8284 shows
Clear filtersIn the hallucinating mind of Raoul de Raoul, a former Central American general living in Florida after amnesty for atrocities, four women he had raped and murdered in a death squad assume roles in his imagined world. The play criticizes dictatorships, U.S. foreign policy, and the Catholic Church.
Whorl Inside a Loop is a play written by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott. The playwrights spent several weeks working with inmates at a medium-security prison on a theater project, and then subsequently wrote a play depicting similar events. The play premiered Off-Broadway on August 27, 2015 at the Second Stage Theatre, directed by Scalan and Michael Mayer. (Scott, Scalan and Mayer previously collaborated on Everyday Rapture.)
Set in a hospital room, the action revolves around Ken Harrison (Claire Harrison in some later productions), a sculptor by profession, who was paralysed from the neck down (quadriplegia) in a car accident and is determined to be allowed to die. Clark presents arguments both in favour of and opposing euthanasia and to what extent government should be allowed to interfere in the life of a private citizen. In portraying Ken as an intelligent man with a useless body, he leaves the audience with conflicting feelings about his desire to end his life.
At an annual cabin retreat, friends’ marriages are tested when Mike cruelly rejects his wife Sheila and begins an affair with her friend Trina. Sheila is devastated, but with support from Diana and the widowed host Poppy she rebuilds her life through faith and work, eventually marrying her longtime admirer Troy. The other couples also revisit the reasons for their marriages.
Lily, a frustrated young woman who smokes constantly, is hounded by her mother.
Inspired by the image of a football fan inserting a flare into his buttocks, the solo play explores English football fan culture, belonging, tribalism, and toxic masculinity through the fictional character Billy Kinley.
During a weekend at a country house, family and friends debate marriage and divorce. Jean was raised to marry, while her sister Helen rejects marriage despite being sought by many; the clergyman Cousin Theodore and host John oppose divorce, Judge Everett supports it, and scientist Ernest rejects both marriage and divorce. The discussion unfolds as a satirical comedy.
Tom Morgan is lonely after his wife Fifi spends the summer traveling through Europe without contacting him. Her return initially delights him, but she brings two traveling companions and their neglected husbands for a weekend of bedroom farce and infidelity.
Tramp Henry Bossborn rescues Serafina White, heir to a timber business, and asks for a job on his own terms. He transforms the company and replaces her family home with an efficient modern house, expecting to marry her; she rejects the changes and refuses marriage.
There are only four characters in the play. Lili, a private detective, is attracted to Renee, a straight paleontologist who is having trouble with her marriage. Lili's sister, Mary, has schizophrenia and as a result, she robs 7-Eleven stores. Mary lives with Lili briefly, until their mother, Eleanor, returns from Central America, and Lili starts an affair with Renee. While this is happening, Mary is arrested for robbery. There is a focus on how their mother's constant traveling has affected the lives of the two sisters.
The poet X returns to Nova Scotia hoping to win Shelly’s love. Her brother Othello becomes entangled in an employer’s political schemes and a fatal quarrel, bringing racism and injustice into a drama of love, betrayal and survival.
In French-occupied Düsseldorf, the tailor Wibbel is jailed for insulting Napoleon. He persuades his journeyman to serve the sentence, but when the man dies in prison, Wibbel hides and later returns claiming to be his own twin.
In 1918, sisters Sarah and Ellie Vinson come into conflict that results in murder.
Harry Trench, an idealistic young doctor, becomes engaged to Blanche Sartorius. He objects to her father's income from slum housing, then learns his own income is similarly compromised; after losing his moral certainty, he returns with others to plan a questionable business venture and reunites with Blanche.
Ambitious James leaves his Irish town for a Dublin job, returning seven years later as a successful bus-service owner. His childhood sweetheart Nan, widowed and raising a child, seeks work from him; after he has her jailed for theft, she explains the coercion and debt behind it. As James’s relationships with Nan, Kate, Nora and rival Bill collide, he must confront the difference between ambition and contentment.
A Yale academic gathers friends to prepare for a crucial job interview on Halloween, just before the 2024 American election. A dinner party exposes unstable loyalties and increasingly disturbing forces.
Six people gather at the edge of a forest, calling dogs that have abandoned them for a wild pack. Their vigil creates an uneasy community whose need for connection is tested by unexpected violence.
Wild Heather is a 1917 play by the British writer Dorothy Brandon. A woman looking to marry has to choose between two very different men. After debuting at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester in August 1917, it transferred for a West End run at the Strand Theatre lasting 79 performances between October 1917 and January 1918. The cast included Lyn Harding and Helen Haye. Noël Coward had one of his earliest roles in the production.
Michael Frayn adapts Chekhov's untitled early five-hour drama, commonly known in English as Platonov after its central character, Mikhail Platonov, a disillusioned provincial schoolmaster.
Wild Horses is a 1952 stage farce by the British writer Ben Travers. It was first performed at the Manchester Opera House in August 1952 before moving on to the Aldwych Theatre in the West End, lasting for 179 performances between November 1952 and April 1953. The plot revolves around the sale of a valuable painting. It starred Robertson Hare and Ralph Lynn who had previously appeared together in the Aldwych farces, written by Travers in the 1920s and 1930s. Other members of the cast included Robin Hunter, Cyril Smith, Colin Douglas, Frank Thornton, Joan Haythorne and Ruth Maitland.
The naval captain Sir George Thunder and his valet and bosun John Dory arrive at an unknown country house on their hunt for deserters. They soon discover that it is the home of Thunder's niece Lady Amaranth, who has been left a legacy on the condition that she live as a Quaker – with another Quaker, Ephraim Smooth, on hand to make sure she sticks to this. Hearing his son Harry has left the naval academy at Portsmouth, he sends John to bring him back to woo Amaranth. Harry has been playing truant with a travelling theatre troupe, where he has made friends with another actor called Jack Rover. However, he decides to leave the troupe and return to the academy. Rover arrives near Amaranth's house in a storm and seeks shelter with the miserly Farmer Gammon. Gammon refuses and instead he takes shelter with his neighbour Banks and his sister Amelia. Gammon is trying to impoverish Banks to encourage Amelia to marry him and the following morning Rover pays off a debt Banks owes Gammon. Rover then sets off for the London coach, but realising he has no money left, instead takes employment with a new troupe. He then meets Dory, who mistakes him for Harry, then meets Amaranth, with the two falling in love. He and the troupe then end up performing at Amaranth's house, with Amaranth playing Rosalind to Rover's Orlando in As You Like It. Sir George Thunder hears that 'Harry' (actually Rover) is already wooing Amaranth as hoped. He then meets with the real Harry, who is non-plussed and goes to meet Rover. They keep up the deception, even when Thunder arrives. Thunder then continues his pursuit of the deserters and is saved from them by Rover, who also ends up defending Amelia from Gammon's bailiffs. Amelia then goes to Amaranth to explain how she and Banks became poor – years ago, a young naval officer tried to trick her into a sham marriage. However, her brother Banks was then a naval chaplain and performed the ceremony, making it valid. She had a child but the officer then left her – she ended up travelling to the East Indies and then back to England. Ephraim is angered at the play being put on, but tries to use it as a cover to woo Amaranth's new handmaid, Gammon's daughter Jane. Overhearing this, Amaranth denounces Ephraim's hypocrisy, renounces her Quakerism and reveals her love for 'Harry'. Rover reveals his true identity and it is revealed that George was the naval officer and Rover their son. However, this invalidates George's second marriage and makes Harry illegitimate, but Rover makes over the Thunder family estate to Harry, asserting that Amaranath and her fortune are enough for him.
At the court of Henry II of France, Catherine de Medici struggles to secure her future alongside a maidservant and the king's mistress. Their encounters with a man kept as a court curiosity expose the violence beneath ideals of beauty, power, and civility.
In a fictional afterlife trial, psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich is prosecuted by the Marquis de Sade and Sacher-Masoch, while the American Medical Association appears as a punk-rock group delivering his insanity diagnosis. A circus ringmaster demands that Reich prove everyone else insane; the play critiques social boundaries between sanity and madness, good and evil, and restrictions on freedom.
Will Any Gentleman? is a 1950 stage farce by the British writer Vernon Sylvaine. The play was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool in July 1950. It then went on to the West End, running for 364 performances at the Strand Theatre between September 1950 and July 1951. It starred Robertson Hare, who appeared in several plays by Sylvaine. Hare plays a mild-mannered bank clerk who, after a night out, is hypnotized into a much more assertive lifestyle.
In early-twentieth-century Bethesda, widowed landlady Louise waits for her former boarder and lover, Mr. Merriwether, who has left for Memphis and may never return. She and her neighbor Nora hold séances, while Louise’s daughter discovers first love; ghosts, fate-weaving figures and musical interludes mingle with the town’s romantic and social life.
A solo performance uses Will Rogers quotations and commentary on current events to evoke Rogers's public wit and social observations.
Fan magazine writer George MacCauley visits Hollywood's reigning sex goddess Rita Marlowe in her swank New York hotel and confesses that this is only his second interview, the first having been titled 'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?' Arriving moments later is the hottest new playwright in town, Michael Freeman (author of 'No Hiding Place Down Here'), quickly followed by literary agent Irving 'Sneaky' LaSalle (inspired by real-life agent Irving 'Swifty' Lazar) and Hollywood mogul Harry Kaye, who is apoplectic about having paid $350,000 for the rights to Mike's play. LaSalle tries to convince the playwright to sign with his agency and write a second play, but Mike is reluctant to write what might be a flop. George, left alone with LaSalle, is persuaded to sign up instead. LaSalle's fee for each of his services is the usual ten per cent, but what George does not realise is that he'll be selling off pieces of his soul in ever-increasing increments. George's first wish is for a million dollars; he gets it. Then, when he fantasises about having a woman like Rita Marlowe love him, the suddenly love-struck Rita re-enters and Act One ends with George carrying her into the bedroom. In Act Two, the scene shifts to the Hollywood office of Rita Marlowe Productions, where Mike flirts with Rita's pert secretary, Miss Logan. George has learned that Rita's not-yet-divorced husband, football star Bronk Brannigan, is none too happy about her new relationship. Worse, George has been engaged to write his first screenplay, an adaptation of Mike's psychological drama about a prostitute and a psychiatrist, and after four weeks he still has no idea how to go about it. With an all-important story conference due any minute, LaSalle increases his hold on George by giving him the requisite 'inspiration' to satisfy the increasingly impatient Harry. In Act Three, a year has passed and George has won an Oscar. When Bronk shows up and begins to pummel George, LaSalle (exacting another ten per cent) enables George to get the better of Bronk; in fact, George tosses the astonished athlete through a window in a shower of broken glass. Soon afterwards, however, George decides he must get out of town before LaSalle takes complete control of him on reaching the full 100 per cent. His penultimate wish is to give Mike a ready-made Pulitzer Prize-winning play, but Mike suddenly realises that he could never pass off as his own a play he did not write. When LaSalle reappears, George selflessly releases Rita from his control and Mike convinces LaSalle to take him on as a client instead, even agreeing to start with the 90 per cent share already pledged. When LaSalle grabs the offer, Mike explains that it was a bad trade, because he's completely happy with his life and has no intention of selling off the remaining ten per cent. LaSalle petulantly grabs George's Oscar and departs. As the play ends, Mike and George are on their way back to New York, Mike not forgetting to grab his typewriter on the way out.
In Schiller's drama, Swiss peasants rebel against the Habsburg governor Gessler. Tell is forced to shoot an apple from his son's head, then escapes custody during a storm and later kills Gessler. The signal of Gessler's death launches a revolt; the people free Bertha and win Ulrich's support. Tell refuses to praise the assassin John, but helps him escape on condition that he atone.
William Tell is an 1825 historical play by the Irish writer James Sheridan Knowles. It portrays the legendary 14th-century Swiss folk hero William Tell in his battle against the Habsburg authorities. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. The original cast starred William Macready as Tell and included Thomas Archer, Henry Gattie, Edward Knight, Elizabeth Yates, Clara Fisher, Charles Mayne Young and Margaret Agnes Bunn. Knowles dedicated the play to the Spanish opposition leader General Francisco Mina, then living in exile in England. The play was a success and established Knowles as the leading dramatist of the period. Revived frequently, it became a standard in both Britain and North America.
Set in a Greenock shipyard around the outbreak of the First World War, the play presents a revolutionary socialist view of events. Socialist leader John Maclean is discussed but never appears.
During the 1964 Harlem riots, painter Bill Jameson is creating three portraits intended to represent Black womanhood. His friends introduce him to Tommy as a possible model, but her presence challenges the class and gender assumptions behind his work.
A large ensemble of Army Air Forces recruits struggles through pilot training, with the drama emphasizing their work, camaraderie, families and sweethearts. Music and a chorus play a substantial role in the production.
During a record drought, Walt searches for a new well with the help of an eccentric water witch, confronting whether farming can continue for him and Maggie.
Newly married Walt tries to preserve the old rural community by turning the crumbling, reportedly haunted Hollyhock Mill into a museum.
With Maggie expecting their first child, Walt tries to mend community feuds as winter and an approaching ice storm threaten the farm and its neighbours.
After two unprofitable farming seasons, Walt tries a closed local economy with his neighbours, prints his own currency, and falls in love.
After a devastating fire destroys the Orange Hall, Walt leads the effort to rebuild it and struggles to rally the community committee.
In his second farm season, Walt confronts urban development and tries to mobilize the neighbourhood to preserve Larkspur's rural character.
After a stroke leaves Emily Stilson with a language disorder, she struggles to make sense of the world and rebuild her speech. The play presents her shifting psychological perspective as she works toward recovery.
Wings Over Europe was a 1928 Broadway three-act play written by Robert Nichols and Maurice Browne, produced by the Theatre Guild and directed by Rouben Mamoulian. It opened on December 10, 1928 at the Martin Beck Theatre and then moved to the Alvin Theatre on February 6, 1929, running for 90 total performances. Young British genius Francis Lightfoot has discovered how to make terrible bombs using the atom. He's soon dismayed by the greed and militarism of the British cabinet members.
Two friends classify people and ideas as winners or losers. Their apparently playful contest turns personal, exposing differences in wealth, values, and the competitive assumptions beneath their friendship.
A family’s tense Christmas gathering is disrupted by a stranger invited home from a train journey. His apparently reasonable conversation gradually exposes political sympathies that unsettle the household.
Winterset is a play by Maxwell Anderson. A verse drama written largely in poetic form, the tragedy deals indirectly with the Sacco–Vanzetti case, in which two Italian immigrants with radical political beliefs were executed. Its plot follows Mio Romagna's quest to prove his father's innocence in the years after Bartolomeo Romagna is executed for a robbery and murder that he did not commit. Mio's quest is complicated by his love for Miriamne Esdras and the difficult ethical decisions that result from his connection with her family. A highly political play, with reflections on faith, truth, justice, love, and duty, it frequently alludes to William Shakespeare and Judaic philosophies. The Broadway production, produced and directed by Guthrie McClintic, opened on September 25, 1935, at the Martin Beck Theatre, where it ran for 195 performances. The cast included Burgess Meredith, Margo, and Eduardo Ciannelli. It won the first New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play (Best American Play). Meredith, Margo, and Ciannelli were joined by John Carradine, Stanley Ridges, and Mischa Auer in the film adaptation in 1936, directed by Alfred Santell. Anderson initially offered the play to The Group Theater with the stipulation that Meredith, a non-member, play the lead. Meredith wanted to join the group, but when asked during his interview by the three directors "do you love the Group Theater above yourself?", he said no. He was rejected, causing the playwright to withdraw his offer to the Group Theater. This incident became a source of contention among the group's actors. Members often cited it as an example of "ill-advised dogma".
In this morality play, the Soul and its faculties are drawn between Wisdom, personified as Christ, and Lucifer. After Lucifer tempts Mind, Will and Understanding into sin, Wisdom returns; the figures repent, receive mercy and hear a closing sermon on sin and grace.
A one-person biographical play about Norman Wisdom's early life and career, performed by Jack Lane as Wisdom and using the entertainer's own Gump suit.
The play concerns orphaned Jerry Artminster, who blackmails a criminal named Jock Masters by promising he will not reveal his identity if Jock agrees to impersonate the boy's mother in the Reading, Berkshire, (England) hotel where the boy lives. Others involved are Mr. Booker, the gay hotel manager who fancies the boy, and Janice, a black woman who works in the hotel.
Carrie Fisher recounts her Hollywood childhood, Star Wars fame, relationships, and experiences of addiction and mental illness in an autobiographical solo comedy.
Wishing Well is a comedy play by the British writer Eynon Evans. It was first staged at the Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton in 1946. It ran for 44 performances at the Comedy Theatre between 4 September and 11 October 1952. The West End cast included Evans, Lupino Lane, Glyn Houston, Douglas Argent and Patsy Smart. The owner of the Wishing Well inn tries to solve various people's problems.
Wit & Wisdom is a play conceived and put together by Vivian Gornick and Nora Eisenberg and done by the Colleagues Theatre Company which premiered at the Off-Broadway Arclight Theatre in New York City, New York. It ran from March 5 to March 30, 2003.
Young gentleman Valentine has mortgaged his estate and refuses to marry for money, while his younger brother Francisco loves Isabella, daughter of wealthy widow Lady Hartwell. Valentine’s verbal attacks on women provoke Lady Hartwell into matching his wit; both couples ultimately marry.
Wittypate Oldcraft is cast out by his father to live by his wits and joins a group of con artists who fleece the old knight. Meanwhile the knight’s heiress niece resists an arranged marriage, helps secure a match with her preferred suitor and outmaneuvers the foolish Sir Gregory.
Two sisters navigate courtship and their father’s expectations: Aurora struggles to learn until love awakens her confidence, while the intellectual Marisa seeks an equal rather than a poet who treats her as his muse. Their changing command of language helps them take control of their futures.
A devil offers the residents of an English village their deepest desires in exchange for their souls. Elizabeth Sawyer, ostracized as a witch, refuses his bargain, unsettling both the visitor and the community around her.
A British captain sentenced to death for alleged cowardice entrusts his possessions to a fellow officer, who betrays him and robs his widow and orphan; a Boer attack interrupts the execution and turns the scene into a battle.
A narrator joins an improvised ritual performance beneath a derelict railway station. Among its voices, LG seeks his dead companion and tries to remain with her as the living and dead approach a crossing.
In the first act, department store owner Edward Gilder learns that one of his former sales clerks, Mary Turner, has been convicted for stealing and given a three-year prison sentence. Gilder is pleased because he had asked the judge to make her an "example" to other employees. Turner asks to speak with Gilder before she goes to prison. While Gilder waits for her arrival, his store detective detains another woman, a customer, for stealing. This woman is the wife of a prominent banker, so rather than have her arrested, Gilder apologizes to her and lets her go. Turner arrives and tells Gilder she has been wrongly convicted. Although she says she never stole, she pleads with Gilder to increase the wages of his clerks, so no one who works there will be forced to steal. Gilder rejects her arguments, and she leaves for prison swearing revenge on him for his treatment of her. After being released from prison, Turner sets up a gang that engages in shady activities that are just within the boundaries of the law. She also marries Gilder's son. A member of the gang attempts to rob the home of Turner's new father-in-law at the urging of a police stooge attempting to entrap the gang. When the stooge reveals the plot, the gang member kills him, leaving Turner and her new husband at the scene to be found by the police. It seems that Turner may go to prison again, but she is saved when the guilty party confesses that she had no involvement in the crimes.
In 1969 London, two unemployed actors share a squalid Camden flat. Withnail and Marwood borrow Uncle Monty’s country cottage for a holiday, hoping a break will revive their spirits and stalled careers.
A white mother reflects on the childhood of her biracial, half-Black child in this one-woman performance piece.
The wife of a brutal, alcoholic businessman is accused of poisoning him and struggles to prove her innocence.
After her romance with wealthy shipowner Paratov ends, Larisa agrees to marry the vain Karandyshev, hoping to escape her unhappy circumstances. Paratov returns and rekindles her feelings, only to reveal that he is betrothed to someone else. Humiliated, Larisa rejects the offers of two wealthy men; Karandyshev shoots her, and she forgives him as she dies.
A man plans to assassinate the President of the United States from a building window while keeping a gagged, bound victim as a witness to his sanity; loneliness is one of the play’s major themes.
A murder trial at the Old Bailey alternates with scenes that reveal the lawyers' private reactions. Just as the case appears resolved, new testimony leads to a further reversal, turning the verdict into the beginning of another twist.
Wits Led by the Nose; Or, A Poet's Revenge is a 1677 comedy play by the English writer William Chamberlayne. It was first staged by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. The original Drury Lane cast included Cardell Goodman as Antellus, Edward Lydall as Oroandes, Carey Perin as Zannazarro, Marmaduke Watson as Arratur, Martin Powell as Vanlore, Joseph Haines as Sir Symon Credulous, John Coysh as Dick Slywit and Elizabeth Boutell as Glorianda.
Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are is a 1797 comedy play by the British writer Elizabeth Inchbald. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London on 4 March 1797. The original London cast included John Quick as Lord Priory, Joseph Shepherd Munden as Sir William Dorrillon, Alexander Pope as Sir George Evelyn, William Thomas Lewis as Mr Bronzeley, John Waddy as Mr Norberry, John Fawcett as Oliver, James Thompson as Nabson, Charlotte Chapman as Lady Priory, Tryphosa Jane Wallis as Miss Dorrillon and Isabella Mattocks as Lady Mary Raffle. The Irish premiere was at the Crow Street Theatre in Dublin on 12 June 1797.
In post-Napoleonic Moscow, returning idealist Chatsky confronts the conservative Famusov household and its social circle, while discovering that his beloved Sofya favors the calculating Molchalin.
Sketch comedy draws on the experiences of young Greek and other Mediterranean Australians navigating work, family and Anglo-Australian culture. Its performers reclaim a racial slur while satirising ethnic mockery and the pressure to assimilate.
A fictionalized biography follows Thomas Cromwell's rapid rise at the court of Henry VIII from 1500 to 1535, through the political upheavals surrounding the death of Thomas More.
"Wolf", the play's narrator, greets the audience with a monologue on the nature of theater and reality. He tells the audience to imagine he is a wolf, before revealing an Asian boy puppet. The puppet, whom Wolf operates, is the adopted son of Peter, who has also named this child "Peter" after adopting him from Korea. Due to disagreements with his wife, the elder Peter has connected with Robin via an online forum to transfer custody of the child to her and her spouse. After signing the contract, however, Peter is incensed to learn Robin is married to another woman, Ash, protesting as he leaves that his son will not have a father. Despite her own reluctance to accept the adoption, Ash quickly connects with the boy, whose real name is Jeenu, after recognizing they share an aggressive spirit: Jeenu in imagining himself as a wolf (which the narrator "Wolf" represents as his inner voice, largely invisible to the other actors) and Ash's own background as a boxer. Conflict arises within Jeenu's extended family as his new parents disagree over Jeenu's occasionally violent behavior, his reluctance to bond with Robin yet easy connection with Ash, and Peter's attempts to regain custody of Jeenu. Additionally, Robin's brother and Ash's trainer Ryan is suspicious of the boy and believes him a distraction from Ash's boxing career. Peter soon becomes friendly with Ryan and plants in his mind the idea that Ash and Robin are not fit to be parents. When Ash loses a boxing match due to being distracted by Jeenu trying to enter the ring, she tells Ryan of her intention to quit boxing and focus on raising Jeenu. Ryan tries to remove Jeenu from Ash's life by helping Peter to try to get the child back, eventually taking Robin and Ash to court. At the trial, Peter argues that the initial custody transfer was not legal, but Robin and Ash argue Peter is not fit to be a parent given he tried to sell Jeenu online in the first place. Jeenu/Wolf initially cheers on Robin and Ash but soon becomes overwhelmed at the legal language that he does not understand, and when directly asked by the judge who he wants to have custody of him, he is unable to answer, with Wolf leaving the play. In the aftermath, it is revealed that neither families got custody, and that Jeenu is to be taken by the state. The trial has had devastating consequences: it has destroyed Peter's own marriage, Ryan is now estranged from his sister, and Ash tries to share breakfast with an unresponsive Jeenu on their last morning together. Robin makes one last attempt to connect with Jeenu, addressing the lifeless puppet by repeating Wolf's monologue back to it while assuring that she will fight to get him back with all her being. Wolf returns, drawn by her words, and Robin appears to see him for the first time.
Wolf's Clothing is a comedy play by the British writer Kenneth Horne. It premiered at the New Theatre in Bromley in 1958, and the following year enjoyed a run of 61 performances at the Strand Theatre in London's West End. The cast included Derek Farr, Muriel Pavlow, Ronald Adam, Patrick Cargill, Angela Browne, Elspet Gray and Viola Lyel.
In a provincial Russian town, wealthy widow Kupavina becomes the target of landowner Murzavetskaya, who schemes to seize her property and marry her to a nephew. Neighbor Berkutov outmaneuvers the plotters while pursuing Kupavina and her fortune.
Woman Is a Riddle is a 1716 comedy play by the British actor Christopher Bullock. Sometimes its title is written as A Woman Is a Riddle. Richard Savage may have assisted with the writing of the play, which draws inspiration from a seventeenth century Spanish work The Phantom Lady by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. In 1788 Woman Is a Riddle was reworked as an afterpiece called The Invisible Mistress performed at Drury Lane. The original Lincoln's Inn Fields cast includes John Leigh as Colonel Manly, Christopher Bullock himself as Sir Amorous Vainwit, Thomas Elrington as Charles Courtwell, William Bullock as Vulture, James Spiller as Aspin, John Ogden as Butler, Jane Rogers as Lady Outside and Letitia Cross as Miranda.
Susan awakes to a man tending to her speaking apparent gibberish, actually misheard English (such as "Squeezy cow, squeezy" really meaning "Easy now, easy"). He is Dr. Windsor (or "octer bin sir"), and Susan suggests she's died and gone where no-one speaks English, and when Bill says "December bee" ("Remember me"), Susan retorts that there are no bees in December. When Bill's language starts to make sense, he explains she knocked herself out with a garden rake. After Bill leaves to fetch a cup of tea, Susan's husband (Andy), lovingly tends to her, joined by daughter Lucy and brother Tony, fresh from the tennis courts. All show concern for her welfare and tease her about the rake. Lucy and Tony fetch the ice, and Andy goes to cancel the ambulance Bill has ordered. When Bill returns, however, it is apparent something is not right. Bill sees a tiny garden, whilst Susan insists her garden is massive, complete with rose-beds, swimming pool, tennis courts and lake. Susan also denies having a sister-in-law or son and becomes more confused when Bill says that her husband has not yet come home. When her real husband (Gerald) and sister-in-law (Muriel) enter, Susan faints. The following day, Susan, dozing in the garden, is woken by Gerald. Now back in tune with the real world, she openly discusses the deadness of their marriage, something Gerald insensitively glosses over. Muriel serves "coffee": ground coffee prepared as one would do instant. Indignantly Muriel points out she tended to her late mother, then late husband (or finished off, as Susan sees it) before digressing into her deluded conviction that her late husband's ghost will return with a message. When Gerald reminds Susan that their son, Rick, is coming for lunch, it transpires that he joined a sect two years ago that forbids members from talking to their parents. He writes, but only to Gerald. Susan, hurt by this, blames this (and Rick's fear of women) on the public school scholarship Gerald bullied him to take. Susan is momentarily distracted by glimpses of Tony and Lucy, before Bill returns to check on Susan, only to be drawn into Gerald's account of the book he's writing on the history of the Parish. Susan therefore takes the opportunity to talk to Lucy, who praises her for her status as a historical novelist, and then informs her (naturally Susan is the first to know) that she is getting married. In the real world, Bill agrees to stay for lunch (Muriel's "omelette surprise", where she mistakes the tea tin for herbs). Gerald makes excuses for the sect, until confessing that Rick is coming to sell the possessions in his room – something that horrifies Susan as this is all she has left of him. Bill offers to act as a go-between so that Gerald and Susan can communicate with their son. When Rick arrives, even Gerald has trouble bringing himself into the house. But before Susan can enter, her imaginary family brings her a sumptuous outdoor banquet and persuades her to dine with them instead. Rick then comes into the garden and, to Susan's surprise, asks her to come inside. As she goes to her son, she collapses again. Susan wakes to find Rick still speaking to her, explaining that he has left the sect he and now has a girlfriend. Her joy, however, is short-lived when she learns they are already married and they are moving to Thailand – her to do nursing, and him to do "odd jobs". He will not even allow Susan to see her, because Rick is embarrassed by the way she acted around past girlfriends. Rick leaves a stung Susan to explain this to Gerald, who says "it's not fair to lay all the blame at your door". They get into a fierce argument, with Susan egged on by Tony and Lucy (by now sitting in on most of Susan's conversations). Lucy tries to console Susan by praising her status as a brilliant heart surgeon. This time, Susan snaps at Lucy to shut up. Lucy runs off in tears, and Susan tries to apologise only for it to be accepted by Gerald. In the sunset of her imaginary world, Andy caresses Susan and forgives her for being angry with Lucy. Susan, now worried by the increasing influence that Lucy, Tony and Andy have on her real life, tries to ask Andy to leave her alone. Andy says they will go when she asks but stays when Susan does so, suggesting she didn't really mean it. The scene becomes unreal, with Andy anticipating everything Susan says, then the voices of Susan and her imaginary family coming out of both their mouths. Back in reality, Susan finds Bill beside her (who fled on mention of a dessert but has now returned). Susan confides to Bill about her hallucinations, and when asked about Rick, tells him a semi-fantasy where he is getting married, and she has met her daughter-in-law to be. Having previously hinted over his own family life – two daughters married to wheeler-dealer stockbrokers and a wife probably cheating with another doctor – Bill reveals how he feels about her, and is about to kiss her when Susan points to Lucy. Bill tries to humour Susan by talking where Susan pointed, but Lucy has already moved away. Tony and Andy arrive, and suddenly, Bill becomes part of her fantasy – now a wheeler-dealer stockbroker poaching rabbits. His is thrown into the lake, leaving Andy and Susan to reminisce on their own wedding day. As he kisses her, Susan weakly protests "Oh dear God! I'm making love to the devil!” At an indeterminate time overnight, Gerald and Rick find Susan sprawled out in the middle of the lawn during a thunderstorm. Gerald tries to bring Susan inside, but she mocks him with an offer of a quiet divorce. It appears that Susan has burnt Gerald's precious book of the Parish, something Susan has no memory of. Then Muriel comes out screaming, having read a message of "Knickers off Muriel". She refuses all pleas to come inside, denouncing Gerald for narrow-minded meanness, Rick as a priggish brat, and Muriel for wanting a phantom pregnancy. Tony appears and opens an umbrella and the storm ends in time for what initially appears to be Lucy's wedding, but Tony and Andy appear to be some sort of race stewards, and Lucy, although dressed as a bride, seems to be taking part in a "brides race". Meanwhile, Bill becomes a clichéd bookie, Muriel is a heavily pregnant French maid, Gerald is an archbishop and Susan's real son Rick (now an odd-job man), to her horror, seems to be the groom for her imaginary daughter Lucy. All kinds of snippets relating to her real-life mesh together as a surrealistic nightmare. Ignoring Susan's protests, they all toast her, acclaiming Susan as precious to them all, demanding a speech. The final shred of reality is when Muriel says "The ambulance is on its way", and a blue light flashes. Susan's speech descends into the same gibberish Bill used at the beginning of the play, and, with a desperate request to "December bee", she collapses a final time.
A British officer and a French dancer meet during the First World War and begin a doomed romance.
Woman's Wit; or, Loves Disguises is an 1838 comedy play by the Irish writer James Sheridan Knowles. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden on the 23 June 1838 with a cast that included James Warde as Lord Athunree, George Bartley as Sir William Sutton, William Macready as Walsingham, John Langford Pritchard as Felton, John Pritt Harley as Clever and Helena Faucit as Hero. Knowles dedicated the play to the writer Samuel Rogers.
Longeville tries to reveal that Leonora is unfaithful to her fiancé Lovemore. Leonora turns the accusation back on him, claiming he is plotting to win her himself, and their rival deceptions multiply until she is forced to confess. A separate comic subplot follows the Rakish family.
Two music-shop proprietors try to hide a young woman staying in one of their homes from their domineering wives, then become entangled in a German espionage plot while serving in the Home Guard.
In a women's prison, an innocent woman framed for armed robbery is brutalized until she emerges as a hardened drug dealer. Her story unfolds among a chain-smoking tough girl, a Southern belle, and the sadistic matron who oversees them.
In Florence, Bianca elopes with the poor Leantio, but his decision to confine her allows the Duke to pursue and rape her with help from Livia. Bianca becomes the Duke’s mistress, while Livia and Leantio begin an affair. A parallel plot follows Hippolito’s incestuous relationship with his niece Isabella. As betrayals surface, a wedding masque erupts in violence and kills the principal characters.
At a garden party in Ealing, two couples struggle to converse while the wives' laughter and talk about their husbands interrupt them. When the women join the men, a confrontation follows; in the second act, the couples' positions reverse as the setting shifts toward a mental hospital.
A Florentine tragicomedy follows Silvio and Belvidere, whose love is tested by her mother’s riddle, a year of exile, a disguised encounter and a war with Siena; a subplot tests the fidelity of Isabella, a young wife pursued by a suitor who proves to be her brother in disguise.
At an Irish girls’ boarding school in the late 1930s, idealistic new teacher Jean Wade unsettles the staff’s close, controlled social world. When the manuscript documenting Miss Connor’s moral deeds is destroyed, suspicion falls on Jean and accusations expose the group’s rivalries, ambitions and isolation.
In Sophocles’ version of the Argonauts’ quest, Medea advises Jason on obtaining the Golden Fleece and kills her young brother Absyrtus inside the palace as the heroes prepare to flee Colchis.
A comedy about three women sharing social lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side: Rhonda has recently split with her boyfriend, Billie is married, and Judy repeatedly dates men who turn out to be gay. The play unfolds in four vignettes.
After a nineteenth-century invasion destroys Owu's male population, the surviving women face grief, trauma, and resistance under the conquering forces. Osofisan reworks Euripides' Trojan Women in the history of the Owu kingdom.
Deianeira, fearing that Heracles has taken a new lover, sends him a robe treated with what she believes is a love charm. The poisoned robe kills him; after learning the truth, their son Hyllus helps Heracles fulfill his final requests as Deianeira dies by suicide.
In a London lodging house, unmarried young mothers and their babies are exploited by the unscrupulous proprietor, Helen Allistair. Vivianne confronts Helen over her baby-farming, is attacked, and ultimately sees justice done.
In a fort during the Red River Resistance, Métis woman Marie-Angelique, Ojibwe trapper Eugenia and European settler Cecelia discuss the fur trade, European influence and Louis Riel. The play shifts between 19th- and 21st-century language and perspectives.
Cass leaves her husband after discovering his sexual fetish involving Barbie heads and takes a bus to Niagara Falls in search of freedom and meaning. Along the way she encounters a suicidal alcoholic, a lonely tour-boat captain, private detectives, and a clown therapist.
Two CIA operatives respond in different ways to the growing role of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence in supplying the Mujahideen for their war against the Soviets.
Three intelligent chimpanzees named Kafka, Milton and Swift share a cage while an unseen scientist tests whether random typing will produce Hamlet. They debate the experiment and attempt to understand or resist it; Kafka ultimately begins typing Hamlet's opening lines.
The play examines the relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright's personal life and architectural work through an ensemble portraying people central to his life, including Louis Sullivan, Ayn Rand, Alexander Woollcott, his family, and Mamah Cheney.
Set in a rehabilitation home at Walter Reed Medical Center, the play follows four young veterans and their families as they try to readjust to life after physical and psychological injuries.
Soldier Franz Woyzeck supports Marie and their child with menial work and medical experiments. As his mental health deteriorates, Marie turns to a drum major; Woyzeck confronts and is humiliated by him, then stabs Marie by a pond. Büchner’s fragment ends with Woyzeck trying to clean the blood from the knife and dispose of it.
The two actors play roles of various black South Africans – a vendor, barber, servant, manual labourer, soldier – receiving the news that Christ (Morena) has arrived in South Africa, where a Calvinist white elite imposes apartheid. Christ's arrival precipitates a crisis, and the government launches a nuclear bomb against the peacemaker. In the ruins, great South African leaders in resistance to apartheid such as Albert Luthuli, former president of the African National Congress, are resurrected. They play dozens of parts that involve them using many skills such as acting, mime, singing and dance. They also create images using a few words and actions
In a solo monologue, Edward Carr confronts his wife’s death and reveals the dark secret that brought them together.
In a one-person performance, Aaron Davidman portrays seventeen people with contrasting backgrounds and viewpoints as he seeks to understand experiences shaped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, social division and identity.
The play tells the story of the brothers Clive and David Rodingham, who inherit the family fortune upon the death of their father. They then meet business man Charles and his wife Julie, a would-be thriller writer. Charles is anxious to work with the brothers on property deals, and so encourages David, who is also a writer, to co-write a murder story with Julie. It isn’t long before the two concoct the perfect crime, which twisted into a reality.
The play examines William Tyndale's and Lancelot Andrewes's involvement in biblical translation; its title comes from their translation of Jeremiah 31:33 in the King James Bible.
Politician Robert Crawshaw can inherit fifty thousand pounds only if he takes the name Wurzel-Flummery. His family and friends challenge his attempts to reconcile the windfall with his dignity and public reputation.
After a businessman's error leads to bankruptcy and a fifteen-year Italian prison sentence, Ludovic rejoins his family on his brother-in-law's yacht at Cannes. His brother-in-law has arranged the marriage of Ludovic's stepdaughter to an influential young man to restore the family's standing, but Ludovic's prison experience has changed him.
A small-town murder draws a sheriff, a young detective and a university professor into an investigation of secret relationships and ancient magic. The mystery reimagines Baba Yaga as its characters’ accounts of predator and prey begin to shift.
A historical Urdu play about Roman persecution of Jews, adapted from W. T. Moncrieff's 19th-century play The Jewess.
A solo play that reinterprets the Mahabharata from Draupadi’s perspective, presenting Yajnaseni alone in the scenes while retaining the basic conception of her story.
During China’s Warlord Era, unpaid soldier Zhao Da steals his battalion’s payroll and flees into a forest. Lost and tormented by hallucinations, he is killed by pursuers; his fellow soldier Li buries him and escapes with the hidden money.
A celebrated dancer journeys toward Zenkōji and encounters an old woman in the mountains who asks to hear the dancer’s song about Yamanba. Revealing herself as the mountain spirit, she returns in demon form, takes over the performance, and completes the dance before vanishing into the mountains.
The play interweaves the Japanese tale of Yamata-no-Orochi and the Meitei tale of Keibu Keioiba, exploring sacrifice and endurance through the two mythic traditions.
In a provincial European theatre dressing room, Palestinian actor Yasser Mansour prepares to play Shylock. As he reflects on his life in Palestine, discrimination and prejudice in the West, the role gives him a lens on emancipation and the parallels of Jewish and Arab histories.
On Jura, where George Orwell is writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell and Cyril Connolly both pursue Sonia Brownell as she grieves a failed relationship. Their conversations draw on school and Spanish Civil War memories while Orwell works through his anger at Stalinist purges; symbolic figures punctuate the action, and after Orwell's death Sonia packs his books wanting to know more.
Yellow Face opens with DHH receiving an e-mail from Marcus G. Dahlman in 2006 about his recent travels in China. DHH reflects on how Marcus disappeared from the public eye. He begins in 1990 with the controversy over the casting of Jonathan Pryce, a Welsh actor, in an Asian role in Miss Saigon as the musical transfers from London to New York City. Although DHH receives a lot of publicity about his protests against the casting and yellow face makeup, especially as the first Asian-American playwright to win a Tony Award (for M. Butterfly), the production of Miss Saigon ultimately continues without changes to the cast. DHH then writes the play Face Value, based partly on the Miss Saigon controversy, and casts Marcus G. Dahlman as one of the lead Asian roles in his play. DHH is at first convinced that Marcus is part Asian but eventually realizes he is fully white. DHH fears he will appear hypocritical for the casting after his protest of yellow face, but is unable to fire Marcus on the basis of his race. DHH has him adopt the name "Marcus Gee" and tells the public that Marcus has Eurasian ancestry as a Jew with Siberian ancestry. Though their deception is successful, Face Value receives negative reviews and closes in previews, losing $2 million. DHH tries to move on, but he later discovers that Marcus has continued playing his role as an Asian in all parts of his life, acting in Asian roles and becoming an activist for Asian American rights. This angers DHH, who views him as an "ethnic tourist". The play further explores DHH's relationship to his father, HYH, and the relationship of the Chinese American community to America. HYH is a successful immigrant who built the Far East National Bank in California. After contributing monetarily to political campaigns, he and others affiliated with the bank, including Wen Ho Lee, are investigated by Senator Fred Thompson, who believes they are funneling money from China to influence American politics. In the course of this, DHH and Marcus are implicated as Chinese collaborators. DHH beseeches Marcus to reveal his true identity as white, deciding he cares more about defending the Chinese American community than hiding his mistakes. Marcus ends his deception, and Thompson's investigation breaks down. DHH's father dies in 2005, having lost faith in the American Dream. DHH and Marcus converse after their e-mails, before DHH admits to the audience that Marcus is an entirely fictional character he created to explore messy questions about race and nationality. At the character’s request, DHH writes Marcus a "happy ending" in which he moves to a small village in China and is eventually accepted into the community there.
Private detective Sam Shikaze is hired to find the missing Cherry Blossom Queen in Vancouver’s Powell Street Japantown. As he investigates, racism and political intrigue lead toward the Hong Kong tongs, while a lawyer, a reporter, and a police captain become involved in the case.
After the Spanish–American War, Walter Reed’s medical commission investigates yellow fever in Cuba. When animals prove immune, Pvt. John O’Hara volunteers to be exposed to the disease.
A wealthy dying woman's relatives gather, unaware that they have all been cut out of her will.
The play follows Alma, a dark-skinned Black woman, and Eugene, a very fair-skinned Black man, from childhood on the South Carolina coast through adulthood in New York. Their friendship becomes a relationship as they confront colorism, class, family and personal tragedy. Eugene’s inheritance and conflict with his father lead to murder and imprisonment, while Alma is left pregnant and ends her pregnancy.
Yentl is a play by Leah Napolin and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Based on Singer's short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" (first published in September 1962 in Commentary magazine and later included in the 1963 collection Short Friday and Other Stories), it centers on a young woman who defies tradition by discussing and debating Jewish law and theology with her rabbi father. When he dies, she cuts her hair, dresses as a man, and sets out to find a yeshiva where she can continue to study Talmud and live secretly as a male named Anshel. When her study partner Avigdor discovers the truth, she is conflicted about pursuing a relationship with him because it will compromise her higher calling. The play focuses on the spiritual equality of women in a segregated Jewish society that does not see women as equals to men, but at the same time prioritizes religion and relationship to God above all else. More generally, the play's conflict is between one's need for self-actualization and the demands of society as well as one's baser desires. Another play of the same name, Yentl, based on the same story, was written by Gary Abrahams, Elise Hearst and Galit Klas, and first produced in Australia in 2022.
Yerma longs for a child, but her marriage to Juan remains distant and childless. Although she is attracted to Victor and later urged to leave Juan, her sense of honor keeps her bound to the marriage. When Juan finally tells her he will never want children, her desperation ends in his death and the loss of her hope for motherhood.
A fictional director discusses a play script with an actor who answers only “Yes” or “No.” The one-act dialogue grew from Greene’s observations of director John Gielgud and actor Ralph Richardson rehearsing The Complaisant Lover.
A documentary-theatre work about the 7 July London bombings, juxtaposing immediate reactions with later interviews and reenacting the recorded testimonies alongside visual and audio footage.
On the day Quebec politician Pierre Gravel is offered the justice ministry, he learns that his son André is a Quebec separatist plotting to destroy a statue of James Wolfe. Father and son argue over political loyalties and motivations, with the family conflict shaped by their shared affections for Louise Gravel.
In a storm-bound manor in 1882, detective Erast Fandorin and his Japanese manservant Masa investigate deaths and a magical fan amid a family’s inheritance dispute. The printed play offers White and Black versions with the same basic plot but different dramatic worlds and details.
A civic cycle of Middle English mystery pageants dramatizing sacred history from Creation to the Last Judgment. York craft guilds organized the plays, which were traditionally staged on pageant wagons at stations around the city.
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