Best of
Drama

1978

Holocaust


Gerald Green - 1978
    The Dorfs are "good" Germans, loyal to the new Nazi regime, and their son Erik, a promising lawyer, finds his ambitions realized in the SS at the side of the ruthless Reynard Heydrich. The Weiss family is Jewish, also seemingly "good" Germans, but doomed under the new regime and its determination to exterminate the Jewish population.

Torch Song Trilogy


Harvey Fierstein - 1978
    The four hour-plus play begins with a soliloquy in which he explains his cynical disillusionment with love.Each act focuses on a different phase in Arnold's life. In the first, Arnold meets Ed, who is uncomfortable with his bisexuality. In the second, one year later, Arnold meets Alan, and the two settle down into a blissful existence that includes plans to adopt a child, until tragedy strikes. In the third, several years later, Arnold is a single father raising gay teenager David. Arnold is forced to deal with his mother's intolerance and disrespect when she visits from Florida.

Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part


Michael Shurtleff - 1978
     His legendary course on auditioning has launched hundreds of successful careers. Now in this book he tells the all-important HOW for all aspiring actors, from the beginning student of acting to the proven talent trying out for that chance-in-a-million role!

Requiem for a Dream


Hubert Selby Jr. - 1978
    She becomes addicted to diet pills in her obsessive quest, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and his best friend, Tyrone, have devised an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by scoring a pound of uncut heroin. Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in the spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares."Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists. HIs work has the power, the intimacy with suffering and morality, the honesty and moral urgency of Doestoevsky's. To understand Selby's work is to understand the anguish of America." - The New York Times Book Review

Birbal The Witty


Kamala Chandrakant - 1978
    He also composed poetry by the pen name 'Brahma'. Birbal's fame had spread far and wide. As Akbar's favourite minister, he had an answer to every question and a solution to every problem. In fair tribute to his shrewdness, even the mighty Shah of Persia addressed Birbal as the "Ocean of Intelligence". Combining tact and common sense with a fair pinch of humour, he won his master's heart.

Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton


John Lahr - 1978
    Less than one month later, Britain's most promising comic playwright was murdered by his lover in the London flat they had shared for fifteen years. Lahr chronicles Orton's working-class childhood and stagestruck adolescence, the scandals and disasters of his early professional years, and the brief, glittering success of his blistering comedies, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Loot, and What the Butler Saw.Prick Up Your Ears is a watershed biography; it paved the way for Orton's revival and ensured his rightful place in the English repertoire.

The Complete Major Prose Plays


Henrik Ibsen - 1978
    Gathers the Norwegian writer's most important dramas, including A Doll's House, An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler, and Ghosts.

Rhanna


Christine Marion Fraser - 1978
    Overcome by grief, he shuns the doctor, convinced he could have done more to save her. He also refuses to take notice of his daughter, Shona, until years later, when she falls in love with the doctor's son.

Deathtrap


Ira Levin - 1978
    A possible break in his fortunes occurs when he receives a script from a student in the seminar he has been conducting at a nearby college a thriller which Sidney recognizes immediately as a potential Broadway hit. Sidney's plan, which he devises with his wife's help, is to offer collaboration to the student, an idea which the younger man quickly accepts. Thereafter suspense mounts steadily as the plot begins to twist and turn with devilish cleverness, and with such an abundance of thrills and laughter, that audiences will be held enthralled until the final, startling moments of the play.

Peake's Progress: Selected Writings and Drawings


Mervyn Peake - 1978
    For the aficionado and for the first-time reader, this selection of his less well-known works offers a treasure trove. It includes a wealth of short stories, poems, nonsense verse and drawings - all of them adding new perspectives on this prolific and astonishingly original writer.

The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939


W.H. Auden - 1978
    The reader recaptures the excitement of a young poet who struck readers first by the austere saga-like strangeness of his poetry, and then by his intoxication with disruptive, uninhibited ideas. The English Auden is the resurrection of the body of the poetry as it existed in England between 1927 and 1939.'-Stephen Spender, Sunday Telegraph

The Complete Plays: The Hostage / The Quare Fellow / Richard's Cork Leg


Brendan Behan - 1978
    First comes the three famous full-length plays: The Quare Fellow, set in an Irish prison, is "something very like a masterpiece" (John Russell Taylor); The Hostage, set in a Dublin lodging-house of doubtful repute, "shouts, sings, thunders and stamps with life . . . a masterpiece" (Harold Hobson); and Richard's Cork Leg, set largely in a graveyard, is nevertheless "a joyous celebration of life" (Michael Billington). There follow three little-known one-act plays originally written for radio and all intensely autobiographical: Moving Out, A Garden Party and The Big House. The Introduction, by Alan Simpson, who knew Behan well and first directed his work on stage, provides the essential biographical details as well as candid insights into Behan's working methods and his political allegiances. Also included in the volume is a wide-ranging bibliography. "It seems to be Ireland's function, every twenty years or so, to provide a playwright who will kick English drama from the past into the present. Brendan Behan may well fill the place vacated by Sean O'Casey."-Kenneth Tynan

It Ain't All for Nothin'


Walter Dean Myers - 1978
    Then Grandma Carrie gets sick, and Tippy goes to live with Lonnie, his father. Lonnie's got his own thing going on, and he doesn't have much room in his life for a son he barely knows -- unless, that is, Tippy is willing to walk the far side of the fine line between right and wrong. Grandma Carrie always said if he had Jesus in his heart there wasn't anything to worry about, but sometimes it's not that simple. When the chips are down, will Tippy be able to call for help -- and is there anyone out there who will listen?

Dramatic Works of Lord Byron; Including Manfred, Cain, Doge of Venice, Sardanapalus, and the Two Foscari, Together with His Hebrew Melodies and Other Poems


Lord Byron - 1978
    The contents of this volume include: Manfred, Hebrew Melodies, Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, Monody on the Death of the Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan, The Lament of Tasso, Poems, Ode on Venice, The Prophecy of Dante, Cain, Marino Faliero, and many more. This vintage book was first published in 1840 and is being republished now in an affordable, modern, high-quality, edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author."

Hamletmachine and Other Texts for the Stage


Heiner Müller - 1978
    Includes: Hamletmachine, Correction, The Task, Quartet, Despoiled Shore, and Gundling's Life. One of the most original theatrical minds of our time, Müller, who resided in East Berlin before his death in 1995, was a frequent collaborator of Robert Wilson.

Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence Under Hypnosis


Helen Wambach - 1978
    Barnes & Noble, 2000.

A Walk in the Dark


Joyce Stranger - 1978
    He has a flourishing sheep farm in the hills of western Scotland, and his childhood sweetheart, the beautiful, dark-haired Mara, is soon to become his bride. Then in one brief shattering moment Steve's bright future goes black. There is an accident. He is blind. But life is not over, as he first believes. There are new directions he can take, with very special people--and one very special dog at his side--to help him along the way.

Pursuit


Robert L. Fish - 1978
    HELMUT VON SCHRAEDERGermany's most infamous war criminal, the handsome Aryan SS officer known as the "Monster" of the Maidenek death campBENJAMIN GROSSMANThe concentration camp survivor who became one of Israel's greatest heroes and most powerful military leadersHELMUT VON SCHRAEDER AND BENJAMIN GROSSMAN ARE THE SAME MAN...and now a diabolical scheme born in the last days of the Third Reich is about to achieve its nightmare triumph...

The Shows of London


Richard D. Altick - 1978
    Examining hundreds of the wonderfully varied exhibitions that culminated in the Crystal Palace of 1851, this generously illustrated book sheds light on a vast and colorful expanse of English social history that has thus far remained wholly unsurveyed.Drawing on a wealth of never-before-used information, Mr. Altick traces London exhibitions as they evolved from the display of relics in pre-Reformation churches, through the collections of eighteenth-century virtuosi, to the first science museums and public art galleries. He also narrates for the first time the history of the panorama and diorama as an influential genre of nineteenth-century popular art. At every point, the London shows are linked to the prevailing intellectual atmosphere and to trends in public taste.The material is fresh and fascinating; the range--from freaks to popular science, from the funeral effigies at Westminster Abbey to Madame Tussaud's waxworks--impressive. Like the exhibitions that best served the Victorian ideal of mass culture, The Shows of London is both entertaining and informative.

My Enemy, My Love


R.T. Stevens - 1978
    A whirlwind romance follows, with Vienna bathed in the brilliance of the last days of the emperor. And when James proposes to Sophie it seems a fitting end to that wonderful, enchanting summer. But darker days are on the horizon as Europe teeters on the brink of war.From the Hardcover edition.

F.I.S.T.


Joe Eszterhas - 1978
    of the wife he betrayed and the ambitions he tarnished ... and of the dangerous allies who brought him down.F.I.S.T.is a novel peopled with characters as big and as powerful as the diesel trucks they drive, a story shot through with savage violence and deep-etched corruption.F.I.S.T.is an On the Waterfront for the 1970s ... a totally unforgettable reading experience.

The Silent Bells


William MacKellar - 1978
    A young Swiss girl dreams of the day the cathedral bells, which no one has ever heard, will break their long silence when a special gift is presented at the cráeche on Christmas Eve.

The Phantom of the Open Hearth: A Film for Television Co-Ordinated by Leigh Brown


Jean Shepherd - 1978
    

The Comedies


William Shakespeare - 1978
    

Four Plays for Coarse Actors


Michael Frederick Green - 1978
    II Fornicazione is a "grim" tale of operatic adultery, poison and mayhem. Streuth is the crime story Agatha Christie would never have dared to write. A Collier's Tuesday Tea combines the kitchen with the coal mine with an irreverent glance at D.H. Lawrence. All's Well that Ends As You Like It pushes the genius of the bard to its limits while filching lines from most of his plays. In all, cues are missed, effects fail and props are lost and confusion reigns, but the coarse actors struggle on.