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Jack and Algernon use fictional identities to escape their social obligations. When both pursue women who are determined to marry a man named Ernest, their deceptions begin to unravel. Oscar Wilde’s comedy of manners turns engagements, family secrets, and respectable society into a game of verbal mischief.
Tom Wingfield recalls life with his mother Amanda and his shy sister Laura in their St. Louis apartment. Amanda hopes that a gentleman caller will secure Laura’s future, while Tom longs to escape. A dinner invitation brings their competing dreams together in Tennessee Williams’ memory play.
Vladimir and Estragon pass the time by a lonely tree, talking, arguing, and considering whether to leave. They are waiting for Godot, though the purpose and timing of the meeting remain uncertain. Visitors interrupt their routine in Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy about companionship, repetition, and the search for meaning.
Blanche DuBois arrives in New Orleans seeking refuge with her sister Stella and Stella’s husband Stanley. Her manners and romantic illusions clash with the life of their crowded apartment. As Stanley questions her past, the tensions between desire, dependence, and vulnerability become increasingly difficult to contain.
Willy Loman returns home exhausted, still measuring himself and his sons against an elusive idea of success. Memories of better days intrude on the present as his family confronts disappointment and painful secrets. Arthur Miller’s drama examines work, self-worth, and the distance between ambition and love.
Witchcraft accusations turn Salem into a place of suspicion, fear, and opportunism. Farmer John Proctor tries to protect his family while confronting a secret that threatens his credibility. Arthur Miller’s drama places private guilt against public hysteria and asks what a person will sacrifice to keep their integrity.
Servants Sam Samela and Willie Malopo, both in their mid-forties, are practicing ballroom steps in preparation for a major competition, while maintaining Hally's mother's tea shop on a rainy day. Sam is the more worldly of the two. When Willie says his ballroom partner and girlfriend is lacking enthusiasm, Sam points out that Willie beats her every time she makes a mistake. Seventeen-year-old Hally Harold arrives home from school, and cheerfully asks about the dancing progress. Sam mentors the boy, wishing to guide him through adolescence into manhood, while Willie is the "loyal black"; who calls the white boy "Master Harold". The conversation between the three moves from Hally's school-work, to an intellectual discussion on "A Man of Magnitude", where they mention various historical figures of the time and their contribution to society, to flashbacks of Hally, Sam and Willie when they lived in a boarding house. Hally warmly remembers the simple act of flying a kite Sam had made for him out of junk. Hally wishes to write a story about the two of them flying the kite for school, but he feels the ending was too simple, as he recalls how he had sat on a park bench to watch the kite fly, while Sam quietly went back to work. Conversation then turns to Hally's 500-word English composition, where they describe the ballroom dancing floor as "a world without collisions"; a transcendent metaphor for life. Almost immediately, despair returns: Sam had early on mentioned why Hally's mother is not present; the hospital had called about his father, who has been there receiving treatment for complications from a leg he lost in World War I, to discharge him, and she had left to bring him home. However, Hally, indicating that his father had been in considerable pain the previous day, insisted that his father wasn't well enough to be discharged, and that the call must've been about a bad turn, rather than a discharge notice. A call from Hally's mother at the hospital confirms that Hally's father is manipulating the hospital into discharging him, despite the fact that his condition hasn't improved, so it's still unofficial, and Hally remains hopeful that the discharge won't happen. A second call from Hally's mother later reveals that the discharge is official, and she has brought Hally's father home. Hally is distraught about this news, since his father, who in addition to being crippled, is revealed to be a tyrannical alcoholic, and his being home will make home life unbearable with his drinking, fighting, and need for constant treatment, which is more than Hally and his mother can handle, and includes demeaning tasks of having to massage his stump, and empty chamber pots of urine. Hally vents to his two black friends years of anger and pain, viciously mocking his father and his condition. But when Sam chastises him for doing so, Hally, although ashamed of himself, turns on him, unleashing vicarious racism that he learned from his father, creating possibly permanent rifts in his relationship with both Sam and Willie. For the first time, apart from hints throughout the play, Hally begins explicitly to treat Sam and Willie as subservient help rather than as friends or playmates, insisting that Sam call him "Master Harold". It all comes to a head when, in a moment of blind rage, Hally spits in Sam's face. Sam is hurt and angry about this, and both he and Willie come very close to physically attacking Hally, but they both stop themselves, coming to understand that Hally is really causing himself the most pain. There is a glimmer of hope for reconciliation at the end, when Sam addresses Hally by his nickname again and asks to start over the next day, and maybe fly another kite, harkening back to the simple days of the other kite. Sam recalls the reason he had made that kite in the first place: Once, Hally's father had passed out from drunkenness at a hotel bar, and young Hally and Sam had to fetch him, as Hally's mother was unavailable to do so. Sam had to literally carry Hally's unconscious father home on his back, while young Hally miserably followed, carrying his crutches. Sam took pity on young Hally's shame and humiliation, and wanted to give Hally something to be proud of. In the present, Hally, horrified about what he's done, is barely able to face Sam, responds without looking up "It's still raining, Sam. You can't fly kites on rainy days, remember," and asks Willie to lock up the tea shop. Sam then gives Hally a twist ending to the kite story: the reason Sam left, to go back to work, was because the bench Hally had sat on to watch the kite, had said "Whites Only" but young Hally had been too excited to notice it, but now, he can (figuratively) leave it at any time. Hally exits into the rain without response. The play ends with Willie promising to make amends with his girlfriend and stop beating her, and him and Sam consoling each other by using Willie's bus fare to play the jukebox, and they ballroom dance together.
Set in Paris, the play revolves around three friends—Serge, Marc and Yvan—who find their previously solid 15-year friendship on shaky ground when Serge buys an expensive painting. The canvas is white, with several fine white lines. Marc, appalled to hear that Serge had paid two hundred thousand francs, scornfully describes it as "a piece of white shit". Serge argues that the painting, created by a reputable artist, is worth its hefty price, but Marc remains unconvinced. Serge and Marc confide in Yvan about their disagreement. Yvan, who is engaged but conflicted over his forthcoming wedding, remains neutral and attempts to smooth things over. To Serge, Yvan comments politely on the painting but admits that he does not grasp the essence of it. To Marc, Yvan laughs at the painting's price but suggests that the work is not quite meaningless. Yvan's vacillations only fuel the disagreement as his friends criticize his timid neutrality. Several nights later the three meet for dinner, and an all-out argument rapidly develops with each using the painting as an excuse to criticise the others over perceived failures. Marc attacks Yvan for never expressing any substantial opinions, and for being an "arse-licker" in the ongoing conflict between his fiancée, his in-laws, and his mother. Marc and Serge argue that Yvan should call off the marriage, to which Yvan responds with lame excuses. Serge criticizes Marc's unwillingness to accept that his friends’ opinions differ from his own; and he reveals that he has for some time despised Marc's girlfriend. Marc finally admits that his true resentment is not the painting itself but the uncharacteristic independence of thought that the purchase reveals in Serge. He recalls that Serge used to share his own views on arts and culture, and he feels abandoned now that Serge has developed his own, modern taste. Marc says that friends must always influence each other, but Serge finds that view to be possessive and controlling. Yvan, at last defending himself, sobbingly explains that he tries to be tolerant and agreeable because he values companionship over dominance: their friendship is his only sanctuary in his burdensome life. After Yvan's outburst, the friends calm down. The argument wordlessly settles as Serge allows Marc to deface the painting using a blue felt-tip pen. Marc draws a person skiing along one of the white lines on the painting. Serge and Marc agree to attempt to rebuild their friendship, and they begin by washing the pen marks off the painting. Marc asks Serge whether he had known that the ink was washable; Serge replies that he had not. But he had indeed known that, and feels troubled about his lie. Marc concludes by describing his own interpretation of the painting: it is of a man who moves across the canvas and disappears.
In a London laundry, Amanda imagines that handsome client Horace is her sweetheart and tells co-workers elaborate stories about their supposed romance. When he arrives to collect his laundry, she admits the truth; he responds kindly, gives her a kiss and a jeweled tie pin, then leaves her alone with her broken fantasy.
Giovanni and his sister Annabella confess their mutual incestuous love. Annabella is pressured into marriage with Soranzo, who discovers her pregnancy and seeks revenge; after Annabella warns Giovanni, he kills her at a feast and reveals their affair, triggering a final massacre.
Tis Well if it Takes is a 1719 comedy play by the British writer William Taverner. It premiered at Lincoln's Inn Fields on 28 February 1719. The original cast included John Leigh as Loveless, William Bullock as Oldish, Lacy Ryan as Charles, James Quin as Careful, James Spiller as Prate, Robert Pack as Easy, Jane Rogers as Corinna, Frances Maria Knight as Wishit, Mary Willis as Isabella, Elizabeth Spiller as Beatrice and Jane Egleton as Lucy. Lewis Theobald wrote the lyrics for a song performed in the Third Act. It ran for five nights, a reasonable length for a new comedy in the era.
The play takes place over the course of a single evening in the living room/kitchen of an isolated house shared by Jessie and her elderly mother Thelma. This evening, Jessie has carefully organized the house and made other detailed preparations for the future while explaining the changes to Thelma, who does not immediately notice anything unusual. Finally Jessie asks where her late father's pistol is stored; Thelma tells her. Only after Jessie retrieves the pistol does Thelma question Jessie's strange behavior. Jessie explains that she intends to commit suicide at the end of the evening. Thelma, horrified, at first assumes Jessie is unhappy with their life together. Jessie calmly assures her that she is simply tired of living and has been for some time. Thelma speculates that Jessie's unhappy marriage, her divorce, her criminal son, the loss of her father, her epilepsy, or the pity and distaste other people feel toward her illness, are at the root of her depression; Jessie likewise dismisses these reasons, stating that her motives are purely her own and have nothing to do with other people, including Thelma. Gradually the two reveal long-hidden truths to one another: Thelma admits that Jessie's seizures began in early childhood, but went untreated for decades with Jessie herself unaware of her symptoms, while Jessie confesses the true causes of her failed marriage. Throughout it all, Thelma occasionally bursts into hysterics in which she attempts to reason with Jessie. Jessie deflects her mother's reasoning by continuing to calmly explain the mundane responsibilities that Thelma must assume once Jessie is dead including what to do in the immediate aftermath of her suicide. Thelma rejects all of it, believing that Jessie will give up her plans if Thelma refuses to cooperate, but Jessie says she will kill herself regardless. By the end of the evening, Thelma concludes that she has never really known her daughter and realizes that their long conversation has altered the nature of their relationship, but Jessie, stating that it is now time for her to go, says night, Mother," before locking herself in her room. As Thelma begs and beats the door, the gunshot rings out, shocking Thelma to silence. After a moment to collect herself, she begins to carry out the instructions Jessie left for her.
A solo performer inhabits multiple characters in a dark comedy about life, death, and the misfortunes that connect them. Interwoven voices examine the humour and cruelty of being human.
(I Am) Nobody's Lunch is a play with music produced by The Civilians, an investigative theater company in New York City. Based on interviews conducted in 2003, the play explores the compromised issues of trust and truth that arose between the American government and its people during the lead-up to the Iraq War. (I Am) Nobody's Lunch was written and directed by Steve Cosson from interviews by the company, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman.
On the Mississippi during the Civil War, a lynched Black man named Damascus is resurrected as Demeter, who has three days to find her daughter Po’em and pass on her song before returning to death.
Four characters find themselves in a mysterious void, where a Guide asks them to choose one memory in which to spend eternity. The play follows their memories and searches for self-knowledge.
Wilhelm Pederit, secretary to a German prince, discovers that the prince has agreed to sell twelve thousand subjects to Britain as mercenaries against the American rebels, including Pederit’s two brothers. He alerts Frederick the Great, whose emissary prevents their departure. The prince condemns Pederit, but Frederick protects him; Pederit and his brothers then leave for America as free men.
After a period of absence, John returns to preach an anti-war movement and becomes a Christ-like figure around whom a following gathers.
As news of Anne Boleyn's arrest and execution by King Henry VIII spreads across the country, the play follows Anna, Jane and Mariella, three friends reuniting in a field to share news and gossip, as the rumors become reality and begin to inspire the men of their village to mistreat women through force and manipulation.
Performers take the roles of traveling players in 1789, presenting the French Revolution while critically examining the historical figures they portray.
An 18-sketch Living Newspaper strings together events of 1935, using a Greek-like chorus rather than a single point of view.
Students at a residential school prepare a Shakespeare production for an anticipated royal visit. As they discover connections between the play and their own experiences, they challenge their teacher’s assumptions and reclaim the performance.
1984 is a 2013 play by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan based on the 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
A deputy sheriff in Eldon, Iowa, must enforce a law barring sex offenders from living near places where children gather. Forced to evict a neighbour’s son, he confronts the town’s fear and intolerance.
In a dramatized lecture delivered in Chris Rapley's voice, the speaker combines memoir of his life and career with an explanation of climate change and the controversies around it. The title refers to the year Rapley's oldest grandchild would reach 67, Rapley's age when he first performed the piece.
Jake, a shady cotton-gin owner, burns down a rival plantation’s mill. Silva Vicarro, who knows Jake was responsible but cannot prove it, retaliates by assaulting Jake’s young wife Flora.
Jenny and her husband Sam have recently bought a large house in Greater London that they are renovating. For several nights, at exactly 2:22 am, Jenny hears the sound of someone moving around the house and a man's voice crying, often via the baby monitor in her daughter's bedroom, and becomes convinced the house is haunted. Sam, being a sceptic and having been away on a work trip, insists there are more logical explanations for the noises. The couple hosts a dinner party for Lauren, an old university friend of Sam's, and Ben, her new boyfriend who has a belief in the supernatural. After discussing the strange noises, Jenny persuades the others to stay up until 2:22am to see what happens. Sam reveals that his work trip was to a rural island where he lost his phone, and was unable to contact Jenny leaving her and daughter Phoebe alone in the house. The two argue, and tensions arise further when she discovers one of Phoebe's toys in the bathroom drenched in white spirit. Ben suggests a seance to make contact with the spirit asking it to point out the person in the room who is most related to it, which only causes Sam to be further agitated as the table on which they conduct it begins to move towards him abruptly, setting part of the kitchen on fire. Ben, startled by what he saw in the seance, leaves the house in shock. After the commotion, Lauren has a private conversation with Sam where she confesses to having doused Phoebe's toy in spirit in an attempt to prove Sam (and his constant need to provide a scientific explanation for everything) wrong, and also confesses that she loved him back in their university days. The group are interrupted by a knock at the door, in response to which Sam leaves, and Jenny is greeted by two police officers who inform them that Sam had in fact died on the island, and that before his death he attempted to make one last call to Jenny at exactly 2:22 am. Jenny realises that the voice of the crying man over the baby monitor was in fact Sam's, and that the ghost haunting the house was him.
In a one-man verse drama, Jack Topps recounts how his father's murder led him into a criminal life.
In postwar Liverpool, three Jewish sisters navigate family life in the shadow of the Holocaust. Samuels and Oberman transpose Chekhov's family drama to a community shaped by wartime destruction, combining longing and grief with humour, bickering and fierce family loyalty.
A drama about the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
A musicologist with ALS investigates why Beethoven wrote thirty-three variations on a simple theme submitted by publisher Anton Diabelli. Her research unfolds alongside scenes from Beethoven’s time, with the two eras converging onstage.
At a New York boarding house, Penelope Penn, a minister's daughter pursuing a singing career, takes a chorus job that shocks her landladies and falls for Napoleon Gibbs, a man with a troubled past.
A formally fragmented play in twenty-four sections, using dialogues, confessions, and poetic monologues to explore clinical depression, isolation, treatment, self-harm, and suicide.
When Leo Joseph-Connell suffers a major loss while on a cross-country bike trip, he seeks solace from his feisty grandmother Vera Joseph in her West Village apartment.
Four strangers awaken trapped in a cage and learn they are part of a psychological experiment in which one must die for the other three to live.
45 Seconds from Broadway is a comedy play by Neil Simon, his thirty-third. The play premiered on Broadway in 2001.
Brenton’s history play centers on the 1649 trial and execution of Charles I after the English Civil War.
A single performer becomes six guitarists whose lives revolve around blues, jazz, rock, classical, folk, and country music. Their stories, rivalries, and songs reveal the different ways music can shape a person’s identity.
Married advertising copywriter Paul Friedman and discontented housewife Anne Miller answer a listing for a six-room Riverside Drive apartment. Accidentally locked inside, they share their lives and gradually form a connection.
A man contemplating a jump from a seventh-storey ledge is repeatedly interrupted by the colourful residents who appear through the building’s windows, each absorbed in personal crises. Their encounters prompt the man to explain the lost routine and disorientation that brought him to the ledge.
A Hollywood film director is murdered in a high-class New York restaurant, drawing a temperamental movie actress and her screenwriter into the story.
In this one-man autobiographical show, Billy Crystal reflects on the Sundays he shared with his father, who died when Crystal was fifteen.
On Boat Race Night, Lord Trent steals a taxi and returns home to find a gambling club occupying his house. Pretending to be the cabdriver, he enters the gamblers' circle as a murder and danger to a woman's life lead to a series of adventures in which he sets matters right.
A verbatim courtroom drama reconstructing the closing arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal challenge to California's Proposition 8, from trial transcripts, journalist records, and interviews.
Billy Crystal revisits the family life, friendships and career milestones associated with his longtime Los Angeles home after its destruction in the Palisades fire. The solo autobiographical play uses memories and humor to explore what remains when a home is lost.
After his discharge, soldier Daniel Reeves is arrested and tried for the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family, crimes he may have committed while serving in Iraq. As he moves through military and civilian bureaucracy, legal proceedings, therapy and religious encounters, the play’s stages echo the nine circles of Dante’s Inferno.
Nine composite Iraqi women from different generations and social backgrounds speak about their lives amid political repression, war and displacement. In the original version, one performer shifts among the women, including an artist compromised under Saddam Hussein, an exiled academic, a doctor, a child, a survivor of the Amiriyah shelter bombing and an Iraqi American watching the war from New York.
The play is based on a real-life event that occurred during the Second World War that was initially kept quiet. The 946 in the title is the death tally of servicemen who were killed while they were doing practice runs for D-Day at Slapton Sands in Devon. The play begins before the United States Army arrives, with Lily living in Slapton with her grandfather, her mother and her pet cat, Tips. Then some children that have been evacuated from London begin to arrive in the village, and she becomes friends with a boy named Barry. One day, after the army has arrived, two of the soldiers, who are black, stop by the school asking for directions. The students are taken aback because they have never seen a black person before. Lily kinda develops a crush on one of them nicknamed Adi, which is short for Adolphus. The villagers soon find themselves being forced out of their homes by the army, so they can use the area for practicing a military exercise for the impending attack at Normandy. When Lily realizes that Tips has been left behind, she makes an effort to find him, but can't, so she relies on the American soldiers who promise they will look for her cat, who eventually reunited Lily with Tips. The show features a band onstage performing original and period music.
After an unplanned pregnancy, former music prodigy Eunice Kim returns to her childhood home in Los Angeles and tries to repair her relationship with her Korean immigrant mother, Sah-Jin. Through a nonlinear sequence of memories, dreams and imagined histories, they confront mental illness, the violent death of Eunice’s father and their own conflicting versions of the past.
On a holiday in France, Stanley and Brenda Parker take the last room at a shabby village hotel, only to discover it was also booked by Claude, who arranged to meet cabaret dancer Simone. Claude’s wife Helga arrives, while the hotel’s staff and guests add further confusion. As seductions, ghostly noises and mistaken identities collide, each visitor struggles to hide the night’s secrets from their spouse.
A mysterious man named Carmichael has been searching for his missing left hand for 27 years. Two bickering lovebirds, Toby and Marilyn, claim to be in possession of his long-ago severed appendage, and look to collect the reward that Carmichael is offering for its return. An eccentric hotel clerk, Mervyn, gets in the middle of the transaction, and his presence threatens to spoil the proceedings.
A Bequest to the Nation is a 1970 play by Terence Rattigan, based on his 1966 television play Nelson (full title – Nelson – A Portrait in Miniature). It recounts the events surrounding Horatio Nelson, his mistress Emma Hamilton, and his wife Frances Nisbet in the events immediately before, during and after the Battle of Trafalgar. It also includes various other historical characters such as Thomas Hardy and William Nelson. The title refers to Nelson leaving Emma and their child Horatia to the nation on his death.
Though it was premiered in 1921, the play is set in the early 1930s. Margaret Fairfield divorces her husband, who has been in a mental hospital for many years, in order to remarry. Their daughter cares for the father and faces the fact that his mental illness may be hereditary. Although not permitted at the time in Britain, the play imagines a future where divorce is permitted where a spouse is incurably insane. Due to evolving cultural views, divorce was a popular subject in novels and drama of the time.
During an Ashes Test in Brisbane, England captain Pogson tries to keep star batsman Stratton in form and out of trouble. When Stratton drives to an outback bungalow to protect his girlfriend's grandfather from bandits, Pogson joins the ensuing battle and must get the batsman back to the crease by morning.
A peasant woman, Lizaveta, has a child after being seduced by a young landowner while her husband is away doing quit-rent work. The four-act tragedy follows the conflict over the affair and child amid the social divisions of Russian serfdom.
Based on the Nation of Islam's Yakub doctrine, the play depicts Jacoub creating the White Beast, progenitor of white people. Baraka's action literature uses music, lighting, audience-engulfing performance and the work's inversion of racial symbolism to raise Black political consciousness.
Mildred Tresham has secretly been seduced by Henry Mertoun, who seeks to repair the wrong by asking to marry her. Her brother Thorold consents without knowing their history, then discovers the affair and, in a fatal chain of misjudgments and remorse, duels Mertoun and takes poison.
Avis and Moss wake in an isolated summer house with no memory of who they are or how they arrived. As they invent and revise possible shared pasts, Wren appears with contradictory explanations, making the couple increasingly dependent on and suspicious of her while the boundaries between memory, identity and fiction blur.
A Bold Stroke for a Husband is a 1783 comedy play by the British writer Hannah Cowley. The title is a variation on Susanna Centlivre's A Bold Stroke for a Wife. The original Covent Garden cast included William Thomas Lewis as Don Julio, Richard Wroughton as Don Carlos, John Quick as Don Caesar, John Edwin as Don Vincentio, Richard Wilson as Gasper, John Whitfield as Don Garcia, James Fearon as Vasquez, Mary Robinson as Victoria, Sarah Maria Wilson as Minette, Mary Whitfield as Laura, Harriet Pitt as Sancha and Isabella Mattocks as Olivia. The epilogue was written by John O'Keeffe. The play is in five acts and is set in Madrid.
Set in 18th-century England, the play tells the story of a military officer who wants to marry a young woman. His obstacles are the four guardians who watch over Anne Lovely. Each of the four has his own idea of the ideal husband. The catch is that each is disagreeable in his own way, and they can't possibly see eye to eye on a man for Anne. To gain Miss Lovely's hand in marriage, soldier Colonel Fainwell must convince the four guardians that he will make an ideal husband. Fainwell takes the bold stroke of wearing elaborate disguises, four of which mimic the personalities and occupations of each of the guardians in turn: an antiquarian, an old beau, a Quaker, and an exchange broker. In all, Fainwell dons the guise of a preening fop, a mysterious world traveler, a shuffling country steward, a dimwitted Dutchman and a fire-and-brimstone preacher in turn. The fire-and-brimstone Quaker character impersonated by Fainwell is Simon Pure, and one point of the plot is to discover the "real" Simon Pure. Fainwell gets the guardians' permission to wed Lovely but before the marriage can take place, the real Simon Pure shows up at the end to prove his identity.
Comedic investigation follows Edward Jones, an ordinary man whose life is disrupted by an impossible event the day before his fortieth birthday.
In colonial Boston, James Otis resigns as advocate general rather than defend writs of assistance, then argues in court that warrantless searches violate the right to security at home. After he is attacked and left with a brain injury, the play follows his later participation in the Patriots’ resistance and ends with his death by lightning.
A journalist returns to his hometown to write a novel and recalls the past.
A four-act comedy critiquing the custom of arranged marriage.
In 1932–33 Germany, actress Agnes Eggling and her friends experience the fall of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi rise to power. In the original version, their scenes are interrupted by Zillah, a young woman in the 1980s who draws parallels between Reagan and Hitler; later revisions add Xillah and alter that commentary.
A Bronx Tale is an autobiographical one-man show written and performed by Chazz Palminteri. It tells the coming-of-age story of Calogero Anello, a young New Yorker torn between the temptations of organized crime and the values of his hardworking father. Developed and directed by Mark W. Travis, it originally premiered in Los Angeles in 1989 before moving off-Broadway. A film version, involving Palminteri and Robert De Niro, was released in 1993. In 2007, Palminteri performed his one-man show on Broadway and on tour. A musical version of the show co-directed by De Niro opened in 2016 at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway and played until August 2018.
Short of money and pursued by creditors, Naguib falls in love with Fifi, only to discover that she is engaged to his friend Dr Sami. He conceals his feelings and gives Sami an inherited diamond ring for the engagement. When Fifi learns of his sacrifice, affection begins to pull her away from her fiancé.
Mrs. Murgatroyd, already married to the wealthy Mark, secretly conspires with Sir Philip Marchant to divert a large sum from her husband's finances. The scheme is tangled with her prior marriage and the threat of exposing bigamy; her motives shift from financial gain toward returning to her first husband, drawing the plot toward a contest over violets.
Josinalda, a woman of strict principles, supports her sister, niece and neighbor on a meager salary. When a bandit enters their home and takes the women hostage, the two-act comedy becomes a police-style game of cat and mouse.
After her husband betrays her, a woman, angry and grieving, makes a deal with the devil and asks him to take her husband and his lover to hell.
Goldsmith’s daughter Moll loves Touchwood Junior but is promised to Sir Walter, a fortune-seeking knight. Interwoven plots follow shoemaker Simon Eyre’s rise, the pursuit of Moll’s brother Tim, and the impoverished Touchwood Senior’s attempt to secure an heir for the Kixes, ending in reconciliations, marriages and a celebratory dinner.
Set in the fictional Sydney suburb of Sarsaparilla at the end of the 1950s, Patrick White described the play as being about the destructive power of good.
Set at the court of Edward the Confessor two years before the Battle of Hastings, the play offers an explanation for the quarrel between Harold Godwinson and William of Normandy and the Norman invasion.
Two linked one-act dramas, A War Several Wars Ago and By the Old Moulmein Pagoda, examine war and its consequences. An intervening narrator connects the episodes and comments on the action.
The story follows a young widower, Guy Jones, as he joins an amateur operatic society that is putting on The Beggar's Opera. He rapidly progresses through the ranks to become the male lead, while simultaneously conducting liaisons with several of the female cast. Many of the songs from The Beggar's Opera are kept within the play, usually being sung with their own, new context.
Pirate captain John Ward converts to Islam to marry Voada. A second pirate, Simon Dansiker, repents and seeks pardon, while Ward remains unrepentant and dies; their contrasting paths frame the play's treatment of conversion and piracy.
Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by spirits who challenge him to reconsider his life and how he treats others. This general entry represents stage adaptations of Charles Dickens’s story when a specific adaptation is not identified.
A Christmas Carol is a one-man stage performance by English actor Patrick Stewart of the Charles Dickens 1843 novella of the same title, which has been performed in the United Kingdom and the United States on occasion since 1988. Stewart was originally inspired to create the adaptation during the production of the 1986 film Lady Jane. It is performed without costumes or props, and has Stewart playing more than 30 characters. Critics have praised Stewart's portrayal and compared them to the readings performed by Dickens during the 19th century. A film adaptation of the play, with Stewart reprising his role, aired on TNT in 1999, directed by David Jones and co-starring Richard E. Grant.
In Jack Thorne’s adaptation, Ebenezer Scrooge is confronted by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. The production reshapes Dickens’s story: Scrooge’s father’s debts and abuse burden his family, Fezziwig is an undertaker, and Scrooge reconnects with his former fiancée Belle after his reformation.
The miser Ebenezer Scrooge dismisses Christmas and treats his clerk harshly until his dead partner warns him of three spirit visits. Visions of his past, present and possible future challenge his devotion to money and offer him a chance to change.
On Christmas Eve, seven years after Jacob Marley’s death, the solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by his former partner, shackled for a lifetime of greed. Marley warns Scrooge that he can still change his fate, but first must face three more ghosts.
The miser Scrooge, who mistreats his clerk Bob Cratchit and rejects Christmas, is visited on Christmas Eve by his dead partner Marley and three Spirits. Their visit may turn him from a cold, solitary life and avert his destruction.
Scene I: A soliloquy from Twang, the turn-key who discusses honesty and conscience. There is a knock at the door and Strip, Skin'em and Bounce, his servants enter. Scene II: The Constable and watchmen arrive at the compter (prison) having arrested two gentlemen for the murder of One-Eyed Dick. Toby Twang, the turn-key greets them and tells them they will have good lodgings. Scene III: The Constable, the watchmen arrive at the compter with Justice Hardhead and a woman. Hardhead is drunk and begins to sing a song. Twang tells him to stop his noise to which Hardhead replies: "Sir, I have Eight Hundred pounds per annum, and will make a noise when I please." Scene IV: The Constable and watchmen arrive with Ezekiel Prim who is drunk and a woman in a wheelbarrow. Twang exclaims: "What the devil have we here! a wheel barrow full of iniquity and a cloak full of Spiritual Pride; a pretty Couple Faith!" Prim pleads his innocence. Scene V: The Constable and watchmen arrive with a Quaker and a woman who have been found in a Bawdy House. Scene VI: Twang questions the woman who arrived with the Quaker and says: "What, come to a prison without money in your pocket? Pray how do you design to pay your fees and give me Half-a-Piece for your Civility?" She offers him her scarf and he says it's not worth much and that she'll have to pay with her petticoat and her hoop, but she objects saying: "I shan't be able to get six-pence if I loose my Hoop." Scene VII: The constable and three watchmen arrive with Mordecai the Jew and his lady. Mordecai admits to 'whoring'. Twang is antisemitic in his views. Scene I: The scene begins with a soliloquy given by Mordecai. Twang enters. Scene II: Mordecai and Twang haggle over the costs of his imprisonment. Twang asks Mordecai to pay him ten shillings for tearing his black coat and six and eight pence for damaging his neck cloth. Scene III: The two gentlemen discuss their accommodation. One of them says: "Rot their Lodgings, I was drunk enough to sleep anywhere, but I think the bed I lay in had no curtains." The watchmen accuse them of breaking their lanthorn. The gentlemen ask what happened to the dead man and one of the watchmen replies: "I am the man - and to be sure I thought I was dead, till my wife satisfyed me I had never a hole through my Body." Twang discusses his opinions on Physick and the Law and also how the previous night he had favoured a retailer of Penny-Custards over a Poet by giving him better accommodation because the retailer had more potential to become an influential man and be of use to him. The prisoners are all brought before Sir Humphry Halfwit, apart from Mordecai. Scene IV: The scene changes to a room in Sir Humphry Halfwit's house. There is a table covered with sandwiches and a great chair for Sir Humphry. Justice Hardhead, Ezekiel Prim, Abraham (the Quaker), the four watchmen, and two men, their friends, Strip, Bounce and others are in attendance. Strip and Mordecai enter. Scene V: Sir Humphry has not arrived as he is still eating his breakfast. Twang and the gentlemen discuss the other prisoners. Scene VI: Sir Humphry Halfwit, his clerk and other attendants arrive. The two gentlemen pay their costs and are discharged. Justice Hardhead is next before Sir Humphry and belligerently complains that as someone who makes the laws he should be entitled to break them. Sir Humphry thinks he must still be drunk to say such things and tells Twang to take him away and let him sleep it off. The woman is discharged and told to pay her fees. The Quaker's wife, Rachel, arrives and says that her husband cannot have been taking comfort in the whorehouse as he "is a weak Friend and cannot as he ought, administer the comforts of Wedlock" even to his wife. She admits that she once found him "trespassing" with her hand maid but he had waxed "cool" since. Mordecai is brought before Sir Humphry for drunkenness and Sir Humphry assumes that he is guilty because he is a Jew and makes little effort to hear his plea. Prim is next, and Sir Humphry dismisses the evidence against the holy man. He asks the woman to pay her fees and be discharged. The play reveals the anti-semitic and mysogenistic views of the period and how class influences the treatment of the prisoners regardless of their crimes.
A Commonwealth of Women is a 1685 comedy play by the English writer Thomas D'Urfey. Originally performed by the United Company as the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the cast included Joseph Williams as Captain Marine, Philip Griffin as Du Pier, Thomas Percival as Boldsprite, Thomas Jevon as Franvil, Anthony Leigh as Frugal, Joseph Haines as Hazard, Thomas Gillow as Don Sebastian, John Bowman as Nicusa, Henry Norris as La Mure, Joseph Harris as Bourcher, Katherine Corey as Roselia, Mary Lee as Clarinda, Margaret Osborne as Ariadne, Sarah Cooke as Aminta, Emily Price as Hippolita and Frances Maria Knight as Aglaura.
Ingenuity courts Lady Riches while Gettings and Clod quarrel over her and approach a duel; the Courtier and Soldier compete for Lady Honor. Personified figures such as Honesty, No-Pay, Long Vacation, and Foul-Weather-in-Harvest interrupt the conflicts. Lady Riches accepts Gettings while promising Clod the husband’s office in reversion, and Ingenuity and Honor reveal they are married, prompting a general reconciliation.
Scott is imprisoned for crimes against a young woman. His mother Coral arranges a meeting with the victim's wealthy parents and the prison psychologist, with mediator Jack Manning to guide the conference. Coral may have an ulterior motive.
At a Boston hotel, Constance mistakes the artist Bartlett for the former lover who abandoned her and tries to keep him near as a substitute. Their resemblance entangles Bartlett in the Wyatt family's strained relationships, while the comedy examines the pressures of marriage and the loneliness of unmarried women.
Brothers Frank and Malachy McCourt revisit childhood poverty in Limerick and their later lives in America. Recollections, songs, and comic impersonations turn family hardship into a shared account of survival and migration.
Parcha and Dzina, a volatile pair traveling through Poland, propel themselves into a series of comic and increasingly tragic encounters as they search for a coal barge. The play follows their erratic journey and dark relationship.
A poetic retelling of the Deirdre myth from the Ulster Cycle. Conchobar's obsession with Deirdre divides Ulster; after she reunites with Naoise and goes into exile with the Sons of Usna, betrayal and revenge plunge the province into darkness.
The plot is a fictionalized or dramatized version of William Shakespeare's young adult life.
Two married friends, Peter and Marguerite, miss their train while reminiscing and are forced to share a room at a country inn. Their spouses and the prudish landlady assume an affair, while a dog, an overnight storm, and mistaken identities deepen the confusion before the couples reconcile.
A young coffee salesman submits a slogan to a contest and mistakenly believes he has won its prize and contract. His bosses offer him a promotion instead, but the offer collapses when the mistake emerges—until the company founder intervenes and the contest result proves to be his after all.
Businessman Jim Finch tries to sell shares to Charlie Tutt and his future father-in-law Ernest Ramsbotham, while Charlie and Betty struggle against their fathers’ mutual hostility and class snobbery. When Charlie is arrested on his wedding day over Finch’s suspected fraud, the two families’ quarrels continue until Finch’s return reveals the shares were legitimate and brings them together.
At a wedding, Lessingham follows Clare's cryptic instruction to kill the friend who loves him most, choosing the groom Bonvile; a misunderstanding averts their duel. Meanwhile, would-be thief Rochfield becomes a wealthy hero, and sailor Compass returns to reconcile with his wife and contest the paternity of her child.
A Cure for the Heart Ache is a 1797 comedy play by the British writer Thomas Morton. It premiered at the Covent Garden Theatre in London. The original cast included William Thomas Lewis as Young Rapid, John Quick as Vortex, Alexander Pope as Charles Stanley, Joseph Shepherd Munden as Old Rapid, John Fawcett as Frank Oatland, Charles Murray as Sir Hubert Stanley, Thomas Hull as Heartley, Charles Farley as Bronze, James Thompson as Landlord, Isabella Mattocks as Miss Vortex, Jane Pope as Ellen.
Using dead characters and flashbacks, Soyinka examines Nigerian society across precolonial and postcolonial histories and warns against idealizing the past as the country approaches independence.
A daughter opposes her mother's plan to remarry.
There is little incident in the play, which is a study of the various characters rather than a narrative. It is set in and near the Dorset country house of Laura Anson, a brisk and sensible elderly woman, determined to keep the family home going, though worried that once she is dead nobody will succeed her in this. Her son, Julian, is a workaholic diplomat who abruptly realises that his obsession with his work has left him without a personal life. He attempts to interest the widowed, emotionally damaged Frances, but after two disastrous marriages she cannot face another deep personal relationship. David Anson, Julian's uncle, is an octogenarian who muses on the transitory nature of life. The governess, Miss Mathieson, despairs of finding a husband and makes an unsuccessful attempt to engage the affections of the bibulous but shrewd Dr Farley. While the characters are having a picnic on the beach a Foreign Office official comes to tell Julian he is no longer required in the embassy in Paris and must return to London.
A Day in Turkey is a 1791 comedy by the English author Hannah Cowley. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London on 3 December 1791. The original cast included Joseph George Holman as Ibrahim, William Farren as Orloff, John Fawcett as A La Greque, Joseph Shepherd Munden as Mustapha, William Cubitt as Azim, Charles Incledon as Selim, William Macready as Muley, Charles Farley as Ismael, James Thompson as Old Man, Jane Pope as Alexina, Harriet Pye Esten as Paulina, Isabella Mattocks as Lauretta and Margaret Martyr as Fatima. The Irish premiere took place at the Crow Street Theatre in Dublin on 16 May 1792
The play centres on a British couple, Bri and Sheila, who are struggling to save their marriage whilst trying to raise their only child, a small girl named Josephine, who has cerebral palsy. She uses a wheelchair and is nonverbal, which her parents see as unable to communicate. Caring for her has occupied nearly every moment of her parents' lives since her birth, taking a heavy toll on their marriage. Sheila gives Josephine as much of a life as she can, while Bri wants the child institutionalised and has begun to entertain chilling fantasies of killing himself and Josephine.
In 1911 London, insurance agent Frederick Dyson and his wife share their house with lodger Miss Lummus, an elderly woman who hides her money there. After she is murdered, Dyson is charged with the crime.
A Delicate Balance is a three-act play by Edward Albee, written in 1965 and 1966. Premiered in 1966, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1967, the first of three he received for his work. The uneasy existence of upper-middle-class suburbanites Agnes and Tobias and their permanent houseguest, Agnes's witty and alcoholic sister Claire, is disrupted by the sudden appearance of lifelong family friends Harry and Edna, fellow empty nesters with free-floating anxiety, who ask to stay with them to escape an unnamed terror. They soon are followed by Agnes and Tobias's bitter 36-year-old daughter Julia, who returns home following the collapse of her fourth marriage.
Gary Barlow tells the story of his life in his own words, reflecting on his career, friendships and personal life.
Ramanujan first attracted Hardy's attention by writing him a letter in which he proved that where the notation indicates a Ramanujan summation. Hardy realised that this confusing presentation of the series 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯ was an application of the Riemann zeta function with. Ramanujan's work became one of the foundations of bosonic string theory, a precursor of modern string theory. The play includes live tabla playing, which "morphs seductively into pure mathematics", as the Financial Times review put it, "especially when... its rhythms shade into chants of number sequences reminiscent of the libretto to Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach. One can hear the beauty of the sequences without grasping the rules that govern them." The play has two strands of narrative and presents strong visual and physical theatre. It interweaves the passionate intellectual relationship between Hardy and the more intuitive Ramanujan, with the present-day story of Ruth, an English maths lecturer, and her husband, Al Cooper, a globe-trotting Indian-American businessman "to illuminate the beauty and the patterns – the mystery – of mathematics." It also explores the nature and spirituality of infinity, and explores several aspects of the Indian diaspora. Ruth travels to India in Ramanujan's footsteps and eventually dies. Al follows, to get closer to her ghost. Meanwhile, 100 years previously, Ramanujan is travelling in the opposite direction, making the trip to England, where he works with Hardy on maths and contracts tuberculosis. Partition (as a maths concept) is explored, and diverging and converging series in mathematics become a metaphor for the Indian diaspora.
Just prior to Christmas, Nora Helmer returns from shopping carrying many packages and presents. Her husband, Torvald, is working in his study. He playfully rebukes Nora for spending so much money on Christmas gifts, calling her his "little squirrel". He teases her about how, the previous year, she had spent weeks making gifts and ornaments by hand because money was scarce. Torvald has been recently promoted at the bank where he works, so Nora feels that they can now let themselves go a little. The maid announces two visitors: Mrs. Kristine Linde, an old friend of Nora's, who has come seeking employment; and Dr. Rank, a close friend of the family, who is let into the study. Kristine explains that she has fallen into poverty following her husband's death. Nora is empathetic, recalling her own past troubles: Torvald became very sick, and they had to travel to Italy for a rest cure. Nora promises to talk to Torvald about finding her a job. Kristine gently tells Nora that she is like a child. Nora is offended, so she tells her that she got money from "some admirer" so they could travel to Italy to improve Torvald's health. She told Torvald that her father gave her the money, but, in fact, she illegally borrowed it without his knowledge (women were forbidden from conducting financial activities such as signing cheques without a man's endorsement). Since then, she has been secretly working and saving up to pay off the borrowed money. Krogstad, a lower level employee at Torvald's bank, arrives and goes into the study. Nora is uneasy when she sees him. Dr. Rank leaves the study and mentions that he feels wretched, though like everyone he wants to go on living. In contrast to his physical illness, he says that the man in the study, Krogstad, is "morally diseased". After the meeting with Krogstad, Torvald comes out of the study. Nora asks him if he can give Kristine a position at the bank and Torvald is positive about this, saying that this is a fortunate moment, as a position has just become available. Torvald, Kristine, and Dr. Rank leave the house, leaving Nora alone. The nanny returns with the children, and Nora plays with them for a while until Krogstad creeps through the ajar door into the living room and surprises her. Krogstad tells Nora that Torvald intends to fire him from the bank and asks her to intercede with Torvald to allow him to keep his job. She refuses, and Krogstad blackmails her about the loan she took out from him for the trip to Italy; he knows that she obtained this loan by forging her father's signature after his death, a serious offence. Krogstad leaves, and, when Torvald returns, Nora tries to convince him not to fire Krogstad. Torvald refuses to hear her pleas, explaining that Krogstad is a liar and a hypocrite and that, years before, he had committed a crime: he forged other people's signatures. Torvald feels physically ill in the presence of a man "poisoning his own children with lies and dissimulation". Kristine arrives to help Nora repair a dress for a fancy-dress party that she and Torvald plan to attend the next day. Torvald returns from the bank, and Nora pleads with him to reinstate Krogstad, claiming she is worried Krogstad will publish libelous articles about Torvald and ruin his career. Torvald dismisses her fears and explains that, although Krogstad is a reasonable worker and seems to have turned his life around, he must be fired because he is too personally familiar with Torvald in front of other bank personnel due to their past friendship, then retires to his study to work. Dr. Rank then arrives. Nora teases him and builds up to ask him for a favour, but Rank responds by revealing that he has entered the terminal stage of his disease and that he has always been secretly in love with her. Nora tries to deny the first revelation and make light of it but is disturbed by his declaration of love. She then clumsily attempts to tell him that she is not in love with him but loves him dearly as a friend, and never discloses the nature of the favour she had in mind to ask him. Having been fired by Torvald, Krogstad arrives at the house. Nora convinces Dr. Rank to go into Torvald's study so he will not see Krogstad. When Krogstad confronts Nora, he declares that he no longer cares about the remaining balance of Nora's loan but that he will instead preserve the associated bond (or ’IOU’) to blackmail Torvald into not only keeping him employed but also promoting him in future. Nora explains that she has done her best to persuade her husband, but he refuses to change his mind. Krogstad informs Nora that he has written a letter detailing her crime (forging her father's signature of surety on the bond) and will put it in Torvald's letter box, which is locked. Nora tells Kristine of her difficult situation, gives her Krogstad's card with his address, and asks her to try to convince him to relent. Torvald enters and tries to retrieve his mail, but Nora distracts him by begging him to help her with the dance she has been rehearsing for the costume party, feigning anxiety about performing. She dances so badly and acts so childishly that Torvald agrees to spend the whole evening coaching her. When the others go to dinner, Nora stays behind for a few minutes and contemplates killing herself. Kristine tells Krogstad that she only married her husband because she had no other means to support her sick mother and young siblings and that she has returned to offer him her love again. She believes that he would not have stooped to unethical behavior if he had not been devastated by her abandonment and in dire financial straits. Krogstad changes his mind and offers to take back his letter to Torvald. Kristine, however, decides that Torvald should know the truth for the sake of his and Nora's marriage. Torvald drags Nora home from the party, and Rank departs, conveying obliquely to Nora that this is a final goodbye, as he has determined that his death is near. Torvald retrieves his letters. As he reads them, Nora prepares to run away for good, but Torvald confronts her with Krogstad's letter. Enraged, he declares that she is now completely in Krogstad's power; she must yield to Krogstad's demands and keep quiet about the whole affair. He berates Nora, calling her a dishonest and immoral woman and telling her that she is unfit to raise their children. He says that from now on their marriage will be only a matter of appearances. A maid enters, delivering a letter from Krogstad to Nora, which Torvald demands to read himself. Torvald then exults that he is saved, as Krogstad has returned the incriminating bond, which Torvald immediately burns along with Krogstad's letters. He takes back his harsh words to his wife and tells her that he forgives her. Nora realizes that her husband is not the strong and gallant man she thought he was, who would protect and defend her, and that he truly loves himself more than he does Nora. Torvald remarks when a man has forgiven his wife it makes him love her all the more since it reminds him that she is totally dependent on him, like a child. He preserves his peace of mind by thinking of the incident as a mere mistake that she made owing to her foolishness, one of her most endearing feminine traits. Disillusioned, Nora tells Torvald that she is leaving him because the pair have become strangers to each other and she has been treated like a doll all her life by both her father and husband. She reveals that she had hoped and expected that he would want to sacrifice his reputation for hers in this scandal and that she had planned to kill herself to prevent him from doing so. Torvald insists that she fulfill her duty as a wife and mother, which he says is more important than knowing herself, but Nora says that she has duties to herself that are just as important and that she cannot be a good mother or wife without learning to be more than just a plaything. She says she cannot return unless both she and Torvald are so changed that they are no longer strangers, which would be "the most wonderful thing of all." Nora leaves her keys and wedding ring; Torvald breaks down and begins to cry, completely baffled by what has happened. After Nora leaves the room, Torvald, for one second, still has a sense of hope and exclaims to himself "The most wonderful thing of all—?", just before the door at the entrance to the building is heard closing. Ibsen's German agent felt that the original ending would not play well in German theatres. In addition, copyright laws of the time would not preserve Ibsen's original work. Therefore, for it to be considered acceptable, and prevent the translator from altering his work, Ibsen was forced to write an alternative ending for the German premiere. In this ending, Nora is led to her children after having argued with Torvald. Seeing them, she collapses, and as the curtain is brought down, it is implied that she stays. Ibsen later called the ending a disgrace to the original play and referred to it as a "barbaric outrage". Virtually all productions today use the original ending, as do nearly all the film versions of the play.
Fifteen years after Nora left her family, she returns to finalize her divorce. A judge threatens to expose her hidden marriage and destroy her career unless she publicly recants her feminist writing; as Nora confronts Torvald, her daughter Emmy, and the family’s nursemaid, Torvald ultimately agrees to divorce her to protect his reputation.
A communal Ecotheater work built from Hinton residents’ oral histories and improvisations. One scene follows the town’s economic decline after the railroad replaced steam locomotives with diesel engines.
Indra’s daughter descends to Earth and encounters human suffering, including poverty, cruelty, and the strains of family life. After a dreamlike sequence of shifting scenes, she returns to Heaven.
An aged, widowed woman, Sybille von Bismarck, mourns Prussia's defeat at the end of World War II. Her monologue draws on Euripides' The Trojan Women, Kleist's The Prince of Homburg and Goethe's Faust: Part II.
A Duke and No Duke is a 1684 comedy play by the Irish writer Nahum Tate. It was originally staged by the United Company at the Drury Lane Theatre in London with a cast including John Wiltshire as Lavinio, Thomas Gillow as Barberino, Joseph Williams as Alberto, Anthony Leigh as Trappolin, Thomas Percival as Mago, Elizabeth Currer as Isabella and Susannah Percival as Prudentia.
During Brazil’s Vargas dictatorship, teacher Bolívar Bueno introduces dangerous ideas to students at the Wolfgang Schubert school. His influence over them unfolds alongside romantic attachments to fellow teachers and intrigue involving the school’s religious authorities.
In 1987, Gil Burgess is an archeologist, working in Mexico. His estranged mother, Patrice, visits him, and he recalls the past events. In 1977, a teenaged Gil is living with his mother and father, Harry, in Durban, South Africa. Harry is a U.S. Information Officer. Harry wants to leave because of the political unrest, and when his son Alec visits, he sees his chance. Harry is offered a job in the Hague if he will reveal his son Alec's associates in the anti-apartheid underground.
Captain Ager challenges a colonel after an insult to his mother, then discovers the family secret that complicates the duel. In a linked plot, Jane's father falsely imprisons her lover to force a richer match, while Jane gives birth to their child; both conflicts resolve through confession, reconciliation, and marriage.
A Far Country is a play by Henry Denker. The work premiered on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre on April 4, 1961, where it closed on November 25, 1961, after 271 performances. Produced by Roger L. Stevens and Joel Schenker, the production was directed by Alfred Ryder and used sets by Donald Oenslager and costumes by Ann Roth. Lead actress Kim Stanley (Ryder's wife at the time) was nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal of Elizabeth von Ritter.
The Farmer Takes a Wife is a 1934 play by Frank B. Elser and Marc Connelly based on the 1929 novel Rome Haul by Walter D. Edmonds. It was well-received upon its opening night on Broadway on October 30, 1934, at the 46th Street Theatre. The production was directed by Marc Connelly, used set designs by Donald Oenslager, and starred Henry Fonda as Dan Harrow and June Walker as Molly Larkins. It ran for 104 performances, closing on January 16, 1935.
At a banquet during a plague, the central figure taunts Death with a toast to the plague’s reign.
Private William Santiago, a United States Marine at the United States Navy's Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, on the south shore of the island of Cuba is a weak Marine who has a hard time physically keeping up and gets along poorly with his fellow Marines and has gone outside the chain of command to the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) to request a transfer. Although Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Markinson requests that Santiago be transferred, his senior Base Commander Colonel Nathan Jessep instructs Lieutenant Jonathan James Kendrick, Private Santiago's platoon commander, to "train" Santiago. Soon afterward, Santiago dies. He was murdered, and the two Marines Lance Corporal Harold Dawson and Private First Class Louden Downey who broke into Santiago's dorm room and attacked him and stuffed a rag into his mouth / throat, will stand trial. United States Navy's United States Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG Corps) investigator and lawyer Lieutenant Commander Joanne Galloway believes Dawson and Downey may have carried out an illegal "code red" order: a brutal extrajudicial punishment that in recent years has been outlawed by military regulations. Santiago was ostensibly killed in retaliation for naming Cpl. Dawson in a fenceline shooting into adjacent Cuban sovereign territory, but Lt. Cmdr. Galloway believes Santiago was killed as part of a premeditated plan or even conspiracy. Galloway wants to represent them, but the case is assigned to fellow Navy officer and lawyer Lieutenant (junior grade) Daniel Kaffee, a bumbling attorney who enjoys accepting plea bargain deals and avoiding drawn-out trials / courts martial. Lt. Kaffee's casual attitude bothers the intense, driven Galloway, while Galloway annoys Kaffee with her meddling and her overbearingness. At Guantanamo Bay, Kaffee and Galloway interrogate base commander Marine Corps Colonel Nathan Jessep and others. Jessep asserts that Santiago was supposed to be transferred off the base and sent back to America the following day. Marines Dawson and Downey reject their lawyer Lt. Kaffee's offer to enter into a plea agreement and receive a short six months sentence with government prosecutor U.S. Marine Captain Jack Ross, claiming that Kendrick gave them the "code red" order, that they never intended for Santiago to die and did nothing wrong. Cpl. Dawson thinks it is dishonorable and a violation of the Marines' strict code of honor for Kaffee to opt for a plea agreement rather than stand their ground in court. Kaffee in disgust and unable to understand their sense of morals, wants to be terminated from his position as counsel because he believes the case is worthless, that if they're found guilty, that they'll both be sentenced to long prison terms. Kaffee suddenly submits a not guilty plea on behalf of the accused at the arraignment. He explains to Galloway that the reason he was selected to handle the case was because of his reputation for quickly settling cases out of court with as little fuss as possible, that it was anticipated that he would take a fast plea deal and the case would then be closed, and swept away under the rug. Lt. Col. Markinson tells Kaffee, during their secretive covert meeting in Kaffee's car, that the code red order was actually given, then hidden, and that Col. Jessep never requested Santiago be transferred. According to the defense, Cpl. Dawson was passed up for promotion because he had given food secretly to another Marine who had been on punishment and ordered to go without meals. The defense Kaffee now presents is a favorable picture of Dawson and shows that "code reds" had previously been authorized through Pvt. Downey. On the other hand, Downey claims under oath and cross-examination that he was not present when Dawson allegedly received the "code red" instructions. Lt. Col. Markinson then kills himself before he can testify because he feels guilty about not protecting a fellow Marine under his charge and being an informer / whistle-blower. Kaffee thinks the case has been lost without Markinson's testimony. He complains that he fought the case rather than accepting a settlement as he returns home drunk. Galloway urges Kaffee to summon and get Jessep to testify on the stand under oath despite the possibility of facing court-martial for defying a superior officer. When Kaffee brings up a discrepancy in Col. Jessep's testimony in court at the court-martial at the Washington Navy Yard—that his Marines never disobey orders and that Santiago was to be relocated for his own safety—he is disturbed. Jessep spars under Kaffee's interrogation. Considering that Jessep had told his men to leave Santiago alone, Kaffee wonders why he was still in danger. Jessep, disgusted by Kaffee's behavior, praises the military's contribution to national security as well as his own. Finally, Jessep admits with disdain and intense anger that he really did give the "code red" command. Then while attempting to leave the courtroom thinking he's above reproach or questioned, Jessep is then arrested by order of the observing military judges. The murder and conspiracy charges against Dawson and Downey are dropped, but they are found guilty of lesser offenses of "conduct unbecoming" and will be dishonorably discharged. Dawson explains to his confused and non-comprehending friend that they failed to stand up for people who were too helpless to defend themselves, like Pvt. Santiago, while Downey is unsure what they did wrong. Lt. Kaffee tells Dawson that having honor does not require wearing a patch on one's arm. Dawson then snaps to attention, barking "there's an officer on deck" and smartly snaps off a salute to Lieutenant Kaffee and recognizes him as an officer to be respected (unlike his earlier contempt). Before prosecutor Ross leaves to arrest Kendrick, Kaffee and Ross give each other compliments as friends.
During India's 1975 Emergency, four people share a Bombay apartment that doubles as an illegal garment factory. As political repression intensifies, the unlikely household forms a bond amid growing uncertainty.
Disinherited Aurelio and his lover Valeria face separation, while Aurelio’s brother Careless squanders the family inheritance and tries to marry Aemilia. Disguises and schemes eventually secure the couples’ marriages and restore the family fortunes, alongside comic subplots about tavern companions and confidence games.
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