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Clear filtersGood Luck is a 1923 comedy play by Ian Hay and Seymour Hicks. It ran for 260 performances at the Drury Lane Theatre in London's West End between 27 September 1923 and 10 May 1924. The cast included Claude Rains, Edmund Gwenn, Arthur Treacher, Claud Allister, Joan Maude and Joyce Carey. In 1926 it was adapted into a silent film The Sporting Lover by Hollywood studio First National Pictures, starring Conway Tearle and Barbara Bedford.
Decades in the future, with Guantanamo Bay’s staff stranded after funding and media attention disappear, the warden creates a morning talk show to imitate life off the island and keep guards and detainees in line. Celebrity guests are pressed to publicize the prison, while detainee segments and character soliloquies expose its conditions and inner prisons.
Bill loves Dr Sally Smith and tries to win her affection while ending his relationship with Lottie. His tactless friend and his disapproving uncle complicate his efforts; in the play, the uncle ultimately pays Lottie to leave Bill.
The show follows a 1958 episode of The Tonight Show, where host Jack Paar has as a guest comedian Oscar Levant.
The play's story closely follows the plot of the 2005 film, which portrays the conflict between veteran CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin regarding the Senator's investigations and use of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to blacklist people suspected of being communist. Near the end, the play adds a projected montage depicting the evolution of news coverage, showing archival footage including the destruction of the World Trade Center, the January 6 United States Capitol attack, and ending with Elon Musk’s alleged Nazi salute.
Margie Walsh, a lifelong resident of Southie, a blue collar Boston neighborhood, is fired for tardiness from her job as a cashier at a dollar store. A single mother, and knowing that she and her handicapped adult daughter Joyce, "are only a single paycheck away from desperate straits", Margie goes to her old high school boyfriend Mike — now a doctor, but formerly from her neighborhood — looking for employment. After a verbal game of chicken, Margie shames Mike into inviting her (however reluctantly) to his birthday party in Chestnut Hill. Margie is looking forward to the party because she views it as a chance to meet potential employers. Her friends, Dottie and Jean, encourage her to tell Mike that her daughter Joyce was not born premature but is his, in hopes of getting support from Mike. When Mike calls to tell her that the party has been cancelled, Margie assumes that he is disinviting her because he's embarrassed to have her mix with his bourgeois doctor friends. She decides to go to the house anyway, with the intent of crashing the party. At the beginning of Act II, Margie arrives at Mike's house only to discover that the party has, in fact, been cancelled. Mike's elegant young African American wife Kate at first mistakes Margie for a caterer coming to pick up left-over party paraphernalia. Once the misunderstanding is resolved, Kate invites Margie to stay and reminisce about Mike's past (though Mike is clearly less than enthusiastic at the prospect). A discussion begins, in which Mike tells Margie that her current financial problems are her own fault for not trying hard enough, and Margie tries to explain to Mike that he had lucky breaks that most people from Southie didn't. She talks about the time Mike was beating an African American boy and Mike's father intervened to prevent him from possibly killing the boy and ending up in prison. Then she goes further and tells him that he is Joyce's father, and that she never told the truth about the paternity because she wanted Mike to be able to "get out". Mike says that it wouldn't have made a difference if she'd told him, as he had been planning to leave her anyway. Kate, though she had been taking Margie's side, says to Margie that if Joyce was indeed Mike's, it was selfish of her to hide that fact and not do everything she could for her child. Margie finally claims she was encouraged by her friends to try to extort Mike and it was, indeed, a lie, before finally leaving in shame (though not without implying that Mike is cheating on Kate). Later, Margie's landlady receives an envelope marked as having Margie's rent inside - thinking it has been sent from Mike, Margie intends to return it to him. At bingo, though, it is revealed that the envelope is from Stevie, her former boss at the dollar store - upon learning this, Margie accepts the money as an indefinite "loan" and Stevie agrees to help her find a new job. In a final twist to the plot, Margie asks Jean how she knew that Joyce was indeed Mike's baby, to which Jean replies that "everybody knows."
Dr. Michaels and fellow counselor Evangeline counsel six patients at a rural mental health center.
Goodbye Charlie is a 1959 play written by George Axelrod. It opened on Broadway on December 16, 1959, and closed on March 19, 1960.
A pianist has abandoned music after a public performance mishap and the loss of his wife. He regains his desire to play when another woman takes an interest in his music.
Goodbye, My Fancy is a 1948 play by Fay Kanin. A comedy in three acts and four scenes, the work premiered at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, on October 21, 1948, for tryout performances before the production moved to Broadway in New York City. The work premiered on Broadway on November 17, 1948, at the Morosco Theatre. The original production was staged by Sam Wanamaker and produced by Michael Kanin, Richard Aldrich, and Richard Myers.
A British-born Hollywood star returns to the seaside town where he once struggled as an actor and is cast in a local theatre production without anyone recognizing him. He falls in love with his leading lady, then realizes that his attempt to recreate the past is doomed.
Goodnight Children Everywhere is a 1997 play written by American playwright Richard Nelson that premiered at The Other Place, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. The play is set in 1945 just after the end of World War II. Three sisters reunite with their brother who had been sent to live in the United States during the period of evacuations of civilians during the London bombings.
Constance Ledbelly, an academic studying Othello and Romeo and Juliet, is drawn into their worlds. Her interventions transform the tragedies into comic encounters and lead her to recognize herself as both their author and wise fool.
During World War II, evacuated boy William Beech is billeted with reclusive widower Tom Oakley in rural Dorset. Tom cares for the illiterate, bruised and starving child, but William's abusive mother later calls him back to London during the Blitz.
King Gorboduc divides Britain between his sons Ferrex and Porrex. Their conflict leads to fratricide and revenge, the deaths of the king and queen in a popular revolt, and a succession crisis that ends in civil war.
A skeptical science professor takes part in a Canadian psychology experiment using a helmet said to induce religious experiences. When her son considers becoming a priest, their conflict over religion and tolerance deepens; after his death in a terrorist attack, the professor experiences visions that make her reconsider her beliefs and reconcile with his partner.
A family pursues criminal charges after a young woman discloses childhood sexual assault. Drawing on a true story, the play examines the distance between legal procedure, personal truth, and the search for justice.
David Hare’s play explores the lives and long stage relationship of Victorian actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, alongside the lives of Terry’s children Edith Craig and Edward Gordon Craig.
After a bank clerk inexplicably kills a caretaker with an axe, a public prosecutor identifies with the killer's escape from routine, takes up the legendary Count Öderland's axe, and sets off a rebellion. His attempt to break free of social constraints grows into political upheaval without bringing him the freedom he seeks.
Set twenty years after On Our Selection, the play follows the now-prosperous farmer and parliamentarian Dad as he bullies his sons, who are encouraged by their wives to rebel. The plot also includes a granddaughter’s love triangle, a returning son seeking the estate, and neighboring families.
Grand Hotel is a 1931 play by the British-American writer Edward Knoblock. A drama, it is based on the 1929 German novel Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum about guests staying at a Grand Hotel in Berlin. It ran for 147 performances at the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End between September 1931 and January 1932. The cast included Hugh Williams, Ursula Jeans, Elena Miramova, Lyn Harding, George Merritt and Everley Gregg. Its release was pushed back several times. Much of the play's appeal revolved around its large cast and special effects. A separate American stage version was written by William A. Drake and ran on Broadway from November 1930 to December 1931. It was elements of this play that were used for the 1932 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film adaptation.
At a seaside hotel, a magician’s illusion leaves a jealous husband questioning reality.
Grand National Night is a 1945 thriller play by the British writers Campbell Christie and Dorothy Christie. A racehorse owner quarrels and accidentally kills his wife on the evening of the Grand National. It premiered at the New Theatre, Oxford before transferring to the Apollo Theatre in London's West End where it ran for 268 performances between 12 June 1946 and 1 February 1947. The original West End cast included Leslie Banks, Hermione Baddeley, Frederick Lloyd, Olga Edwardes, Campbell Copelin and Vincent Holman. It was revived briefly at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1948, lasting for 16 performances.
On Labor Day 1944, political boss Patsy McCall vacations at the Grand View Hotel on Saratoga Lake with his entourage. Their quiet stay is disrupted when his political rival and former friend Corbet Atterby arrives.
Jerry, a lifelong blue-collar resident of Grangeville, Idaho, reunites with his estranged half-brother Arnie, a gay artist who fled to Rotterdam. Their conversation about caring for their ailing mother forces them to reckon with their relationship and forgiveness.
A romantic tragedy centered on Grania and Diarmuid from the Fenian Cycle, set in ancient Ireland.
Shepherd Daifilo turns from his pursuit of shepherdess Dorilea after meeting Persian princess Granida. Their love draws him into court life and its rival suitors, while Granida longs for pastoral simplicity; the lovers ultimately unite in marriage.
Great Britain is a satirical play written by Richard Bean. It received its world premiere at the Royal National Theatre, London on 30 June 2014, before transferring to the West End's Theatre Royal Haymarket.
The plot focuses on Captain Charles Edstaston, a very prim and proper British military attaché who, in 1776, is assigned to the Imperial Russian court in Saint Petersburg, during the 34-year (1762–1796) rule of Empress Catherine the Great, and brings his equally prim fiancée, Claire, with him. In the midst of court intrigue and palace politics, primarily instigated by Catherine's favored statesman and military leader, the drunken, ill-mannered, but crafty Prince Patiomkin, the imperiously commanding, yet concurrently, voraciously intimate Catherine toys with the naive arrival, questioning his rigid beliefs, leading him to drop his guarded mannerisms and, in the process, she also learns certain philosophical truths.
Great Day is a 1945 play by the British writer Lesley Storm. It portrays the excitement generated in an English village by the upcoming visit of American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The play ran for 29 performances at the Playhouse Theatre in London's West End. The original cast included Edgar Norfolk, George Selway, Avice Landone, Mary Hinton, Elsie Randolph, Irene Handl, Barbara White, Olga Lindo and Winifred Evans. The same year it was adapted into a film of the same title directed by Lance Comfort and featuring Flora Robson and Eric Portman.
Great Day in the Morning is a dramatic stage play written by American playwright Alice McCamley Cannon (19192017). The play premiered on Broadway at Henry Millers Theatre in 1962. Colleen Dewhurst was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in the production. The play is semi-autobiographical and based on Cannon's Irish Catholic upbringing in St. Louis, Missouri.
A live theatrical recreation of a 1950s radio-drama recording, with performers aware of the audience and free to break character. The original production staged three detective stories, including Dragnet, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Candy Matson.
An unexpected fortune allows the orphan Pip to leave a blacksmith’s forge for life as a gentleman. His attachment to Estella and his assumptions about his benefactor gradually unravel as the past returns.
Eddie Izzard performs a solo reading of Charles Dickens’s story of Pip, an orphan whose unexpected inheritance draws him away from his childhood home. The performance moves among the novel’s characters as Pip confronts ambition, shame, and mistaken assumptions about his benefactor.
At a dinner table, conversation is replaced by fragments of Iraq news reports, an Army prayer manual, invented Arab folk tales and a recurring state of emergency. Three speaking percussionists interweave music, noise and meaning as the sounds of the table press the conversation against material reality.
Greater Tuna is the first in a series of four comedic plays, followed by A Tuna Christmas, Red, White and Tuna, and Tuna Does Vegas. Each play is set in the fictional town of Tuna, Texas, the "third-smallest" town in the state. The series was written by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard. The plays are an affectionate comment on small-town Southern life and attitudes, while also satirizing them. Of the four plays, Greater Tuna is the darkest in tone, as it follows the news of the death, and possible murder, of Judge Buckner. The plays are notable for using two actors to portray the entire cast of more than twenty eccentric characters of different genders and ages. Greater Tuna premiered in Austin, Texas, in 1981 and had its off-Broadway premiere in 1982.
Berkoff relocates the Oedipus story to a decaying modern Britain and London’s East End, reframing Sophocles’ tragedy through social disaffection and the bleakness of urban life.
A devised drama about the troubled relationship between a Greek couple, Alex and Calliope.
In early-1900s pioneer country, headstrong farmgirl Laurey and cocky cowhand Curly pursue a rocky romance amid the farming community of Indian Territory.
Green Waters is a 1936 play by the British author Max Catto. It ran for 80 performances at the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End between 25 May and 1 August 1936. The West End cast included Sebastian Shaw, Wilfred Walter, Morland Graham, Torin Thatcher, Marie Ault and Gillian Lind. It also appeared at the Masque Theatre on Broadway.
In this Jacobean city comedy, spendthrift citizen Spendall loses his inheritance while Bubble unexpectedly comes into money and remains loyal to his master Staines. Debt, role reversals, disguises and cheats let Staines regain his position, satirizing contemporary urban life and its debauchery.
After a Conservative election victory, four characters jump into the Thames and awaken 700 years later in a utopia where no one must do anything against their will.
A collaborative play about global warming and its effects, created for the National Theatre and named after the island of Greenland.
Greenwich Park is a 1691 comedy play by the English writer William Mountfort. The original cast included Anthony Leigh as Sir Thomas Reveller, James Nokes as Raison, Cave Underhill as Sasaphras, John Hodgson as Lord Worthy, William Mountfort as Young Reveller, William Bowen as Thoughtless John Bowman as Beau, George Bright as Bully Bounce, Elizabeth Barry as Dorinda, Susanna Mountfort as Florella, Margaret Osborne as Lady Hazard, Katherine Corey as Aunt to Dorinda and Frances Maria Knight as Mrs Raison.
Faustus, a monk disillusioned with isolation, seeks the pure woman Mephisto shows him. His love for Gretchen leads to her pregnancy and death; before dying, she forgives him and urges a life of faith, truth and charity.
A political satire reacting to Denmark's introduction of counts and barons, who outranked untitled nobles under the absolute monarchy.
Max and Henry, a young married couple, wreck their car in the mountains during a blizzard. They take shelter in a cabin occupied by a group of teenage girls and an old lady who claims to be their mother. During their stay, the girls imply that Max and Henry were not drawn to the house by the car accident, but their own pasts.
A young liberal nobleman fights patriarchal order and seeks to transform the landlord economy.
Grieving's a Folly is an 1809 comedy play by the British writer Richard Leigh. It premiered on 21 April 1809 at the Lyceum Theatre in London, which was being used the Drury Lane company while their own theatre was being rebuilt after a fire. The cast included Henry Siddons as Mr Herbert, Harriet Siddons as Ellen, William Dowton as Sir Oliver Cypress, William Powell as Belford, John Bannister as Crape, John Henry Johnstone as O'Harrolan, Charles Mathews as Joe Thresher, Walter Maddocks as Jonathon, Jane Powell as Mrs Mordaunt and Frances Maria Kelly as Susan Woodburn. The prologue was written and spoken by Edmund John Eyre. It enjoyed a successful run and was published by Longmans the same year. A second play by Leigh Where to Find a Friend was performed by the company in 1811.
The devil Belphagor comes to earth disguised as a Spanish doctor to investigate marriage. After curing Honoria, he is trapped in a series of humiliations involving her broken promise, a bed trick, attempted murder, and poisoning; he returns to Hell when his allotted time ends. In the subplot, the good-hearted collier Grim wins Joan with help from Puck.
Grimaldi, an Italian duke in disguise, protects a young actress from the condescension of wealthy society and ultimately reveals her noble birth.
Carol Ann Duffy’s stage adaptation draws on four Grimm fairy tales: Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and The Golden Goose.
A poor farmer, Ise, wishes for power to trap anything that climbs his orange tree by saying “Grip Am”; he uses it to control his troubles and trap the Angel of Death, while his wife Aso has her own wish.
A family saga shaped by loss and trauma, the play uses intimate experience to comment on contemporary Nigerian political dysfunction and the resilience needed to remain engaged in public life.
The play revolves around the relationships between five school-friends are explored at three stages of their lives: in Year Two in 1994, Year Nine in 2001, and at a school reunion in the present day.
Based on the 1971 labor dispute in Balen, the play concerns Vieille Montagne workers striking for equal pay. The strike lasts nine weeks, leaving workers without income as local residents and charities provide support.
Using contemporary court documents, newspaper accounts, and books read aloud by the actors, the play reconstructs Oscar Wilde’s three trials over his relationships with Lord Alfred Douglas and other men. Wilde’s libel case against Queensberry fails, and the later prosecutions for gross indecency end in conviction and hard labour.
A biographical revue follows Groucho Marx's life and career, with an actor portraying him from age fifteen to eighty-five and other performers representing Harpo, Chico and figures from his work.
A female Air Force pilot grounded from flying after becoming pregnant is reassigned to remote drone operations near Las Vegas, where the distance between her home life and distant targets causes psychological distress.
Grouse in June is a 1939 comedy play by N.C. Hunter, in which a group of Americans hunt for treasure lost on the Scottish coast when the Spanish Armada was washed ashore in 1588. After premiering at Richmond Theatre, it ran for 126 performances in the West End at the Criterion and New Theatres. The cast included Robert Beatty, Arthur Hambling and Hugh McDermott.
Three women of middle age perform a scripted comedy of gripes about fashion, food fads and everyday frustrations, from complaints to shops and service providers to the indignities and pleasures of getting older.
In London, a tabloid journalist finds an opportunity to further his career by manufacturing photographs supposedly depicting British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. He is identified only as "English Boy". This story is intercut with the confessional monologue of a young United States Army soldier from West Virginia who becomes a scapegoat in a scandal involving photographs of actual abuse. She is identified only as "American Girl". It is later revealed that English Boy is a sexual sadist, taking pleasure in torturing his partners and taking advantage of his boyfriend's masochism for his own pleasure. It is also revealed that American Girl had an abusive sexual relationship with a superior officer. It is implied that these relationships may have furthered the main characters' descent.
A one-act tragedy following Queen Guenevere through Camelot’s final days as she watches from exile in a nunnery, shaped in the structure of a classical Greek tragedy.
Guilty or Not Guilty is an 1804 comedy play by the British author Thomas Dibdin. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in London on 26 May 1804. The original cast included Robert Palmer as Major Corslet, William Chapman as Mr. Balance, Robert William Elliston as Edmond Rigid, Vincent De Camp as Sir Harry Pointer, Charles Mathews as Triangle and Maria Gibbs as Nancy.
Ten years into their marriage, May and Raleigh live in a Florida Gulf Coast island community, where a shrinking dream house and arriving relatives test their relationship.
Guy Domville, a tutor planning to enter the priesthood, considers marrying to preserve his family line, but ultimately helps the people he loves marry and returns to his vocation.
Gypsy was a 1929 Broadway three-act play written by Maxwell Anderson and produced by Richard Herndon. Directed by George Cukor, the production ran for 64 performances from January 14, 1929, to March 1929 at the Klaw Theatre. It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1928-1929.
Goethe’s freely adapted drama presents the historical Götz as a maverick and pillar of national integrity resisting a deceitful, over-refined society. He ultimately succumbs to the abstract demands of law and justice, dramatizing the individual’s submission to social authority.
In Hove, a doctor and his family, a would-be seducer, an aspiring lover, and a frustrated celibate become entangled in mistaken sexual advances, false breasts, a tranquilliser, an unexpected pregnancy, and old secrets.
A schoolteacher casts an Aboriginal girl as the Virgin Mary in a play, raising a story about race relations in Australia.
A verse drama in which Ishmael quarrels with the Angel of the Lord.
A fisherman finds a celestial dancer’s feather mantle and agrees to return it only if she performs her dance. The chorus presents her dance as an image of the moon’s changes, and she vanishes into mist.
A monk receives a moonflower from a woman who disappears into it. At the site of Prince Genji and Yūgao’s first meeting, a spirit recalls their encounter and exchanged poetry, emphasizing nostalgia for the beginning of their love.
Sent by China's emperor to test Japan, the poet Bai Juyi meets two fishermen. The elder explains the shared nature of Japanese poetry, then reveals himself as Sumiyoshi no Kami, god of poetry. A series of dances summons a divine wind that sends Bai, defeated, back to China.
Halfway Up the Tree is a comedy play about a British general who pretends to be a hippie. It was originally a stage vehicle for Robert Morley. The play was profiled in the William Goldman book The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway.
As Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton argues for a national bank and federal assumption of state debts while negotiating with Jefferson and Monroe over the new capital. A blackmail plot built around his affair with Maria Reynolds threatens his public standing, but his candor helps secure support for his financial program.
Prince Hamlet learns from his father's ghost that his uncle Claudius murdered the former king and seized the throne. Hamlet feigns madness and stages a play to test Claudius, but the ensuing revenge plot leaves the Danish court in tragedy.
A 90-minute reworking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet intersperses fragments of songs from Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief, reworked by Thom Yorke, with the tragedy. The production explores grief, paranoia and the search for a moral compass amid political delusion.
The story of young and adult Hamlet is interwoven through the clown Yorick. In the later described revision, Hamlet stages The Murder of Gonzago to investigate his father’s death, and the play’s close contrasts the tragedy with young Hamlet’s wish to perform cheerful comedies.
In a two-act parody, Hamlet refuses his murdered father’s call for revenge, then later kills those around him after the ghost returns; Sigmund Freud takes him to a psychiatric hospital as sailors dance to “Yablochko.” The play satirizes Russian chauvinism.
Loosely based on Hamlet, Müller's postmodernist drama breaks from conventional plot. In sequences of monologues, its protagonist steps out of the Hamlet role to reflect on acting and the role of intellectuals; the dense, open text also returns to feminist and ecological themes.
In the devoutly religious, relatively quiet small town of Cypress, Texas, Margery is a widow whose husband has recently died. To keep her occupied, her minister, Pastor Greg, has asked her to run the puppet club. Fundamentalist Christian congregations often use puppets to teach children how to follow the Bible and avoid Satan. The teenage members of the club are her son Jason; Jessica, the girl next door that Jason has a crush on; and Timmy, the neighborhood troublemaker whose mother is attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings at the church. Pastor Greg wants the puppet club to put on a performance at the church next Sunday. The characters become sexually attracted to each other. Jason's hand puppet, Tyrone, takes on a life of his own, announces that he is Satan, leads them into sin, and expresses secrets that the characters would rather have left unacknowledged.
Moira Buffini's play examines the relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Younger and older versions of the two women appear, while other performers take multiple roles; the title evokes Thatcher's handbag as a symbol of her political power.
In a Mexican border town, Pepe falls in love with Maria, who is involved with a racketeer. Their relationship tests competing ideas of innocence, morality and redemption.
Ruby, leader of a group of young partygoers, finds a way to obtain financial support for caring for disabled people, though the group has no intention of actually providing that care.
A Dadaist ironic tragedy composed of fifteen short acts, each accompanied by commentary and influenced by serialized fiction and cinema. Tzara conceived its action for a platform at the center of a box-like room from which the actors cannot leave.
At a tea reception in their Mayfair drawing room, the absent-minded Lady Maureen Gilpin repeatedly mistakes one set of guests for another while her naval-officer husband handles calls and tries to entertain them. Their haphazard hospitality leaves an unexpected collection of visitors confused until the mix-up is finally revealed.
A melodrama tracing Ned Kelly and his gang through the Fitzpatrick shooting, bank and police-station robberies, the death of Sergeant Kennedy, and the final battle at Glenrowan.
Hanging Judge is a 1952 crime play by the Canadian-British actor Raymond Massey. It first appeared at the Manchester Opera House before transferring to the New Theatre in London's West End where it ran for 94 performances from 23 September to 13 December 1952. It is based on the 1948 novel Let Him Have Judgement by Brian Hamilton. The West End cast included Godfrey Tearle, Jane Griffiths, Henry Caine, Denis Shaw, Julian Somers, Jack Melford, John Robinson, James Raglan, Bartlett Mullins, Peter Williams, Frederick Treves and John Le Mesurier. It was directed by Michael Powell, best known as a filmmaker.
Hanging and Marriage is a 1722 farce by the British writer Henry Carey. Written as an afterpiece it premiered at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre accompanying a revival of Dryden's The Spanish Friar. The original cast included William Bullock as Goodman Gizzard, James Spiller as Richard Stubble, John Egleton as Jerry and Jane Egleton as Mother Stubble.
After a 1963 prologue showing British executioner Harry Wade at work, hanging a man, Hennessy, who goes to his grave proclaiming his innocence and pronouncing a curse on Harry, Hangmen flashes forward to 1965 in a town in northern England. The action centres around Harry, who we discover is the second-best hangman in the land. Harry owns a pub that he also lives above with his wife, Alice, and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Shirley. Harry is contending with the abolition of hanging in Britain while the pub is filled with cronies and sycophants, as well as a journalist who is trying to interview Harry about the abolition. Despite continually protesting that he has nothing to say on the record, Harry eventually takes the journalist upstairs and gives him an extensive interview, complete with disparaging remarks about the number-one hangman in England, named Pierrepoint. A smiling but menacing stranger named Mooney comes to the pub and stirs up some trouble, causing consternation among Harry and his cronies. Mooney inquires if there are any rooms about to let, and Alice offers him a room upstairs. But when Alice tries to call his references, Mooney explodes. Mooney also creepily flirts with Harry's daughter, Shirley, who later appears to go missing. Over the next day or so, Mooney toys with Harry and leads him and his wife to believe that Mooney has kidnapped their daughter, Shirley. We learn that Mooney is in cahoots with Syd, one of the men in the bar and Harry's assistant hangman whom Harry has always treated with contempt. Syd is conspiring with Mooney to take Harry down a peg, but it becomes clear that Mooney may have more on his mind than just scaring Harry. Mooney's taunting eventually pushes Harry and his cronies to put a noose around his neck and stand him on a chair to force him to reveal Shirley's whereabouts. Suddenly, Pierrepoint, the best hangman in England, storms into the bar to confront Harry about the disparaging remarks Harry made about Pierrepoint in the paper. This forces Harry and his crew to hide the now choking Mooney behind a curtain. When Pierrepoint eventually leaves, Harry and company discover Mooney has been hanged behind the curtain, which was apparently Mooney's goal all along. Shirley returns to the bar, completely unharmed. The play ends with Harry and his friends soberly reflecting on what they have done, while Harry is also forced to deal with the justification of the hanging he performed at the very beginning of the play.
Thomas Nabbes's tragedy dramatizes the historical rivalry of Hannibal and Scipio through contrasts between public duty and private passion, continence and lust, and competing ideas of virtue. Its five acts move among Capua, Syphax's court, Utica, Carthage, and Bithynia.
On a May morning in 1988, Conservative minister Robin Hesketh returns to the Cotswold home he shares with his wife Diana after publicly defending Clause 28. Their political disagreement becomes an intimate confrontation, exposing the secrets and wounds beneath a long marriage.
British female spymaster Hapgood juggles her work and motherhood in a play about espionage that also draws on quantum mechanics, including Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem.
Psychology professor Roland is an expert on the pursuit of happiness, but struggles to find it in his own life.
A young lawyer buys a Rolls-Royce for his pushy wife; a young female artist is in the car’s back seat.
Happy Birthday is a comedic stage play written by American playwright Anita Loos. The play premiered on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre in 1946. The show was nominated for two Tony Awards, Best Costumes by Lucinda Ballard and Best Lead Actress in a Play for Helen Hayes, who won the award as Addie Bemis. The plays tells the story of a librarian and her escapades when she decides to have a night on the town.
Big-game hunter Harold Ryan returns to find that his wife and son have changed during his absence. The play contrasts his glorification of killing with pacifist characters, while Wanda June and other dead acquaintances address the audience from Heaven.
Winnie, buried first to her waist and later to her neck in a mound, persists in her daily rituals and talk with her mostly silent husband Willie, sustaining an uneasy optimism as her circumstances worsen.
In Northern England in 1978, a boy named John looks back on the stresses of growing up with his parents Vic and Dot, grandparents and aunts. The memory play moves through his teenage years, from age nine to his graduation as a drama teacher, mixing humor with sadness.
Two brothers, Danny and Lyle, were locked in a chicken pen as children. Their mother abandoned them there for months, and the brothers later become celebrities; the play develops the story through dark comedy and abrupt shocks.
After meeting businessman Michael at a conference, Kitty questions her life as she tries to balance family and freedom, fidelity and a demanding marketing job at a cancer charity. Her husband Johnny and friends are also struggling, while her parents drift apart and Carl appears to have found happiness with a new boyfriend.
Women living in a psychiatric treatment centre form difficult, sustaining relationships as they confront trauma and consider life beyond its walls. Their encounters bring humour, conflict, and solidarity into an uncertain process of recovery.
Happy with Either is a 1948 comedy play by the British writer Margaret Kennedy. Best known as a novelist, it was her last play. It ran for 35 performances at St James's Theatre in London's West End between 22 April and 22 May 1948. The original cast included Cyril Raymond, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Adrienne Corri, Valerie Taylor, Angela Baddeley and Constance Cummings. It was produced by Basil Dean. The plot revolves around a bigamist who is allowed back into the lives of his two wives because they miss him.
The surviving fifth-act portion, Krauncha-vijaya, stages a conversation among Shiva, Gauri, the Vidushaka and a Pratihara, recalls the Kiratarjuniya story, and ends with Shiva blessing King Vigraharaja.
In post-revolutionary Iran, Mahmoud, an aspiring footballer struggling at school, is paired with Ayaz, a book collector whose library includes works forbidden by the regime. Mahmoud is drawn to Ayaz's escape through reading; their friendship provokes jealousy in Mahmoud's teammate Fareed, whose intervention leads to their arrest and trial.
Across three Harlem eras—1860, 1928, and the present—Billie confronts Othello’s departure for a white woman and the racial pressures shaping their relationship. The play reframes Othello as a non-chronological prequel and uses a two-act, seven-stanza blues structure to explore racism, history, and Black identity.
A migrant family comes to Harlem seeking a better life but meets hardship; the melodrama depicts vice and crime in Harlem.
A one-performance English burlesque parody of Hydaspes by Isabella Aubert, reusing much of its music along with numbers from other operas. The entry names Harlequin and the Doctor among its roles but gives no plot summary.
This is a one act play about a professional theatre company presenting Romeo and Juliet. The opening night is in the town of Brackley in the English Midlands. The principal characters are Arthur and his wife Edna (who play Romeo and Juliet) and the stage manager Jack. Arthur is horrified to be confronted by his grown up daughter (Muriel) and grandchild, neither of whose existences he had been aware of. To discover that he's a grandfather just before playing Romeo is too much for him. They later learn that he's still married to Muriel's mother (Flossie) and that he is bigamously married to Edna. There are a number of other threads running through this play, such as Jack's attempts to leave the theatre and do a 'real job' and the humdrum world of bit players and the attempts in post-war Britain to bring culture to the masses. It is a funny farce which has a strong satirical element.
Forty-one-year-old Harper leaves her West London family to visit her dying father, undertaking a journey through England that examines sex, death, and her relationships with her daughter, husband, and mother.
The last man on earth considers whether to prolong his life or end it, in a metaphysical play described as vernacular yet literary in style.
A stage play following Harry Potter and a new generation at Hogwarts, nineteen years after the events of the original novels.
In a future Mumbai, unemployed Om Prakash agrees to sell his organs to wealthy Western recipients through InterPlanta, which then monitors and controls his family. The recipient Ginni treats them condescendingly, while the plan shifts to using Om's brother Jeetu's body and virtually impregnating Om's wife, Jaya.
Aloho is drawn into the unlawful schemes of corrupt officials. The satire follows how people entrusted with making, interpreting and enforcing the law exploit the people who trust them.
Elwood P. Dowd is an affable man who claims to have an unseen (and presumably imaginary) friend Harvey – whom Elwood describes as a six foot, three-and-one-half inch pookah (Chase uses the spelling p-o-o-k-a as noted especially by the character Wilson who is reading the definition from a dictionary on page 33 of Chase's playbook) resembling an anthropomorphic rabbit. Elwood introduces Harvey to everyone he meets. His social-climbing sister, Veta Simmons, increasingly finds his eccentric behavior embarrassing. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium. When they arrive at the sanitarium, a comedy of errors ensues. When Veta confesses that she has seen Harvey too, the young Dr. Sanderson commits Veta instead of Elwood. But when the mistake comes out, the search is on for Elwood and his invisible companion. When Elwood shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey, it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood has had a strange influence on the staff, including sanitarium director Dr. Chumley. Only just before Elwood is to be given an injection that will make him into a "perfectly normal human being, and you know what bastards they are!" (in the words of a taxi driver who has become involved in the proceedings) does Veta realize that she would rather have Elwood the same as he has always been – carefree and kind – even if it means living with Harvey.
When Hasemann’s wife indulges their daughters, he eventually takes control of the family. The contemporary review frames the folk comedy as a portrait of parental overindulgence and the resulting household conflict.
Hattie Stowe is a 1947 historical play by the British writer Ian Hay. It portrays the life of the nineteenth century American abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was very different in tone from Hay's usual plays, generally light comedies with naval themes. It was first staged at the Embassy Theatre in the West End on 11 February 1947.
At a music centre built as a shrine to Julia Lukin, who died by suicide at nineteen, her father Joe summons a psychic and Julia’s former admirer Andy to investigate signs that she haunts the room. Their accounts uncover the painful circumstances of her death, while recordings, music and a final apparition blur grief and the supernatural.
The four eccentric members of the Bliss family each invite a guest to their country house for a weekend, without telling one another. They impose parlour games, flirtations, and theatrical outbursts on their increasingly bewildered visitors. The next morning the guests slip away while the family is absorbed in a row and does not notice until the door slams.
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