“Love Is All Around” is the name of a feminist publishing house where Harriet Copeland is running a competition to find new romantic fiction written by women only. Leonard Loftus is trying to get his books published, but Harriet keeps sending his manuscripts back because they are the work of a man. When Leonard finally…
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (DIE KOMÖDIE DER IRRUNGEN) is usually considered to be one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays. Based on a work by the Roman comic playwright Plautus, it concerns two sets of identical twins that were separated shortly after birth. Years later the twins end up in the same town unaware of the others’ existence.…
“What do you do when you are not sure?” This is the question posed by this remarkable new play. The setting is a Catholic church and school in New York in 1964. Twelve-year-old Donald starts behaving strangely and is caught with alcohol on his breath. The principal of the school, Sister Aloysius, suspects that the…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…