes through Prior's bedroom ceiling, addresses him as "Prophet", and proclaims that "the Great Work" has begun. The second part begins with a speech given by the world's oldest living Bolshevik, Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov, addressing a crowd in Moscow in December 1985. He condemns the reforms proposed by Mikhail Gorbachev, decrying the notion of progress without political theory and declaring that the only way forward is to not move. At the funeral of a friend, a shaken Prior relates his encounter with the Angel to Belize. After revealing the presence of a mystical book underneath the tile in Prior's kitchen, the Angel reveals to him that Heaven is a beautiful city that resembles San Francisco, and God, described as a great flaming Aleph, created the universe through copulation with His angels, who are all-knowing but unable to create or change on their own. God, bored with the angels, made mankind with the power to change and create. The progress of mankind on Earth caused Heaven to suffer earthquake-like tremors and physically deteriorate. Finally, on the day of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, God abandoned Heaven. The Angel brings Prior a message for mankind—"stop moving!"—in the belief that if man ceases to progress, Heaven will be restored. Since the night of his vision, his health has once again started to decline. Belize believes that Prior is projecting his own fears of abandonment and death into an elaborate hallucination, but Prior suspects that his illness is the prophecy taking physical form and that the only way the Angel can force him to deliver her message is for him to die. Roy lands at the hospital in the care of Belize, where his condition rapidly declines. He manages to use his political clout to acquire a private stash of the experimental drug AZT at the expense of withholding the drug from participants in a drug trial. Alone in the hospital and fighting disbarment, Roy finds himself increasingly isolated, with only Belize, who despises him, and the ghost of Ethel for company. Prior goes to a Mormon visitors center to research angels, where he meets Hannah, who is volunteering there and taking care of Harper, who has slowly returned to reality but is now deeply depressed. Harper and Prior share a spark of recognition from their earlier shared dream, and witness a vision of Joe and Louis together. Louis is aghast to learn that Joe is a practicing Mormon and, regretting his actions and resistant to the intensity of Joe's infatuation, begins to withdraw from Joe. He begs Prior's forgiveness, which Prior angrily refuses, and Prior, who knows about Louis's affair with Joe from his vision, becomes deeply hurt that Louis is attempting to move on. Joe visits Roy, who is near death, and receives a final paternal blessing from his mentor. However, when Joe confesses he has left Harper for a man, Roy rejects him in a violent reaction of fear and rage, ordering him to return to his wife and cover up his indiscretion. Joe returns to Harper, and they have an unsatisfying sexual encounter, which prompts Harper to realize their marriage is over. Prior, accompanied by Belize, jealously confronts a confused Joe at work, but the encounter descends into chaos when Belize recognizes Joe as Roy's protegé. Belize informs Louis about Joe's connection with Roy, whom Louis despises. Louis, as a result, researches Joe's legal history and confronts him over a series of hypocritical and homophobic decisions Joe himself wrote. The confrontation turns violent, and Joe punches Louis in the face, ending their affair. Ethel Rosenberg watches Roy suffer and decline before delivering the final blow as he lies dying: He has been disbarred after all. Delirious, Roy seems to mistake Ethel for his mother, begging her to comfort him, and Ethel sings a Yiddish lullaby as Roy appears to pass away. However, with a sudden burst of energy, he reveals that he has tricked her, viciously declaring that he has "finally [made] Ethel Rosenberg sing". He then suffers a stroke and dies. After Roy's death, Belize forces Louis to visit Roy's hospital room, where they steal his stash of AZT for Prior. Belize asks Louis to recite the Kaddish for Roy. Unseen by the living, Ethel guides Louis through the prayer, symbolically forgiving Roy before she departs for the hereafter. After his confrontation with Joe, Prior begins following him obsessively, neglecting his health. He collapses from pneumonia after following Joe to the Mormon center, and Hannah rushes him back to the hospital. Prior tells her about his vision and is surprised when Hannah accepts this, based on her belief in angelic revelations within Latter-day Saint theology. At the hospital, the Angel reappears, enraged that Prior has rejected her message. Prior, on Hannah's advice, wrestles the Angel, who relents and opens a ladder into Heaven. Prior climbs into Heaven and tells the council of Angels that he refuses to deliver their message, as without progress, humanity will perish, and he begs them for more Life, no matter how horrible the prospect might be. He returns to his hospital bed, where he awakens from his vision with his fever broken and his health beginning to recover. He makes amends with Louis but refuses to take him back. Meanwhile, Harper departs New York for San Francisco, leaving Joe alone. The play concludes in 1990, five years later. Prior and Louis are still separated, but Louis, along with Belize, remains close in order to support and care for Prior, and Hannah has found a new perspective on her rigid beliefs, forging a friendship with the three gay men. Prior, Louis, Belize, and Hannah gather before the angel statue in Bethesda Fountain, discussing the fall of the Soviet Union and what the future holds. Prior talks of the legend of the Pool of Bethesda, where the sick were healed. Prior delivers the play's final lines directly to the audience, blessing them and affirming his intentions to live on and telling them that "the Great Work" shall continue. The initial print editions of the play include two scenes in Perestroika that were frequently deleted from productions. With the publication of the "Revised and Complete Edition" in 2013, Kushner elected to follow "the verdict of twenty-two years of production history" and placed them in the play's appendix. The former Act Five, Scene 6, where Prior runs into Rabbi Isidor Chemelwetz and Sarah Ironson, Louis' grandmother, as they play cards in the streets of Heaven. A scene taking place between Act Five Scene 7 and 8, where a deceased Roy Cohn in the afterlife offers to represent God in a paternity suit filed by the angels.
In 1980s New York, the AIDS crisis draws together a gay couple, a conflicted Mormon family, and lawyer Roy Cohn. Personal betrayals and political fears culminate in an extraordinary visitation.
Prior Walter confronts an angel’s demand that humanity stop moving forward. Around him, lovers, friends, and political enemies struggle with illness, abandonment, faith, and the possibility of change.
Angels in Love is a 1953 comedy play by the British writer Hugh Mills. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool. It later transferred to the Savoy Theatre in London's West End where it ran for 203 performances between 11 February and 17 August 1954. The West End cast featured Peter Hammond, Barbara Kelly, Peter Reynolds, Kynaston Reeves, Henry Kendall, Christopher Morahan, Myles Rudge and Maxine Audley. It portrays the life of the now grown-up Little Lord Fauntleroy.
The play begins as a young female slave arrives in Montreal from Madiere, Portugal. She is purchased by François Poulin de Franchville for his wife, Thérèse de Couagne, who attests she does not want a slave. Thérèse and François name her Marie-Josèphe Angélique after their dead child. François forces Angélique to have sex with him. At the encouragement of Ignace, Angélique is paired with César, another slave, for breeding. She gives birth to several children, though it is unclear if they are César's or François'. Meanwhile, Angélique begins a romantic relationship with Claude, a white indentured servant. François dies and Thérèse makes plans to sell Angèlique. Angélique, discovering she is about to be sold, plans to run away to America with Claude. While the two are leaving, a fire breaks out. It is never made clear who set it. On their journey to America, Claude abandons Angèlique, who is later apprehended on suspicion of starting the fire. She is tortured into confessing to starting the fire and is subsequently executed.
Farm animals overthrow their human owner and attempt to build an equal society. As the pigs consolidate control, the revolution becomes a new system of exploitation in this stage adaptation of George Orwell's political fable.
Animal Magnetism is a 1788 comedy play by the English writer Elizabeth Inchbald. A three-act farce, it premiered as an afterpiece at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London on 22 May 1788. The original cast included John Quick as Doctor, William Blanchard as La Fleur, William Macready the Elder as Marquis De Lancey, Mary Wells as Constance and Isabella Mattocks as Lisette. The Irish premiere took place at the Crow Street Theatre in Dublin on 8 November 1788.
Anna Christie is the story of a former prostitute who falls in love, but runs into difficulty in turning her life around. The first act takes place in a bar owned by Johnny the Priest and tended by Larry. Coal-barge captain Old Chris receives a letter from his daughter, a young woman he has not seen since he lived in Sweden with his family and she was five years old. They meet at the bar and she agrees to go to the coal barge with him. The barge crew rescues Mat Burke and four other men who survived a shipwreck in an open boat. Anna and Mat don't get along at first, but quickly fall in love. A confrontation on the barge among Anna, Chris and Mat. Mat wants to marry Anna, Chris does not want her to marry a sailor, and Anna doesn't want either of them to think they can control her. She tells them the truth about her past: She was raped while living with her mother's relatives on a Minnesota farm, worked briefly as a nurse's aide, then became a prostitute. Mat reacts angrily, and he and Chris leave. Mat and Chris return. Anna forgives Chris for not being part of her childhood. After a dramatic confrontation, Anna promises to abandon prostitution and Mat forgives her. Chris agrees to their marriage. Chris and Mat have both signed to work aboard a ship that is leaving for South Africa the next day. They promise to return to Anna after the voyage.
Anna Liisa’s hidden past returns when the farmhand Mikko, with whom she had a child years earlier, comes back and threatens to expose that she killed the baby. As she prepares to marry Johannes, she confesses publicly, receives absolution from the village parson, and accepts imprisonment and social disgrace.
A girl making her way through life as a prostitute seeks forgiveness from her family. The Lucastas, working-class people in a coal mining town, are selfish people whose daughter, Anna, has left home to lead what they consider a "life of shame" in the city. Rudolf, the son of a friend, comes to visit them on the suggestion of his father. He has several hundred dollars in his pocket and is eager to marry. The family decides that the youth is a hick, but there is a chance to marry off Anna "respectably". However, Rudolf turns out to be rather attractive and has graduated from an agriculture college. When Anna returns home, she is fascinated by him and the two fall in love, though she is still in love with her sailor boyfriend Danny. Anna gradually awakens to find out what it means to be treated by a kind young man. For Anna is not a degenerate, but a high spirited girl driven from home by her father's puritanical cruelty. Without telling Rudolf about her past, she agrees to marry him. But on her wedding day, Danny shows up. Anna, believing that a life with Rudolf is impossible, returns to her old haunts in the city. Rudolf realizes he loves Anna more deeply, and sets out to find her. He makes her realize his love for her and they go off together.
The play is set in Ybor City, a section of Tampa and the center of the cigar industry. When Cuban immigrants brought the cigar-making industry to Florida in the 20th century, they carried with them another tradition. As the workers toiled away in the factory hand rolling each cigar, the lector, historically well-dressed and well-spoken, would read to them. It was the lector who informed, organized and entertained the workers until the 1930s, when the rollers and the readers were replaced by mechanization. In the play, the lector reads Anna Karenina, sparking the characters' lives and relationships to spin out of control.
In a fictional country after revolution, General Strammfest hesitates between the unstable provisional government and counter-revolution. Grand Duchess Annajanska, who supports the uprising, confronts him and urges liberation from the old regime; she reveals she is the mysterious officer blamed for eloping with her.
Anne Blake is an 1852 melodrama by the British writer John Westland Marston. It premiered at the Princess's Theatre in London on 28 October 1852. The original cast included Charles Kean as Thorold, Walter Lacy as Llaniston, Ellen Kean as Anne Blake. The same year it appeared at the Broadway Theatre in New York.
Anne Boleyn’s ghost frames two interwoven histories: her struggle at Henry VIII’s court to advance Protestant ideas through Tyndale’s Bible, and James I’s 1603 efforts to settle religious disputes through the authorized Bible translation. The play follows Anne’s rise, marriage, fall and execution, then returns to James’s encounter with her ghost.
In fictionalized Bergen, Anne Pedersdotter develops an irresistible desire for her stepson Martin, a young theologian. Their passion appears bewitched, and Anne is ultimately convicted as a witch; the play’s plot is expressly described as not based on the historical facts.
In a fictional afterlife, Anne Frank and Emmett Till meet and compare their lives and deaths as young victims of racial persecution.
An imaginative orphan finds a home at Green Gables in Kat Sandler’s stage adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel.
Anne Boleyn’s relationship with Henry VIII leads to marriage, accusations of adultery and her execution.
Hannibal takes refuge with Prusias in Nicomedia, where a promise that he will marry Laodice is challenged by Roman ambassador Flaminius, who also desires her. Marivaux uses the Roman's abuse of political power for private ends to expose imperial hypocrisy.
The Walters are celebrating their fifteenth wedding anniversary. Alice's parents are due for an evening get together, so she supervises Okkie and Debbie's choice of attire and Millie's preparation for the gathering. Harry and Sam deliver and install a TV set, a gift from Mr. Gans. Knowing Bud's violent dislike of television, everyone is a bit apprehensive. Bud arrives home with his business partner Chris Steelman, and Janice Revere, a new friend of Chris. All three are a bit merry with drink. Janice, who has married well and often, admires Alice's ability to pick a good partner on the first try. Chris and Janice leave, while Bud notices the TV and explodes. Alice calms him, asking his indulgence for that evening. He relents, just as Alice's parents arrive. Mrs. Gans is shocked when Debbie uses the word "prostitute" in response to Mr. Gans telling her what a "vamp" was. As the evening progresses, Bud, warmed with affection for Alice and primed with champagne, carelessly lets slip that he and Alice had premarital relations. The kids and Millie overhear the admission, and the resulting outrage from the grandparents. As Bud justifies it to his in-laws, they grow huffy and storm out of the apartment. Bud angrily kicks the TV, wrecking it. Alice is distraught over Bud's slip and the resulting fight with her parents. She locks herself into the bedroom. Bud then breaks the door and lock trying to enter. The next morning a handyman brings in a new door and lock for the bedroom. Bud and Alice reconcile, but Alice says Debbie asked if they were going to get divorced. Later, Janice shows up at the Walters apartment alone, to talk with Alice, who has gone out. Millie reluctantly admits her, and Janice sees the handyman repairing the door. Alice returns, and Janice is enlightened that even good marriages have their storms. Harry and Sam return to the apartment with another new TV, this one a gift from Chris. Okkie persuades Bud to watch a little television while they are relaxing. Bud likes the commercials, but then a program called Juvenile Jury comes on the set. They are all stunned to see Debbie on the program as a guest. She tells the moderator that her parents had a quarrel, they resent her trying to help heal the breach, and she's worried they may get divorced. Bud and Okkie are in an uproar. As a punctuation to the brouhaha, Bud kicks in the second TV set. As Millie sweeps up shattered remains, Debbie returns home to an ominous welcome from her father. Debbie is contrite, realizing she has gone too far. Alice whisks Debbie away while Bud fumes alone, until Chris shows up. Seeing the broken TV, he and Bud begin to quarrel. Bud finally leaves the apartment, with Chris following, trying to calm him down. Four days later, Alice and the kids breakfast alone; Bud has stayed away. Okkie assures Alice that Bud is simply cooling off. Chris arrives at the apartment to intervene for Bud, who is waiting outside the apartment. Bud apologizes for staying away, and asks forgiveness, but he had to get his head straight. Alice forgives him and further informs him she's expecting. They embrace and play ends.
Judy Miller, a Jewish college senior, submits an updated anti-nuclear play about Antigone instead of the assigned paper. Her refusal to yield brings her into conflict with Professor Henry Harper, while she stages the work on campus and challenges his decision through the university grievance process.
At an English public school in the early 1930s, Guy Bennett and Marxist Tommy Judd respond to a pupil’s suicide and the institution’s hypocrisy. As the boys maneuver within the school’s hierarchy, persecution of Bennett and Judd’s compromises expose how class, sexuality, and appearances shape their lives.
Set in the fictional town of Bowden, Alabama, in June 1880, the plot focuses on the wealthy, ruthless, and innately evil Hubbard family and their rise to prominence. Patriarch Marcus Hubbard was born into poverty and toiled at menial labor while teaching himself Greek philosophy and the basics of business acumen. He ultimately made his fortune by exploiting his fellow Southerners during the American Civil War. He treats his good-hearted but slightly eccentric Bible-quoting wife Lavinia in a way designed to undermine both her self-confidence and sense of reality; she is no help to her children and wants nothing more than to join a religious retreat so she can expiate her sins. Shrewd, amoral elder son Benjamin is plotting to usurp his father's power and steal his money, and the younger Oscar lusts for "cooch dancer" (as she's described by Regina) Laurette Sincee rather than penniless neighbor Birdie Bagtry, who desperately is looking for a loan on her family's valuable land, a situation Benjamin hopes to exploit. Regina is the sexually active daughter who wants to live in Chicago with Birdie's cousin, former Confederate officer John Bagtry, a move discouraged by her father, who has a disturbingly unnatural closeness to the girl. The only people in the household with any sense of morality are the servants, Coralee and Jacob.
Based on a traditional Ghanaian tale, Anowa rejects the suitors chosen by her parents and marries the stranger Kofi Ako, who becomes a wealthy slave trader. Their childlessness and conflict over slavery strain the marriage; an old man and woman intermittently serve as a chorus, commenting on events. The play ends with Kofi’s suicide and Anowa drowning herself.
Anselma, also known as The Princess Andrea, is a play in six acts. It is an 1885 English-language adaptation of Victorien Sardou's 1873 French-language play Andréa which was created by Leander Richardson for the Austrian actress Antonie Janisch (1848–1920), known on the stage as Madame Janisch. The play became a source of contention in the Judiciary of New York with several legal battles between the producers of Anselma and the actress Agnes Ethel arguing over the rights to Sardou's play.
A lost Athenian tragedy whose plot was entirely invented by its poet rather than drawn from myth or history, an unusual conception in fifth-century Greek tragedy. No plot details survive; stories later suggested as its subject remain conjectural.
Gambaro recasts Antigone as a dissociated figure reliving her defiance of Creon while two men mock and reenact the story around her. Their performance implicates the spectators in the punishment of dissent and evokes Argentina’s government terror and disappearances.
After Creon forbids the burial of Polynices, Antigone defies his decree to honor her brother with funeral rites. Creon condemns her, and his refusal to heed warnings from his son Haemon and the prophet Tiresias leads to the deaths of Antigone, Haemon, and Creon's wife Eurydice.
In this lost tragedy, Antigone and Haemon’s participation in the burial of Polynices appears to lead to a different ending from Sophocles’ version: the pair marry and have a son, Maeon. The surviving fragments provide little plot detail, and scholars dispute how much can be reconstructed, including whether Dionysus intervened to save them.
Antigone’s refusal to obey Creon confronts his pragmatic acceptance of political power in Anouilh’s reworking of the ancient story.
Brecht reframes Sophocles’ tragedy through a modern opening in which two sisters shelter their deserter brother before he is lynched, paralleling this death with Polynices’ fate. Creon is presented as a Nazi-style dictator.
Antiochus is a 1721 tragedy by the British writer John Mottley. The play is set in Ancient Greece, revolving round the relationship between Stratonice of Syria and Seleucus I Nicator and his son Antiochus I Soter, the leaders of the Seleucid Empire. The original Lincoln's Inn Fields cast included James Quin as Selecus, Lacy Ryan as Antiochus, John Egleton as Arsaces, Richard Diggs as Cleartes, Anthony Boheme as Nicanor, Elizabeth Spiller as Semandra and Anna Maria Seymour as Stratonice.
Antiochus the Great is a 1701 tragedy by the English writer Jane Wiseman. It is also known by the longer title of Antiochus the Great, or, The Fatal Relapse. It is based on the life of Antiochus the Great, the Greek ruler of Ancient Syria. The original Lincoln's Inn Fields cast included George Powell as Antiochus the Great, John Bowman as Artenor, John Corey as Seleuchus, Barton Booth as Ormandes, George Pack as Philotas, Elizabeth Barry as Leodice, Elizabeth Bowman as Berenice, and Mary Porter as Child.
Antonio, or the Soldier's Return is an 1800 historical tragedy by the British writer William Godwin. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on 13 December 1800. The cast included John Philip Kemble as Antonio, Sarah Siddons as Helena, William Barrymore as Don Gusman, Richard Wroughton as Don Pedro, Charles Kemble as Don Henry, William Powell as Don Diego. Both the audience and critical reaction were negative. Seven years later another of Godwin's plays Faulkener was staged at the same theatre.
Antonio disguises himself as an Amazon to reach Mellida, daughter of his father's rival, Duke Piero. Their attempts to escape and marry are repeatedly disrupted by discoveries and new disguises; after Antonio stages his death, the fathers reconcile and the lovers are finally wed. A comic subplot follows Mellida's cousin and her many suitors.
After Duke Piero poisons Andrugio and accuses his daughter Mellida of infidelity, Antonio hears his father's ghost demand revenge. Antonio kills Piero's son, disguises himself as a fool, and helps stage a conspiracy that culminates in Piero's murder at a wedding feast. Antonio survives but refuses the dukedom, vowing to live in mourning for Mellida.
After a love affair draws Roman triumvir Mark Antony between Alexandria and Rome, he and Cleopatra lose a war against Octavius Caesar. Antony dies after Cleopatra's false report of her death; captured and facing a Roman triumph, Cleopatra takes her own life.
A historical tragedy based on the final days of the Luso-Brazilian Jewish playwright António José da Silva, who was executed by the Portuguese Inquisition.
In a three-act spoof of classic murder mysteries, guests gather at Raven’s Head, a mansion on a deserted island off North Carolina. An old detective investigates amid a midnight will reading, secret passages, and suspicious house staff.
A married man’s mistress approaches her thirtieth birthday and reflects unhappily on the future of their relationship; the romantic comedy turns on whether love will find a way.
A marital farce centered on divorce.
A political farce based on John Wells's Dear Bill columns, set at Chequers and parodying the relationship between Denis and Margaret Thatcher. The play uses topical jokes and the conventions of broad farce to satirize the prime minister and her husband.
In a Jacobean city comedy of marriage, money and deception, a merchant and two households are drawn into schemes involving an adulterous bargain, a false theft, a threatened land sale and staged betrayals, before the plots are exposed and the couples reconcile.
Sandro Shanshiashvili's Georgian reworking of Armoured Train 14–69 relocates the action to Dagestan and gives it Georgian and Lezghin characters. The hero is Chechen Anzor Cherbbizh, and the changed ending has Zaira dance a lezginka to select who will sacrifice himself to stop the armoured train.
Lady Aoi lies gravely ill and is represented onstage by a folded robe. A shamaness summons the living spirit of Lady Rokujo, Genji’s jealous former lover, whose resentment turns to an attack on Aoi; a mountain priest’s prayers finally drive the spirit away.
A band of five thieves uses disguises and schemes around a stolen incense burner. Benten Kozō disguises himself as a young woman to rob a cloth shop, where a family revelation changes the thieves’ fate; the five later reveal their identities in riverbank monologues, and Kozō dies seeking to atone for his crimes.
In Troezen, Queen Phaedra attempts to seduce her stepson Hippolytus, who rejects her after realizing who she is. She dies by suicide and leaves a note accusing him of rape; when Theseus returns and calls on Poseidon to kill his son, Artemis vindicates Hippolytus, while Aphrodite honors Phaedra’s embrace of desire.
An interactive theatrical recreation of the Apollo 13 mission from Mission Control’s perspective. Audience members operate working consoles and telephones, interact with performers, and hear the astronauts through headsets as scenes play across a mission-control room and a command module.
Appearance Is Against Them is a 1785 comedy play by the British writer Elizabeth Inchbald. A farce, it premiered as an afterpiece at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London on 22 October 1785. The original cast included John Quick as Mr Walsmley, John Palmer as Lord Lighthead, James Thompson as Thompson, William Swords as Lighthead's Servant, John Edwin as Humphry, Lydia Webb as Lady Mary Magipie, Mary Morton as Miss Angle and Sarah Maria Wilson as Fish. The Irish premiere took place at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin on 4 February 1786.
In ancient Rome, Appius Claudius uses his political power to pursue Virginia and conspires to have her declared a slave. When the rigged trial condemns her, her father Virginius kills her rather than surrender her to Appius; the people then turn against the corrupt rulers.
Appius and Virginia is a 1709 tragedy by the British writer John Dennis. It was a distinct reworking by Dennis of an older play of the same title by John Webster. It was not a particular success on its debut. It became best known for Dennis' use of an innovative new technique to imitate the sound of thunder. When Dennis' play was taken off and a revival of Macbeth put on, he was angered when he attended a performance and discovered they were using his thunder machine, reportedly exclaiming "they will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder". This gave rise to the expression "stealing thunder". The original Drury Lane cast included Barton Booth as Appius, Theophilus Keene as Claudius, Thomas Betterton as Virginius, Robert Wilks as Icilius, Benjamin Husband as Valerius, Thomas Smith as Numitorious, Jane Rogers as Virginia, Frances Maria Knight as Cornelia.
Miriam prepares an apple pie for her son’s final meal before his execution. As she bakes, she traces their life together and confronts his crime, her memories and the limits of a mother’s love.
During a tour in Palestine, a family lives under the control of the tyrannical Mrs Boynton, whose death becomes the mystery. In Christie’s stage version, Mrs Boynton dies by suicide and leaves red herrings to keep her family suspicious of one another; unlike the novel, Lady Westholme is not the killer.
In 2011, the unnamed patriarch of the Lafayette family has recently died. He leaves the family home in Southeastern Arkansas, an old plantation, to his three children: the overworked elder daughter Toni, the tactless middle brother Bo, and the estranged brother Franz. Toni has been made executor of the will, and Franz has not been seen or heard from in a decade. The play opens as Franz and his eccentric fiancée River, from Portland, arrive at the house and enter through a window. Toni has been at the house preparing for an estate sale and auction of their father's old belongings with her troubled teenage son Rhys. Initially apprehensive of Franz's sudden arrival, she reluctantly allows the couple to stay at the house. The next day, Bo and his wife Rachel arrive with their children: 13 year-old daughter Cassidy and the much younger son Ainsley. As the group reconnect, unexpected items begin to be unpacked from boxes, such as jars containing body parts, but they are disregarded as being antiques from a prior owner. However, Ainsley is mistakenly given a photo album containing graphic imagery of lynchings, evoking panic from Rachel, who forbids Cassidy from viewing them. The adults deliberate why the album would be there, as the siblings did not believe their father to be racist. Rachel, however, finds this plausible: she is Jewish, and at several points in her relationship with the father, he disrespected or ignored her. Toni dismisses her accusation of the father's antisemitism. In the ensuing argument, Toni sarcastically refers to Rachel as both a "Shylock" and a "kike", leading Rachel to storm out. Toni defends her actions as maintaining the sanctity of their father's name. Meanwhile, Bo reminds the group that they also inherited $500,000 worth of debt that the auction needs to pay off. He suspects that it won't because the land and belongings have a low value. Angry that the reunion seems only to capitalize on their father's death, Toni drives away. That night, Cassidy comes downstairs to see River meditating on the photo album. She shows the younger girl the images. Cassidy is unsure how to feel about the pictures, but is quick to say that they could be sold on the internet at a decent price to collectors, due to their apparent historical value. Toni returns to the house drunk, and instructs Cassidy to place the pictures in her car. After Cassidy goes out, River attempts to connect with Toni and reveals that she is pregnant with Franz's child, to the latter's chagrin. During their discussion, Cassidy sneaks back in with the photos and hides. Rhys, on whom Cassidy has a crush, arrives to sleep on the downstairs couch. Cassidy and Rhys later view the pictures together after Toni and River leave, and Rhys keeps them as Cassidy returns to bed. Franz comes downstairs as Rhys attempts to masturbate, but the uncle only sees the lynching photos. He awkwardly begins to explain why they're important to view. The next morning, the family prepares to welcome prospective buyers, but Toni has canceled the auction out of spite. Bo reveals that his research has revealed that the album could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, so that it doesn't matter if the auction is held after all. However, nobody is able to locate the images. Franz shows up wet and covered in mud after swimming in a local lake. He reveals that in an attempt to redeem himself to the family, he "baptized" himself in a nearby lake, bringing the photos with him and ruining them. Bo's ire enables Cassidy to reveal that she had been the one who invited Franz to the house (via Facebook) and not estate lawyers as previously thought. Rachel's concern with this illicit friendship turns to fury as Toni reveals that Franz had been estranged due to a prior drug addiction that led to Rhys entering rehab, and Franz's statutory rape of a 12 year-old girl who became pregnant. River flees in disgust and a full brawl begins among the family. Just as things quell, Ainsley, who had been playfully running around with various artifacts all weekend, arrives in the room wearing a Klan hood he found in the patriarch's bedroom, to everyone's horror. The next morning, Rachel is hurriedly leaving with Bo, and Franz claims to be working on mending his relationship with River. Toni declares that she is effectively dead to her relatives, and their selfishness in their relationships with her and the estate are not worth salvaging. After everyone leaves, the house begins to fall apart over years of disrepair.
A biographical play follows Jain philosopher and mystic Shrimad Rajchandra from his childhood in a remote Gujarati village through his renunciation of worldly pleasures, while reflecting on Jainism's influence on Indian culture and heritage.
Araminta Arrives is a 1921 play by the British writer Dorothy Brandon. It is an historical romantic comedy, set in 1887, about a young woman going to live with her aunt in London and becoming involved in a series of entanglements with men. The play was adapted from J.C. Snaith's 1908 novel, Araminta. It premiered at the Winter Gardens Theatre in New Brighton before transferring for a West End run at the Comedy Theatre that lasted for 39 performances. The cast included Eileen Beldon in the title role, along with Herbert Bunston, Louise Hampton and Lady Tree.
An elderly real-estate mogul is vexed when one daughter dates a Republican and the other falls in love with a poplar tree, which she is determined to cut down.
A pastoral masque honors Alice Spencer, Countess Dowager of Derby, as a queen of a metaphorical Arcadia. Guided by the spirit Genius, songs and personified figures praise her stature and virtue, turning the usual welcoming masque into a celebration centered on its guest.
In 1809, Thomasina Coverly, the daughter of the house, is a precocious teenager with ideas about mathematics, nature, and physics well ahead of her time. She studies with her tutor Septimus Hodge, a friend of Lord Byron (an unseen guest in the house). In the present, writer Hannah Jarvis and literature professor Bernard Nightingale converge on the house: she is investigating a hermit who once lived on the grounds; he is researching a mysterious chapter in the life of Byron. As their studies unfold – with the help of Valentine Coverly, a post-graduate student in mathematical biology – the truth about what happened in Thomasina's time is gradually revealed. The play opens on 10 April 1809, in a garden-front room of the house. Septimus Hodge is trying to distract 13-year-old Thomasina from her curiosity about "carnal embrace" by challenging her to prove Fermat's Last Theorem; he also wants to focus on reading the poem "The Couch of Eros" by Ezra Chater, who with his wife is a guest at the house. Thomasina starts asking why jam mixed in rice pudding can never be unstirred, which leads her to the topic of determinism and to a nascent theory of chaotic shapes in nature. This is interrupted by Chater himself, who is angry that his wife was caught in the aforementioned "carnal embrace" with Septimus; he has come to demand a duel. Septimus tries to defuse the situation by heaping praise on Chater's "The Couch of Eros". The tactic works, because Chater does not know it was Septimus who had savaged an earlier work of his, "The Maid of Turkey". Landscape architect Richard Noakes enters, shortly accompanied by Captain Brice and Lady Croom; the three discuss proposed modifications to the Arcadian style gardens, while Thomasina sketches an imaginary hermit on Noakes' technical drawing of the garden. The present day. Hannah Jarvis is researching the house, the garden, and specifically the hermit, for a study of hermits and the Romantic imagination. Bernard Nightingale enters with Chloe Coverly; she conceals the professor's identity from Hannah, as Nightingale had given Hannah's last book a poor review. Chloe's brother, Valentine, is gathering data on the population biology of the grouse in the surrounding grounds, using the house's "game books". When Chloe accidentally reveals Bernard's identity, Hannah reacts angrily; but she agrees to share her research material. This enables him to propose the theory that one of the 1809 inhabitants, Ezra Chater, was killed by Lord Byron in a duel. Bernard notes that records of Chater the poet disappeared after 1809, and the only other Chater of record is a botanist. The 19th century. Septimus is tutoring Thomasina, this time in translating Latin. Again their focus diverts, this time to the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, which upsets Thomasina. She mourns the loss of the knowledge stored there, and Septimus responds that all that was lost will eventually turn up again. They are interrupted by Chater, who succeeds in challenging Septimus to a duel, having learned (from Lord Byron off-stage) that Septimus wrote the damning review of his work. The present. Hannah rediscovers Thomasina's primer containing her ideas on iteration and chaos theory; this recalls Septimus' assertion that what was lost is eventually rediscovered. Valentine reacts with interest to the notes, as his own research centres on similar concepts. Bernard gives Hannah, Valentine, and Chloe a preview of his lecture theorising that Lord Byron shot and killed Chater in a duel. When Hannah and Valentine challenge his logic, Bernard launches into a diatribe about the irrelevance of science, then departs for his lecture (and a promotional media appearance) in London. Hannah begins to suspect that the hermit of Sidley Park – who was reportedly obsessed with algebraic computations about the heat death of the universe, the theory suggested in Thomasina's diagram – could have been Septimus. Returning to 1809, we learn that the duel never occurred. Instead, the Chater couple left for the West Indies with Captain Brice. Chater served as the expedition's botanist and his wife Charity was the captain's secret paramour. Lord Byron has also left the country. Septimus has gone rabbit hunting for Thomasina, who favours rabbit pie; he returns to find Lady Croom searching for him. She has found two letters, a love letter addressed to her, and another to Thomasina about rice pudding, both written by Septimus in case he died in a duel. She invites Septimus to an amorous rendezvous. Both 1812 and the present, the actions running concurrently. Some present-day characters are in fancy dress for a party, so that both casts appear similarly attired. After reading a newspaper report on the Byron murder theory, Chloe talks about determinism with Valentine, echoing the discussion between Septimus and Thomasina. Chloe, however, believes that sex is the force that disrupts the universe's ordered plan. Valentine, using his computer to extrapolate Thomasina's ideas, relates them to the later developed concept of entropy. He wonders whether Thomasina or Septimus was the genius behind the theories. Hannah and Valentine mention that Thomasina died in a fire on the eve of her seventeenth birthday. Meanwhile, Thomasina asks Septimus to teach her to dance, to prepare for her forthcoming 17th birthday party. Lady Croom enters, complaining to Noakes about the noise of his steam engine; Thomasina notes that the machine obeys the laws of entropy (which have not yet been formalized), which describe the universe as winding down. In the present, Bernard arrives and is met by Hannah, who has found a diary entry detailing the facts of Chater's death – this discovery totally discredits Bernard's theory and vindicates Lord Byron's reputation. While Septimus awaits appropriate music for Thomasina's dance lesson, he examines the sketch she made to illustrate the irreversibility of heat; his action mirrors that of Hannah and Valentine, who pondered the same diagram. Bernard is caught in a compromising position with Chloe, and is asked to depart. Eventually a waltz starts, and Septimus dances with Thomasina, revealing that their relationship is increasingly complicated by hints of romance. Gus (Valentine and Chloe's younger brother, who has been silent for the entire play) hands another of Thomasina's drawings to a surprised Hannah. It depicts Septimus and the tortoise, confirming her suspicion that the hermit, who had a tortoise called Plautus, was Septimus. After Thomasina's tragic death, he apparently became a hermit. Accepting her challenge to the laws of the universe as propounded by Newton, he worked for the rest of his life to apply "honest English algebra" to the question of the universe's future.
A group of young Milanese men stage a fake marriage between their friend Lofty and a woman pretending to be an Albanian princess. In his attempt to obtain identity papers, Lofty is transformed into a dog and passes through a series of comic adventures before waking from the dream. The pinball image evokes mechanization and conspicuous consumption.
A group of teenage revolutionaries, including Gavrilo Princip, are swept up in a scheme to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Exiled by his brothers, Archelaus reaches King Cisseus and helps defend him. When Cisseus plots against him instead of honoring his promise, Archelaus turns the plot back on the king, escapes to Macedonia and founds Aegae, guided by a goat and an oracle.
Alice Arden and her lover Mosby plot to murder her husband Thomas. After several failed attempts, hired killers carry out the murder, and the conspirators are discovered and punished.
An ageing general convenes his family to condemn his hunchbacked sister Ardèle's romance with a tutor. Behind her locked bedroom door, the unseen couple become a target of the family's hypocritical, self-interested advice and scandalized judgment.
Frank Perry pretends to have joined the Freemasons to satisfy his wife and explain his late nights. His father-in-law has used the same excuse for years, and each fears exposure when the family expects them to recognize one another as lodge brothers.
The Hon Willie Tatham is at a dance at his own house, hosted by Lady Frinton. He is surprised by the return of his wife Margot from a long trip to Egypt. She catches the lonely Willie with Kitty Lake just at the moment when the former actress gives him a consoling kiss. There is a serious row, and Margot adopts the tone of a deeply injured wife. Fortunately for Willie, his widowed father, Lord Grenham, who has a roving eye and wide worldly experience, finds a young Australian, John Willcocks, who had a flirtation with Margot in Egypt more romantic and possibly more passionate than a casual kiss at a jazz supper party. Margot has fled Egypt to avoid further temptation. Grenham arranges for Willcocks, who has come to London in search of her, to have a chance of rekindling the Egyptian romance. Willocks proves a gentleman and abandons his pursuit. Mutual forgiveness is the result. Meanwhile, Lady Frinton manoeuvres to lure Lord Grenham into a marriage. Margot, irritated by Grenham's efforts regarding Willcocks, assists in this by placing an announcement of Grenham's engagement to Frinton in The Times. This is all observed closely by the vicar, Lynton, and his wife, who is Grenham's sister. The Lyntons learn something, however, from Grenham's flexible attitude toward life. With the young couple reconciled and Lady Frinton triumphant, the vicar reproaches Grenham for calling him "a bloody old fool". Grenham responds by putting his arm round the vicar's shoulders and says, "But aren't we all, old friend?".
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