8284 shows
Clear filtersTilly Wellwyn, a young woman from Bloomsbury, falls in love with a wealthy aristocrat and pretends to be of noble birth. Her deception initially fools his family, but her attempts to make her own family play along expose the scheme.
Timanthes is a 1770 tragedy by the British writer John Hoole. The original Covent Garden cast included William Smith as Timanthes, Robert Bensley as Demaphoon, Richard Wroughton as Cherinthus, Mary Bulkley as Cephisa and Mary Ann Yates as Ismena.
Time Out for Ginger is a Broadway comedy written by Ronald Alexander, and directed by Shepard Traube (1907–1983), that ran 248 performances at the Lyceum Theatre from November 26, 1952, to June 27, 1953, before becoming hugely popular in regional theatres throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.
Time Stands Still is set in Brooklyn and revolves around Sarah, a photo journalist who has returned from covering the Iraq war after being injured by a roadside bomb, and her reporter boyfriend James who is swamped by guilt after leaving Sarah alone in Iraq. They receive a visit from their friend Richard, a photo editor, who introduces them to his new girlfriend Mandy, who is much younger than he. The play focuses on their relationships and Sarah and James' prospects at a more conventional life.
Personified Fame and the Curious debate Time and reputation before Chronomastix, a satyr who embodies political scandal and libel. After comic anti-masques of mutes, jugglers and tumblers, mythological figures including Saturn, Venus, Cupid and Diana lead into the principal masquers’ dances.
Time and the Conways is in three acts. The first act is set in the Conway house in 1919 on the night of the birthday of one of the daughters, Kay. Act Two moves to the same night in 1937 and is set in the same room in the house. Act Three then returns to 1919, seconds after Act One left off. In the first Act we meet the Conway family, Mrs Conway, her daughters Kay, Hazel, Madge and Carol and her sons Alan and Robin. Three other characters appear: Gerald, a solicitor; Joan, a young woman in love with Robin; and Ernest, a young, ambitious entrepreneur of a lower social class. Act One's atmosphere is one of festivity as the family celebrates the end of the War and look forward to great future of fame, prosperity and fulfilled dreams. In a pensive moment when Kay is left alone on stage she seems to slip into a reverie and has a vision of the future. Act Two plunges us into the shattered lives of the Conways exactly eighteen years later. Gathering in the same room where they were celebrating in Act One we see how their lives have failed in different ways. Robin has become a dissolute travelling salesman, estranged from his wife Joan, Madge has failed to realise her socialist dreams, Carol is dead, Hazel is married to the sadistic but wealthy Ernest. Kay has succeeded to a certain extent as an independent woman but has not realised her dreams of novel writing. Worst of all, Mrs Conway's fortune has been squandered, the family home is to be sold and the children's inheritance is gone. As the Act unfolds resentments and tensions explode and the Conways are split apart by misery and grief. Only Alan, the quietest of the family, seems to possess a quiet calm. In the final scene of the Act, Alan and Kay are left on stage and, as Kay expresses her misery Alan suggests to her that the secret of life is to understand its true reality – that the perception that Time is linear and that we have to grab and take what we can before we die is false. If we can see Time as eternally present, that at any given moment we are seeing only 'a cross section of ourselves,' then we can transcend our suffering and find no need to hurt or have conflict with other people. Act Three returns us to 1919 and we see how the seeds of the downfall of the Conways were being sown even then. Ernest is snubbed by Hazel and Mrs Conway, Gerald's budding love for Madge is destroyed by the snobbery of Mrs Conway in another moment of social arrogance, Alan is rejected by Joan who becomes betrothed to Robin. As the children gather at the end of the play for Mrs. Conway to foretell their future, Kay has a moment of memory of the vision of Act Two we have seen unfold. Disturbed, she steps out of the party and the play ends with Alan promising that he will be able to tell her something in the future which will help her.
Mr. MacPherson, longtime employee of the Snow-Drift Washing Machine Company, receives a gold watch upon his retirement and looks forward to an idyllic life of leisure in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Ed Davis, vice president of the company, is intrigued by Mr. MacPherson's plans. Davis becomes angry with company president Walter P. Schaeffer and quits his job. Davis retires to Florida with his wife Kay, and has to cope with boredom, new neighbors, and living on a retirement income. When Davis loses his nest egg, he can't stand his new life anymore. Fortunately his old boss Schaeffer begs him to come back to the company in New York, at a higher salary.
At a family meal in an Italian restaurant, three timelines unfold at once: Gerry and Laura revisit their marriage in the present, Glyn and Stephanie's reconciliation appears in future scenes, and Adam and Maureen's relationship is shown in reverse chronology.
Timoleon is a 1730 tragedy by the British writer Benjamin Martyn. It is based on the life of the Greek statesman Timoleon, leader of Syracuse during the Sicilian Wars against Carthage. The original Drury Lane cast included John Mills as Timoleon, Roger Bridgewater as Timophanes, William Mills as Olinthus, John Corey as Orthagoras, Charles Williams as Dinarchus, James Rosco as Pheron, John Bowman as Ghost, John Roberts as Aeschylus Mary Porter as Eusensia and Jane Cibber as Cleone. The prologue was spoken by Robert Wilks, and the epilogue by Anne Oldfield.
Timon in Love is a 1733 comedy play by John Kelly. It is an adaptation of a French play based on Timon of Athens and is not related to Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. The original Drury Lane cast included Roger Bridgewater as Pierrot, Kitty Clive as Mercury, Henry Norris as Plutus and Christiana Horton as Eucharis.
The wealthy Athenian Timon gives lavishly to his supposed friends, but when his fortune is gone they refuse to help him. He turns against society, lives in the wilderness, discovers gold, and gives it away while urging Alcibiades to destroy Athens; his loyal steward Flavius is the exception among those around him.
An equestrian drama about Timur, expressly written to feature horses as part of its theatrical spectacle.
Powerful widow Miss Alice and her lawyer offer a generous grant to the church on the condition that the cardinal's naïve secretary be used as a liaison. The play is Edward Albee's look at the corruption involved in mixing religion and money. Julian is the lay brother who is sent to live with "Miss Alice". Miss Alice, her lawyer, and her butler are "representatives of the unseen Tiny Alice, who resides in an altar-like 18-foot model of Miss Alice's baronial mansion."
A stage adaptation conceived as a celebration of sexuality and a formative journey to love and sexual discovery between women, in a period when that relationship is frowned upon.
Tit for Tat is a 1786 comedy play by the British writer George Colman the Elder. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in London on 29 August 1786. The original Haymarket cast included John Palmer as Villamour, Cockran Joseph Booth as Old Meanwell, William Davies as Young Meanwell, Robert Palmer as Skipwell, Elizabeth Farren as Florinda and Mary Bulkley as Letty. The Irish premiere took place at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin on 26 February 1787 It also subsequently appeared at both the Covent Garden and Theatre Royal, Drury Lane theatres.
An outrageous one-act comedy aboard the Titanic follows the Tammurai family and shipboard figures through shifting identities, sexual entanglements, apparent disasters, and reversals of who is controlling events.
Tite is preparing to marry Domitie after Bérénice has been sent away from Rome, but her return renews the conflict between love, succession and public opinion. Bérénice refuses the Senate's offer to make her empress and leaves Rome, while Tite vows not to turn her renunciation into another marriage.
Through a play within a play, the life of street-opera performer Ah Chiam unfolds: she and her sister are sent to an opera troupe, while a staged tale follows servant Titoudao. The drama then turns to Ah Chiam's romance, marriage and in-laws, and her enduring commitment to performing, culminating in her onstage recollection of her wayang life.
Roman general Titus Andronicus returns from war with Tamora, Queen of the Goths, and her sons as captives. After Titus sacrifices her eldest son, Tamora and her allies exact revenge, setting off a cycle of violence that destroys both families.
Titus and Berenice is a 1676 tragedy by the English writer Thomas Otway. It portrays the relationship between the Roman Emperor Titus and the Jewish Queen Berenice. It premiered at the Dorset Garden Theatre, staged by the Duke's Company. It was inspired by Jean Racine's 1670 French work Bérénice. The original cast included Thomas Betterton as Titus Vespatian, William Smith as Antiochus, Matthew Medbourne as Paulinus, John Crosby as Arsaces, Thomas Gillow as Rutilius, Mary Lee as Berenice and Elizabeth Barry as Phaenice. Another new work by Otway, a farce The Cheats of Scapin was performed as an afterpiece. Both plays were published together the following year and dedicated to the Earl of Rochester.
A biographical stage work assembled from Lorraine Hansberry's letters, interviews and journal entries, tracing her life from childhood in Chicago through her Broadway success with A Raisin in the Sun, her marriage and political commitments, and her final illness.
In Warsaw in 1939, theater troupe leaders Josef and Maria Tura become involved in pre-war intrigue and help catch a spy, with the assistance of fighter pilot Stanislaw Sobinski, who is romantically drawn to Maria.
A three-part cycle traces the Stranger’s spiritual journey through a series of encounters. In Part I, he passes through seven stations on the way to an asylum, then retraces them in reverse to his starting point on a street corner.
To Dorothy, a Son is a 1950 comedy play by the British writer Roger MacDougall. The plot revolves around a complex inheritance in which the American ex-wife of a man tries to prevent his current pregnant wife giving birth before a certain day, in order that she can claim the money. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham before it transferred to London's West End where it ran for 515 performances between 23 November 1950 and 16 February 1952 initially at the Savoy Theatre before moving to the Garrick Theatre. The original London cast included Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Yolande Donlan and Gwenda Wilson. A 1951 Broadway version at the John Golden Theatre, with adaptations by Otis Bigelow and a cast that included Ronald Howard and Glynis Johns, lasted for just 8 performances. It was revived in 1976 with Leslie Phillips and Hilary Pritchard in the cast.
Merryn and Wyatt, a married couple separated by a devastating accident, meet to try an exercise of 36 questions and sustained eye contact. They hope it can reconnect them and save their relationship.
David, still grieving his wife Gillian’s death, continues an imagined romance with her ghost during walks on the beach. His daughter Rachel and visiting relatives need him to return to the present and help the family face its losses.
Following Canon Chasuble and Miss Prism beyond their appearances in The Importance of Being Earnest, the play begins with their walk to and from the schools. It traces their precarious lives on Victorian society's lower rungs and their mutual dependence, then turns their relationship after Wilde's comedy ends.
A monologue follows Edwin Rodríguez Vuelvas, a provincial bureaucrat who transforms into a drag queen while recounting an unrewarding life, a troubled childhood, and fleeting happiness at a drag pageant before returning to loneliness and nihilism.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a 2018 play based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Harper Lee, adapted for the stage by Aaron Sorkin. It opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on December 13, 2018. The play opened in London's West End at the Gielgud Theatre in March 2022. The show follows the story of Atticus Finch, a lawyer in 1930s Alabama, as he defends Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of rape. Varying from the book, the play has Atticus as the protagonist, not his daughter Scout, allowing his character to change throughout the show. During development the show was involved in two legal disputes, the first with the Lee estate over the faithfulness of the play to the original book, and the second was due to exclusivity to the rights with productions using an earlier script by Christopher Sergel. During opening week, the production garnered more than $1.5 million in box office sales and reviews by publications such as the New York Times, LA Times and AMNY were positive but not without criticism.
To Marry or Not to Marry is an 1805 comedy play by the British writer Elizabeth Inchbald. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London on 16 February 1805. The original cast included Joseph Shepherd Munden as Lord Danberry, John Philip Kemble as Sir Oswin Mortland, Charles Farley as Willowear, George Frederick Cooke as Lavensforth, Julia Glover as Lady Susan Courtley and Mary Ann Davenport as Sarah Mortland. It was the last of Inchbald's new plays to be staged in her lifetime.
In a courtroom, conman Lakhoba Lokhande contests testimony from people who identify him as several fraudsters, repeatedly claiming mistaken identity; the action uses witness accounts and flashbacks.
Based in part on Yonatan Netanyahu’s letters and interviews with his friends and family, the play examines his life and legacy, including his leadership during the hostage rescue at Entebbe and the events that led to the operation.
To Quito and Back is a 1937 American play by Ben Hecht. It was neither a commercial nor a critical success. Mounted by the Theatre Guild, it premiered at the Colonial Theatre in Boston on September 20, 1937. It transferred to Broadway's Guild Theatre where it opened on October 6, 1937. The cast was led by Leslie Banks as Alexander Sterns, Francis Compton as Howard Evans, and Sylvia Sidney as Lola Hobbs.
A dramatic exploration of Shakespeare’s possible sexuality and the identity of the mysterious W.H. addressed in his work. The play follows Shakespeare’s life from his first meeting with W.H. to his death in Stratford, with blues-style sonnet performances by the Dark Lady.
A play about the experiences of a tank crew in 1918 during the First World War.
The Beebe's live on the ground floor of a two family home, with Chester Mullin and his parents living above them. The Beebe's have been married six months. Leonard Beebe is a clerk with John Kincaid's Sons, a piano manufacturer. Chester also works there in a lower position. Leonard is hoping to be promoted to Chief Clerk, for the Beebe's are running a deficit due to Leonard's investing in a grapefruit farm in Florida. Act I (The Beebe's living room, in Nutley, New Jersey. Saturday afternoon.) Leonard and Elsie fuss around waiting for the Kincaids to arrive. Elsie is ready to play their Kincaid piano and sing when they do come, but is worried about the unpaid bill for it. Chester drops in to their annoyance. He has heard about the visit and is determined to get something out of it. When the Kincaids arrive, he tries to pitch Mr. Kincaid to back his vaudeville act but is shot down. Elsie is ready to play the piano when two truckmen arrive to repossess it. John Kincaid pays the overdue amount for the Beebes. He and Mrs. Kincaid prepare to depart, obviously disappointed in the Beebe's profligacy. However, Elsie persuades them by explaining how Leonard has invested a lot of money into a grapefruit farm, hence their indebtedness. She convinces Mrs. Kincaid, not of Leonard's worthiness, but of her own. Mrs. Kincaid gives Mr. Kincaid the signal, and he invites the Beebes to the annual banquet for top employees. After they leave, Leonard is determined to give a speech from out of an advertised book of speeches, which he buys after borrowing $3 from Chester. (Curtain) Act II (Scene 1: Same, two weeks later.) Leonard rehearses speech number 47 from the book he bought. Elsie quizzes him to make sure he understands when and how to deliver the phrases. When the evening newspaper is delivered, Leonard reads that his grapefruit farm was a scam and the perpetrator has been arrested. Chester arrives, listens to the speech, and announces he's quitting John Kincaid's Sons to go on the road with vaudeville... but not right away. He leaves when the taxi comes to take the Beebe's to the annual banquet. As they exit, Leonard realizes he's forgotten his speech, only to see Elsie pull it from her purse and smile. (Black out-- dark change to second scene) (Scene 2: The annual dinner of John Kincaid's Sons, Hotel Commodore, New York City.) Thirteen people sit in a row at a banquet table, facing the audience. From off to the right an off-stage speaker drones on about a strike at the company's Framingham plant. The Toastmaster hurridley thanks him at a pause, and quickly introduces the Politician, who gives a short speech. Next is John Kincaid, who is applauded and cheered immoderately by his employees. He introduces Tom Baker, Leonard's rival for the Chief Clerk position. Within two sentences the Beebes realize he is delivering speech number 47, the same one Leonard memorized. Leonard is paralyzed when called to speak next, but Elsie saves the day by claiming he has laryngitis. She will deliver a speech Leonard wrote she informs the waiting audience, and makes one up impromptu. The speech is received well, and Leonard is once more grateful to his loyal and resourceful wife. (Curtain) Act III (The outer office of Mr. Kinkaid, New York City, six months later.) Leonard has been promoted to Mr. Kincaid's secretary on the basis of Elsie's speech. He has filled the office with labor-saving gadgets that either don't work or are too difficult to operate. Nevertheless, the efficient Miss Fletcher manages to cope. Elsie arrives to meet Leonard for lunch. He introduces her to Miss Fletcher; the women eye each other for possible threats to their respective positions. Chester enters to pester Miss Fletcher who quickly departs. Elsie goes to wait for Leonard in the lobby. Tom Baker comes in next, and through Chester's ignorance, learns Leonard was planning to deliver speech number 47 at the banquet. Tom accuses Leonard of hiding behind his wife, which Mr. Kincaid overhears. He decides to rescind Leonard's promotion, but Elsie returns in time to forestall him. She has brought Mrs. Kincaid with her. The two women join forces to remind Mr. Kincaid who really runs his company. He backs down, and the Beebe's embrace. (Curtain)
Milne's stage version follows Toad's reckless motor-car obsession, imprisonment after stealing a car, escape, and return to Toad Hall, which has been taken over by weasels, ferrets, and stoats. With Mole, Rat, and Badger, he retakes his home.
Seven men work in a bread factory in Hull. One Sunday night, exhausted factory worker Nellie loses his vest in the dough mixture.
In desolate farm country in Georgia, the profitable tobacco crop has given way to cotton plantations, but poor planting practices have depleted the soil. The Lester family were once sharecroppers, but are now poverty-stricken and unable to cope with the bleak life they face. Jeeter Lester, the patriarch, lives in squalor with his wife Ada, their two children, 16-year-old Dude and 18-year-old Ellie May, and his mother. Ada is suffering from pellagra and Ellie May has a harelip, Jeeter and Dude are thin and emaciated, and the family wears tattered clothing. Sister Bessie Rice, a stout preacher of about 40, decides to marry Dude, who agrees when she promises to buy him a car. When Capt. Tim Harmon tells the family that the house and property are owned by the bank, Jeeter is given a chance to earn money so that they may keep living there, but he refuses. The youngest daughter Pearl tries to escape from her much older husband Lov Bensey, but Ada is run over by Dude's car as she attempts to help Pearl. As Ada lies dying, Pearl escapes and runs away; Jeeter sends Ellie May to Lov instead.
In a drinking place after Jesus's crucifixion, three Roman soldiers talk with the Hebrew bartender about the execution they witnessed. Their casual conversation includes one soldier's admission that he stabbed Jesus with a spear and reveals their irreverent view of the event.
A man living beyond his means has ordered his servant Todros to play a trombone whenever a creditor approaches. The play is now lost.
The play starts with the courtship between Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1914 and ends with their separation in 1933, followed by Vivienne's gradual mental health decline until her death in 1947. The play also follows the early career of T.S. Eliot, the death of Vivienne's father, and how her mother Rose dealt with her daughter's failing marriage and mental health.
Young debtor Tom pretends to be a recently deceased man with the same name to escape his creditors. A wealthy family pays him to maintain the disguise, and he is drawn into an engagement with Caroline, who believes he is the suitor who jilted her; Tom ultimately discovers he is the dead man’s heir and marries her.
Tom Essence; Or, The Modish Wife is a 1676 comedy play by Thomas Rawlins, sometimes also attributed to Edward Ravenscroft. It was first performed at the Dorset Garden Theatre in London by the Duke's Company. Along with Thomas Otway's The Soldier's Fortune, it incorporated scenes from Molière's The Imaginary Cuckold in an otherwise unrelated plot. The original Dorset Gardens cast included Anthony Leigh as Tom Essence, Thomas Percival as Old Monylove, John Crosby as Courtly, Henry Norris as Loveall, Thomas Gillow as Stanly, John Richards as Laurence, Margaret Hughes as Mrs. Monylove, Elizabeth Barry as Theodocia, Margaret Osborne as Luce, and Anne Shadwell as Mrs. Essence.
At King Arthur’s court, tiny hero Tom Thumb defeats giants and receives Princess Huncamunca’s hand, provoking Queen Dollalolla and Lord Grizzle to plot against the marriage. Fielding turns the low tragedy into burlesque as doctors mistake a monkey for Tom, Tom is swallowed by a cow, his ghost dies again, and the other characters kill one another in absurd tragic fashion.
A three-act burletta following young men Tom and Jerry through London's high and low life, with songs, dance and loosely connected scenes. Moncrieff's adaptation became a major theatrical success and ran continuously at the Adelphi from November 1821 to March 1822.
After leaving her Virginia Woolf PhD program, young writer Anna takes a job on a children’s television show filmed in Orlando. The workplace’s commercial spectacle and shifting performances unsettle her, prompting an episodic, increasingly surreal search for purpose, identity and meaning amid a culture of youth and fantasy.
A lone speaker on a bare stage tells the story of a nameless man and shifts into other voices, including a mother, a worker, and a voice addressing a blind person. Percussion accompanies the monologues.
A company of actors, directed by Doctor Hinkfuss, improvises a drama about the La Croce family after its move from Naples to Sicily. Their performance about family scandal, jealousy and loss breaks down as the actors resist Hinkfuss's control, turning the production itself into part of the play.
A cycle of ten one-act plays by Coward, mostly comedies with three serious pieces and four plays containing songs. The plays were presented in rotating triple bills; their subjects and tones vary rather than forming one continuous plot. The cycle includes We Were Dancing, The Astonished Heart, Red Peppers, Hands Across the Sea, Fumed Oak, Shadow Play, Family Album, Star Chamber, Ways and Means, and Still Life.
Indebted inventor Aubrey Allington fakes his death and returns disguised as a Mexican cousin to claim an inheritance beyond the reach of his creditors. His plan spirals through mistaken identities, further staged deaths, and the arrival of the real cousin.
Tony Draws a Horse is a comedy play by the British writer Lesley Storm. It was later adapted into a 1950 film of the same title. It premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse before transferring to the West End where it ran for 363 performances between 26 January 1939 and 6 January 1940, initially at the Criterion Theatre before moving to the Strand Theatre and then the Comedy Theatre. Actors who appeared in the London version included Nigel Patrick, Cyril Raymond, Stewart Granger, James Harcourt, John Turnbull, Anthony Holles and Diana Churchill. It also ran for 13 performances as Billy Draws a Horse at the Playhouse Theatre on Broadway.
Tony Lumpkin in Town is a 1778 Irish comedy play by John O'Keeffe. An afterpiece, it was intended as a sequel to the 1773 play She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith. It is centred on the character Tony Lumpkin. It ran successfully at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in London. The original cast included William Parsons as Tony Lumpkin, Robert Palmer as Doctor Minum and Charles Bannister as Tim Tickle.
An interactive, improvisational comedy stages an Italian American wedding and reception, treating the audience as guests while the cast exaggerates familiar family and community stereotypes.
A compassionate, perverse exploration of a thirty-year affair and its consequences, concerned with love, art and living outside conventional bounds.
A sick young woman escapes her stifling home with her nurse and the nurse’s boyfriend, reaching a jungle outpost where colonial authority is unsettled by a seemingly unassuming private. The play shifts from surreal allegory into extended discussions of religion, science and politics as its characters confront boredom, illness and the failure of their institutions.
The play intertwines the experience of Latvian migrants in 1948 with the 1845 expeditions of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, probing two points of contact between European migrants and northern Queensland.
Career-driven Marlene celebrates her promotion over dinner with women from history and fiction, whose stories reveal the costs of ambition. In the modern office and family scenes, Marlene’s troubled niece Angie visits, and a later family confrontation reveals Marlene is Angie’s mother, who left her in her sister Joyce’s care.
Top Secret is a comedy play by Alan Melville which was first performed in 1949. It is a farce revolving around an ambassador. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle before transferring to the Winter Garden Theatre in London's West End where it ran for 21 performances between 19 October and 5 November 1949. The original West End cast included Tom Gill, Hugh Wakefield, Frederick Valk and Beryl Measor. It was not well-received, and was reportedly booed by audiences on its opening night. A review in The Stage considered it was too long and needed speeding up. Its short run was in contrast to Melville's other play of 1949, Castle in the Air which was a hit running for nearly 300 performances.
A legal-aid solicitor and a prominent barrister compete over their careers and the future of their teenage son.
A five-act historical drama about Timur and the ideal of uniting Turkic, Tatar, and Mongol peoples under a Turan empire.
Topaze, an honest boarding-school teacher, is fired after refusing to falsify a wealthy student’s grades. His private pupil’s aunt, Suzy, draws him into the shady business of her lover, municipal counsellor Castel-Bénac, first using him as a frontman and then watching him become a confident businessman who launches his own ventures.
The play chronicles the adult lives of two African-American brothers as they cope with poverty, racism, work, women, and their troubled upbringings. Lincoln lives with Booth, his younger brother, after being thrown out by his wife. Booth reminds Lincoln that his presence was meant to be a temporary arrangement. But Lincoln, who works at an arcade as a whiteface Abraham Lincoln impersonator, is their only source of income. While the work is honest, both brothers find it humiliating. Booth repeatedly attempts to persuade Lincoln to return to running games of three-card monte. Lincoln had sworn off the hustle after one of his crew had been shot dead, believing he would be next. Idolizing his brother's former glory, Booth aspires to become a three-card monte card sharp, frequently practicing the routine in his apartment, although his act is awkward; his own talent lies in shoplifting. Booth is preoccupied with a woman named Grace whom he tries to impress with shoplifted luxuries. He boasts to his brother about their relationship, but in truth she spurns his advances. Lincoln reveals that his wife Cookie had misread his depression as lack of interest in her, before she threw him out and slept with Booth. In the present, Lincoln is about to be laid off, replaced at his job by a wax model. Booth suggests that Lincoln save his job by vividly acting out Abraham Lincoln's death throes after the customers shoot him with the provided blank—an idea they rehearse before abandoning. The brothers reflect on their past together: Their parents deserted them as teenagers. Each parent, before leaving with a new lover, left one brother $500 in cash, which they refer to as their "inheritance". Lincoln spent his; Booth saved and hid his, never even opening the stocking that held it. After losing his job at the arcade, Lincoln returns to three-card monte the next day and comes home exuberant. Meanwhile, Booth boasts that Grace has proposed marriage to him. Lincoln suggests that Booth find employment in order to keep Grace, calling his card shark abilities "double left-handed." Insulted, Booth challenges him to a game of three-card monte. Lincoln leads him to believe that he can win, inducing Booth to wager his $500 inheritance on the game before beating him. Laughing, Lincoln explains that the conceit behind three-card monte is that the dealer always decides when he wins. Over Booth's protests, he tries to open the stocking containing the inheritance. An agitated Booth reveals that he had shot Grace. Lincoln attempts to return the inheritance, but Booth dares him to open it instead. As Lincoln cuts the stocking, Booth brings a gun to Lincoln's neck and shoots him. Booth rants at his brother's corpse for mocking him and stealing his inheritance, before crumpling and sobbing over the dead body.
On an open-top sightseeing bus, London tour guide Sandie points out the sights while revealing details of her personal life. Although written for theatre, the original production played on a moving double-decker bus.
Each act focuses on a different phase in Arnold's life. In the first, Arnold meets Ed Reiss, who is uncomfortable with his bisexuality. This becomes an increasing source of conflict between the two, causing Ed to eventually leave Arnold and settle down with a woman named Laurel. Arnold is heartbroken because he still loves Ed. In the second, one year later, Arnold meets Alan, and the two settle down into a blissful existence that includes plans to adopt a child. The couple visits Ed and Laurel in their country home, where the group deals with tensions resulting from Ed and Arnold’s previous relationship. The segment ends with Laurel telling Arnold she and Ed are engaged. In the third, several years later, Arnold is a single father raising gay teenager David. It is revealed that just before receiving David from the state, Alan was the victim of a violent hate crime, resulting in his death and leaving Arnold to raise a child on his own. Ed is separated from Laurel, and stays at Arnold’s to help him. The play revolves around Arnold’s struggle to move on following Alan’s death as he is forced to deal with his mother's ("Ma") intolerance and disrespect when she visits from Florida. The first act derives its name (International Stud) from an actual gay bar of the same name at 117 Perry Street in Greenwich Village in the 1960s and 1970s. The bar had a backroom where men engaged in anonymous sex. The backroom plays a central role in the act. The trilogy derives its title from the “torch” musical style which are “popular sentimental song[s] of unrequited love.” The award-winning and popular work broke new ground in the theatre: "At the height of the post-Stonewall clone era, Harvey challenged both gay and straight audiences to champion an effeminate gay man's longings for love and family."
An absentee husband leaves a steward in charge of his estate. The steward gradually exerts power over the mother and her son, Hanawaka, until both are forced to scare birds from a boat in the rice fields.
Goethe’s verse drama portrays the sixteenth-century Italian poet and courtier Torquato Tasso and his descent into madness.
Victor Hugo's play about Tomás de Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition, criticizing religious fanaticism and Catholic fanaticism.
A drama centered on a love triangle.
Set during the hundred days between VE Day and VJ Day in 1945, this play follows working-class women in Nottingham, especially Sandra and her sisters. After losing a child to a car during the blackout, Sandra hopes peace will bring a different future; the women's relationships and loyalties are tested by grief and the return of Italian prisoners of war.
The play is set in 1985, on Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. It follows Joe Simpson and Simon Yates as they climb the west face of the Siula Grande, becoming the first climbers to reach the summit using the west face. Descending down the north ridge tragedy struck as Simpson slipped down an ice cliff, breaking his right leg. With Simpson incapacitated Yates lowered Simpson off the North Ridge by tying two 150-foot lengths of rope together to make one rope. With worsening conditions, frost bite and complications with the knots Yates inadvertently lowered Simpson off a cliff and Simpson accidentally dropped one of the cords required to ascend the rope. Simpson could not climb up the rope, Yates could not pull him back up, the cliff was too high for Simpson to be lowered down, and they could not communicate. Yates had to make the hard decision to cut the rope in order to save his own life. Yates cut the rope, plummeting Simpson down the cliff into a deep crevasse. Exhausted and suffering from hypothermia, Yates dug himself a snow cave to wait out the storm. Assuming Simpson was dead Yates carried on descending the mountain by himself. Simpson, however, was still alive. He had survived the 150-foot fall despite his broken leg and had landed on a small ledge inside the crevasse. When Simpson regained consciousness, he discovered that the rope had been cut and realized that Yates would presume that he was dead. He therefore had to save himself. It was impossible for Simpson to climb up to the entrance of the crevasse, therefore his only choice was to lower himself deeper into the crevasse and hope that there was another way out. After lowering himself, Simpson found another small entrance and climbed back onto the glacier via a steep snow slope. In all Simpson spent three days without food and with almost no water, crawling and hopping five miles back to their base camp. Exhausted and almost completely delirious, he reached base camp only a few hours before Yates intended to leave the base camp and return to civilisation.
A three-act historical drama about Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution.
Two Russian aristocrats exiled in Paris take jobs as servants while secretly safeguarding a fortune entrusted to them by the late Tsar. Their new life is threatened when a Soviet official arrives seeking the money and forces them to reconsider loyalty, country and survival.
Young people in drama classrooms across several countries describe their lives and hopes. Their testimonies connect personal struggles with larger questions about education, identity, and the possibility of change.
Towards Zero is a 1956 thriller play by Agatha Christie and Gerald Verner and based on Christie's 1944 novel Towards Zero. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham before transferring to the St James's Theatre in London's West End where it ran for 205 performances between 4 September 1956 and 2 March 1957. The London cast featured George Baker, Cyril Raymond, Frederick Leister, William Kendall, Max Brimmell, Michael Nightingale and Gillian Lind. The play features Superintendent Battle one of Christie's recurring characters. Reviews were favourable.
Town and Country, or Which is Best? is an 1807 play by English playwright Thomas Morton. It was regularly performed in England and America during the 19th century.
Ellen expected to end her life in the rundown Dublin flat where it began, but after the building is sold she faces a move to her sister’s suburban home. An unexpected visitor prompts her to revisit her past and lay ghosts to rest.
A stage adaptation of Kōno’s linked stories follows a family of Hiroshima atomic-bomb survivors across generations, from Minami’s life in the postwar city to her brother’s descendants revisiting the family’s history decades later.
Two background townspeople navigate their own lives as their fairy-tale kingdom freezes over, in a parody of musical theatre told from the ensemble's perspective.
Writer Roland Henning's attempt to explain his writer's block to a therapist sends his account between childhood in The Shire and his life as a playwright, centered on a formative primary-school day.
Set in New Orleans following the Great Depression, the play focuses on the Berniers sisters, two middle-aged spinsters who have sacrificed their own ambitions to look after their ne'er-do-well younger brother Julian, whose grandiose dreams repeatedly lead to financial disasters. When he unexpectedly returns home accompanied by his emotionally unstable, childlike young bride Lily, her aloof, aristocratic mother Albertine, and an unexplained large sum of money, Carrie and Anna suddenly find that the position of power they have always held has become unbalanced, leaving their lives in chaos.
A Latin liturgical drama for Epiphany matins follows the three Magi as they speak with Herod, follow the star to Bethlehem, and present gifts to the Christ Child. Its processional songs, dialogue and Te Deum use three playing areas within a church.
Set in a wrestling ring, the play follows Tanzi from a childhood in which her parents expect her to be feminine to her marriage to wrestler Dean Rebel. She supports his career, becomes a champion wrestler herself, and challenges him to a match in which the loser must do the housework.
Gabriel Espinoza, a baker suspected of being the missing King Sebastian of Portugal, is arrested and tortured for impersonating the monarch. Although a Portuguese marquis claims Espinoza is the king, Philip II orders his execution; a note found after his death reveals his identity.
Based on astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil's life, the play follows his obsession with observing the transit of Venus. He leaves Celeste, who loves him, on an expedition, returns six years later without having seen the transit, and prepares to set out again. The play takes artistic license with the timing of Le Gentil's return.
In an 1833 Donegal village, a British Ordnance Survey team maps and anglicizes Irish place names. Their interpreter Owen mediates between the soldiers and local residents, while communication across languages shapes the relationships and tensions surrounding the survey, including Yolland and Máire's romance and Yolland's disappearance.
Newly retired engineer Frank and Frances, a divorced mother of adult daughters, leave Melbourne to settle in a cottage in subtropical New South Wales. Their late-life romance is tested by Frank’s illness, his domineering habits, Frances’s family obligations and their clashing political outlooks; as Frank’s health fails, both reassess how they treat those around them.
The comedy follows two men taking actor Jack Lemmon's black poodle from California to Vancouver, where Lemmon is working.
Travels with My Aunt is a 1989 comedy adapted by Scottish dramatist by Giles Havergal from Graham Greene's novel of the same title. The play was first staged at Citizens Theatre in Glasgow on 10 November 1989 with Havergal, Derwent Watson, Patrick Hannaway, and Christopher Gee, and has been performed in London West End theatres, off-Broadway in New York, and in San Francisco. From 2 May to 29 June 2013, Travels with My Aunt was staged at London's Menier Chocolate Factory, starring David Bamber and Jonathan Hyde. This stage version was reduced to a 50-minute, one-act version (with permission from Havergal) and first presented by the Backwell Playhouse Theatre Company as an entry into the Avon Association of Drama One Act Festival on 21 February 2015. The two-act version was revived at the Citizens Theatre in May 2017.
The play is set in Zürich, Switzerland during the First World War and in the 1970s. In 1917, three historically important figures were living in Zürich: the modernist author James Joyce, the communist revolutionary Lenin, and the Dada founder Tristan Tzara. The play centres on the less notable Henry Carr, a British consular official, as he recalls his encounters with these three. As he reminisces, Carr's memory becomes prone to distraction, and the narrative veers away from historical accuracy. The young Carr spies on Lenin, argues with Tzara about the nature of true art, is persuaded by Joyce to play Algernon and later quarrels over the cost of buying new trousers for the role. The old Carr concludes the first act: After further confused memories and mix-ups in the second act, the old Carr concludes the play:
During the Second World War, German officers who believe defeat is imminent plan to assassinate Hitler and negotiate peace with the Allies. The conspiracy fails, and an officer's involvement is discovered amid conflicting loyalties and coercion.
After pirates threaten an old captain at the Admiral Benbow Inn, Jim Hawkins inherits a treasure map and joins an expedition to find the hidden fortune. Most of the ship’s crew are secretly pirates, and Jim must prove his courage when mutiny leads to a fight on the island.
When Dave breaks into the flat of his former girlfriend Ann and her new partner Patrick, he refuses to accept their relationship and bullies both of them. Dave's persistence ultimately wins Ann back, leaving all three unhappy.
An apocalyptic expressionist drama in nine tableaux, exploring erotic frenzy and rejection of civilization through Nietzschean ideas. Its climax draws on mystery-play form, and the text encloses a poem modeled on Georg Heym.
Trelawny of the "Wells" tells the story of Rose Trelawny, a popular star of melodrama plays at the Barridge Wells Theatre (a thinly disguised Sadler's Wells Theatre). Rose gives up the stage when she decides to marry her sweetheart, Arthur Gower, in order to please his conservative family. She finds life with Arthur's grandfather and great-aunt, Sir William and Lady Trafalgar, unbearably dull, and they detest her loud and unrestrained personality. Rose runs back to the theatre, abandoning Arthur. But her experience of the "real world" has killed her talent for melodrama, and she cannot recapture the liveliness that had made her a star. Meanwhile, Arthur has secretly run away to become an actor at the Bristol Old Vic. The problem is solved when Rose encounters Sir William again, and she reawakens his memory of admiring the great actor Edmund Kean as a young man. Sir William offers to help Rose's friend, Tom Wrench, an aspiring playwright who dreams of staging plays in a more realist style than the melodramas that dominate the stage. Tom stages the play with Rose as the star, and her newfound seriousness fits his style perfectly. Tom secretly arranges for Arthur to play the leading male role, and the lovers are re-united on stage.
Tribes is a play by English playwright Nina Raine that had its world premiere in 2010 at London's Royal Court Theatre and its North American premiere Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre in 2012. The play won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.
Tribute is a play by Bernard Slade. The play focuses on Scottie Templeton, a popular actor who has spent his life shirking responsibility. When he discovers he is terminally ill with leukemia, he attempts to reconnect with his long-estranged son.
Trick for Trick is a 1735 comedy play by Robert Fabian. Performed at the Drury Lane Theatre as an afterpiece to Cato. It became notorious for the killing of the actor Thomas Hallam by Charles Macklin after a dispute over a costume in the green room during the performance on 10 May. Macklin was subsequently convicted of manslaughter. The playbill listed amongst its cast Edward Berry as Don Lopez, Macklin as Sancho, Hallam as Guzman, Richard Arne as Estifania and Hannah Pritchard as Eugenia.
During the Partition of India in 1947, six women are trapped in a moving truck. Religious conflict and captivity complicate the divisions between those who inflict violence and those who endure it.
At the abandoned farmhouse of John and Minnie Wright, a county attorney and sheriff investigate John’s strangling while Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters examine the domestic space. The women discover that John killed Minnie’s pet bird, a clue to her motive for killing him. They hide the evidence, understanding the abuse and isolation the men have dismissed as “trifles.”
In 1850s Paris, artist’s model Trilby becomes engaged to Little Billee, but the hypnotist Svengali breaks up the match and turns her into a celebrated singer under his control. Years later, Billee’s friends confront Svengali; his death briefly frees Trilby before Svengali’s portrait returns her to a trance, and she dies.
A young Athenian has squandered his father's money. His friend Callicles protects the absent father's house and hidden treasure, then secretly arranges for it to fund a marriage dowry by hiring an impostor to pose as a messenger from Syria. The returning father discovers the deception and approves the marriages.
A 26-scene Living Newspaper uses vignettes on crop surpluses, foreclosures, auctions, crop destruction, the Dust Bowl, farmer cooperatives, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act to criticize the AAA and urge farmers and laborers to organize against commercial middlemen.
The lost play probably followed Triptolemos on the mission Demeter gave him: to teach agriculture to peoples across the world. Fragments describe Demeter outlining his journey and the winged, serpent-drawn chariot she provides.
Across eight short acts, characters find themselves in absurd everyday situations and make increasingly absurd decisions.
After Troy's fall, the captive Trojan women await assignment to Greek rulers. Achilles' ghost demands Polyxena's sacrifice, while Calchas says Astyanax must also die; Andromache and Hecuba grieve as the Greeks carry out these demands.
During the Trojan War, Troilus and Cressida pledge their love before she is exchanged to the Greek camp, where he sees her with Diomedes and seeks revenge. Meanwhile, Greek leaders try to bring Achilles back to battle against Hector; Achilles returns after Hector kills Patroclus, and the play ends with Hector's death and Troy's war unresolved.
Troilus And Cressida; Or, Truth Found Too Late is a 1679 tragedy by the English writer John Dryden. It was first staged by the Duke's Company at the Dorset Garden Theatre in London. It was a reworking of William Shakespeare's 1602 play Troilus and Cressida, set during the Trojan Wars. In acknowledgement of this Dryden has the prologue spoken by Shakespeare's ghost, defending the alterations made to the play. The original cast included Thomas Betterton as Troilus, William Smith as Hector, Thomas Percival as Priam, Joseph Williams as Aeneas, Anthony Leigh as Pandarus, Thomas Gillow as Agamemnon, Henry Harris as Ulysses, George Bright as Ajax, Henry Norris as Nestor, John Crosby as Diomedes, John Bowman as Patroclus, John Richards as Anthenor, Cave Underhill as Thersites, Mary Lee as Cressida and Mary Betterton as Andromache. The published version of the play was dedicated to the politician Lord Sunderland.
Henri and Sonia’s evening with their son is disrupted when Hubert and Inès, Henri’s employer and his wife, arrive a day early for dinner. A new discovery about Henri’s research undermines his promotion hopes, and the awkward gathering plays out three times, with small changes in how the characters respond producing different outcomes.
A debate team from an elite all-boys school is assigned to argue that feminism has failed women. The students strategize about how to perform that position until an anonymous sexual-assault accusation against a teammate derails their plans.
Trouble in Mind is a play by Alice Childress, which debuted Off-Broadway at the Greenwich Mews Theatre in 1955. It premiered on Broadway at Roundabout Theatre Company's American Airlines Theatre on November 18, 2021. The play focuses on racism and sexism in American theatre as an experienced black actress, cast in a starring role in a Broadway play for the first time, clashes with a white director in rehearsals. It was published in the anthologies Black Theater: a 20th Century Collection of the Work of its Best Playwrights (Dodd, Mead & Co. 1971), the second edition of Black Drama in America: an Anthology (Howard University Press, 1994), Plays by American Women: 1930-1960 (Applause Books, 2001), and Alice Childress: Selected Plays (Northwestern University Press, 2011). It was first published on its own by Theatre Communications Group in 2022.
In an office, Wills explains to manager Mr. Fibbs that workers have turned against the products they make, despite being treated well; asked what they would rather produce, Wills answers, “Brandy balls.”
In a small government house in Canberra’s Waramanga, young people experience love, parties, and the slouching rhythms of shared life; the play also includes a layered exchange between stoned teenagers and a security guard at Parliament House.
Tru is a 1989 play by Jay Presson Allen, adapted from the words and works of Truman Capote.
Set in a beachfront grill shortly after World War II, Anderson’s drama explores emotional damage on the postwar home front through two couples. One is the jealous veteran Sage McRae and his wife Tory, whose relationships with the other people at the café shape the conflict.
Courtesan Phronesium and her maid Astaphium manipulate several men into giving them money. Phronesium pretends to have borne a soldier’s child to extract gifts, while the bad-tempered slave Truculentus, who initially tries to protect his master from her, falls for Astaphium. A hidden baby and a mistaken bargain drive the closing deception.
Pierre Trudeau and René Lévesque pursue competing visions of Canada and Quebec. Political allies, spies, family members, and public figures collide in a darkly comic account of the struggle over sovereignty and national identity.
Pierre Trudeau rises to power as Quebec separatist militancy intensifies. This historical satire follows the personalities and political conflicts of the 1960s through the kidnappings and government response of the October Crisis.
Estranged brothers Austin, a screenwriter, and Lee, a drifter, reunite at their mother's house. Their rivalry escalates when a producer favors Lee's story, and the brothers' roles and ambitions begin to reverse.
Brecht recasts Farquhar’s Restoration comedy as an epic comedy: recruiting officer Plume arrives from London to find recruitment failing, while his friend Worthy seeks help in love and offers Plume a commission on boots.
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