Is life a circle, a journey that keeps repeating itself? This seems to be the question the playwright is asking in this amusing play. Lady Kitty, who gave up a boring life with her titled husband to run away with a young adventurer, watches her daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, about to do the same thing thirty years…
I OUGHT TO BE IN PICTURES is the poignant story of a father and daughter trying to pick up the pieces of a broken home. Set in the showbiz world of Hollywood that the author knows so well, it is about a failed scriptwriter whose struggling existence is suddenly shattered by the arrival on his…
The title of the play comes from a popular song that Americans sing around Thanksgiving and Christmas. The first verse is, “Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow.” This song brings back memories of family…
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…
Victor and Harlan are two philosophy professors who have been friends, rivals and tricksters since their college days. But now Harlan has become a Stoic who has adopted a strict unemotional regimen in preparation for the afterlife, while Victor has turned into a wild hedonist who believes that “when you’re dead, you’re dead,” so enjoy…
In ROLEPLAY Justin Lazenby and his live-in girlfriend Julie-Ann Dobson are planning to announce their engagement at a dinner party for each other’s parents. Julie-Ann wants everything to be perfect for her conservative mother and father. When she discovers that a dessert fork is missing, she panics and leaves the flat, hoping she can buy a new…
MEN’S SINGLES is an amusing as well as revealing look at the friendship of three modern American males. Every Tuesday night, Rob, an advertising executive in his twenties, gets together with either Larry, a macho salesman in his mid-thirties, or Kurt, a psychiatrist in his early thirties, for a tennis match. Rob, a New Yorker, yearns…
PERFECT WEDDING is a rare combination of riotous farce and touching love story. It has already provoked waves of laughter across Europe and America. Bill wakes up in the bridal suite on his wedding day to find an extremely attractive girl in bed beside him. In his hangover state he cannot remember who she is…
Jan de Hartog (1914—2002) was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands. His father was a minister and theology professor. He left home at the age of ten to work as a sailor on fishing boats and steamers. After attending the Amsterdam Naval College, he worked at the Amsterdam Municipal Theatre from 1932 to 1937. During this period he wrote…
LONDON SUITE, produced on Broadway in 1995, is a collection of four short plays set in the same suite of a fashionable old hotel in London. In each playlet Simon sets a different tone, starting with a thriller, moving to a comedy, then to a comedy-drama, and finally a hilarious farce. LONDON SUITE contains Simon’s characteristic witty dialogue,…