Best of
Plays

1965

The Investigation


Peter Weiss - 1965
    This testimony, concerning Auschwitz and the atrocities which were enacted there, has been edited and extracted by Peter Weiss into a dramatic document that relies solely and completely on the facts for its effectiveness.There is no artistic license, no manipulation of facts and figures, no rearrangement of events for theatrical effect. Nameless witnesses stand and recall their appalling memories of Auschwitz, allowing us to bear witness to their painful and painstaking search for truth and, ultimately, justice. What emerges is a chastening and purging documentary of deeply moving power.Peter Weiss was born in 1916 and settled in Sweden before the outbreak of World War II. Apart from his writing, he was also well known as a painter, theatrical and operatic director, and a film maker. His magnificent play Marat/Sade, which is also available from Marion Boyars Publishers, established his reputation among English-speakling audiences as a revolutionary dramatist, and has continued to be a bestselling classic. He died in 1982.

Three Plays: Blithe Spirit / Hay Fever / Private Lives


Noël Coward - 1965
    Unfortunately, Elvira is now a ghost and Charles has, understandably, moved on and married Ruth.The bohemian protagonists of Hay Fever wreak emotional havoc on a house full of weekend visitors.In Private Lives, a recently divorced couple find themselves in adjoining hotel rooms while on honeymoon with their new spouses.

A Streetcar Named Desire and Other Plays


Tennessee Williams - 1965
    In A Streetcar Named Desire fading southern belle Blanche Dubois finds her romantic illusions brutally shattered; The Glass Menagerie portrays an introverted girl trapped in a fantasy world; and Sweet Bird of Youth shows how we are unable to escape ‘the enemy, time’.

The Odd Couple


Neil Simon - 1965
    This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assembled for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. And if the mess is any indication, it's no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger who has just been separated from his wife. Fastidious, depressed and none too tense, Felix seems suicidal, but as the action unfolds Oscar becomes the one with murder on his mind when the clean-freak and the slob ultimately decide to room together with hilarious results as The Odd Couple is born. "His skill is not only great but constantly growing...There is scarcely a moment that is not hilarious." - The New York Times "Fresh, richly hilarious and remarkably original. Wildly, irresistibly, incredibly and continuously funny." - New York Daily News

Altona/Men without Shadows/The Flies


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1965
    

Slow Dance on the Killing Ground: Play in Three Acts


William Hanley - 1965
    The door is flung open, letting in a lithe young black man, weirdly gotten up in a soft, high-crowned hat, sunglasses, a cape, short slacks and sneakers. Mr. Hanley calls this act Pas de Deux. In this dance for two, the characters make hesitant approaches, circle, feint, threaten each other with gun and ice pick but scarcely make contact. The young man is obviously a hunted man. Through the circumlocutions of his odd mixture of jive talk and fancy literary allusions, there pants a sense of terror. The storekeeper is a non-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, is close-mouthed, suspicious, anxious to avoid self-involvement. In the second act, the Pas de Deux becomes Pas de Trois. The third dancer is Rosie, an eigh-teen-year old from Riverdale, has wandered into the shop after losing her way while looking for the address of an abortionist. Rosie has no illusions about her homeliness or about the encounter that has led to her troubles. The laconic German and the flowery young man react to her with a sensitivity and concern that seem to diminish the furies within them. But not for long. Finally the German is driven to revealing the truth about himself as the young man, at last, in the third act, faces his inexorable fate out there on the killing ground.

All in Good Time - A Comedy


Bill Naughton - 1965
    By the author of Alfie, this 1960's Broadway hit was made into the film The Family Way which starred John and Hayley Mills.4 women, 7 men

Moby Dick - Rehearsed


Orson Welles - 1965
    A Shakespearean company puts down their rehearsal sides of Lear and curiously take up those of a new play entitled Moby Dick. On the rehearsal stage of platforms, the teasers overhead suddenly become yardarms with sails and a tall ladder becomes a mast. The platforms become the decks of the ship on which the cast sails through the storms and tribulat