In THE LOVER Harold Pinter leads the audience to believe that there are three characters in the play: the wife, the husband and the lover. But the lover who comes to call in the afternoons is revealed to be the husband adopting a role. He plays the lover for her: she plays the whore for him.…
A man sits peacefully reading in the sunlight in Central Park. There enters a second man. He is a young, unkempt and undisciplined vagrant where the first is neat, ordered, well-to-do and conventional. The vagrant is a soul in torture and rebellion. He longs to communicate so fiercely that he frightens and repels his listener.…
Sidney Bruhl is a once-successful playwright whose last several productions have flopped at the box office. He then receives a script by a novice writer named Clifford Anderson for a stage thriller entitled Deathtrap. Bruhl tells his wife Myra that the script is brilliant and he then concocts a murder plot whereby he will offer…
PRIVATE LIVES, in the opinion of most critics, is the likeliest candidate as Noël Coward’s masterpiece. It, along with HAY FEVER, DESIGN FOR LIVING, PRESENT LAUGHTER and BLITHE SPIRIT, admit Coward to the line of great English comic dramatists such as Congreve, Sheridan and Wilde. “With the sole exception of Bernard Shaw, Noël Coward has…
“. . . modern British theatre has an actual birthday; by virtually universal consent, it is regarded as the first performance at the Royal Court Theatre in London of John Osborne’s LOOK BACK IN ANGER on May 8, 1956.” (Clive Barnes, American theater critic).This first play by Osborne was so vitriolic in its attack on…
Rita, a young hairdresser, registers for a literature course offered by the Open University, sensing that it will enrich and increase her possibilities in life. During her tutorials, she becomes a different person, gradually liberating herself from the limitations of her working class background, family and marriage. She exchanges the small talk of the hair…
GASLIGHT tells the story of the Manninghams who live on Angel Street in the 19th Century When the curtain rises, all appears to be peaceful. It is soon apparent that Manningham, a suavely sinister and handsome man, is slowly torturing his gentle, lovely wife into insanity under the guise of kindness While he is out,…
In the play, George and Martha invite a new professor and his wife to their house after a party. Martha is the daughter of the president of the university (believed to be based on Trinity College) where George is an associate history professor. Nick (who is never addressed or introduced by name) is a biology…
CORPSE!, a comedy-thriller, was originally premiered at the American Stage Festival Theatre, Milford, New Hampshire, USA in 1983. Critics were lavish in their praise of the play both in terms of comedy and suspense. In 1984 it was presented in London at the Apollo Theatre with Keith Baxter and Milo O’Shea in the starring roles.…
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1978—79), THE GIN GAME by D. L. Coburn is a serious yet extremely funny play. It concerns two elderly people, Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, who meet in a nursing home for the aged and discover they both enjoy gin rummy. So they begin to play, exchanging lifelong…