First produced at the National Theatre in London in 1978, BETRAYAL was a popular success on both sides of the Atlantic. It won, in New York, the Drama Critics Circle Award as best foreign play and, in London, the West End Award as best play of the season. It was filmed in 1983 with Ben…
ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR takes place on three successive Christmas Eves in the kitchens of three different couples. In Act I, the “lower-class” but ambitious Hopcrofts give a party for their bank manager and his wife, and an architect neighbour. The Hopcrofts are nervous because the people they have invited might be useful to them on their…
The play is set in a duchy in France, but most of the action takes place in a location called the Forest of Arden..’ Frederick has usurped the Duchy and exiled his older brother, Duke Senior. The Duke’s daughter Rosalind has been permitted to remain at court because she is the closest friend and cousin…
Sister George is a famous character in a BBC soap opera series, a nurse who cycles about singing hymns, doing good deeds, and spreading cheer. Because of the struggle for ratings, and because there is gossip of notoriety in her personal life, the BBC decides to “kill her off” by having her involved in an…
After a six day honeymoon a spanking new lawyer, who has just won his first case 6 cents in damages, and his young bride, who is as pretty and addled as they come, move into the new, high rent apartment that she has chosen for them But the difficulty is, in order to enjoy the…
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…
Neil Simon’s comedies have given pleasure to literally millions of theatergoers over the past three decades. Critics have ranked his plays anywhere from a “delightful evening
Peter O’Donnell was born in 1920 and sold his first story at the age of 16. Drunk with success, he sobered up when he failed to sell another for two years. On leaving school, he worked for a magazine publishing company producing comics. Convinced the work was beneath his dignity, he soon had this notion…
TABLE MANNERS is part of a trilogy under the general heading THE NORMAN CONQUESTS, the other two plays being ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN and LIVING TOGETHER. The plays are not consecutive, but all occur during a single week-end and each takes place in a different part of the same house. Thus we are watching…
One of Bernard Shaw’s most glittering comedies, Arms and the Man is also a burlesque of Victorian attitudes to heroism, war and empire. In the contrast between Bluntschli, the mercenary soldier, and the brave leader, Sergius, the true nature of valour is revealed The play takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. Its heroine, Raina…