The Club


David Williamson - 1977
    It's about each and every club in the League and about soccer, rugby and baseball too," writes the Melbourne Sun's football commentator, Lou Richards, himself a former Aussie Rules champion who has seen it all. He and fellow fanatic, Professor Ian Turner of Monash University, introduce David Williamson's latest probe into the confrontations of Australian life. If you have ever belonged to a sports club, if you have ever been part of any organisation in which the will to win prevails and the trial of strength goes on in the clubroom long after the players have left the field - then you will know the men of The Club.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised]: Actor's Edition


Adam Long - 2011
    To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Reduced Shakespeare Company's classic farce, two of its original writer/performers (Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield) have thoroughly revised the show to bring it up to date for 21st-century audiences, incorporating some of the funniest material from the numerous amateur and professional productions that have been performed around the world. The cultural touchstone that is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) was born when three inspired, charismatic comics, having honed their pass-the-hat act at Renaissance fairs, premiered their preposterous masterwork at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1987. It quickly became a worldwide phenomenon, earning the title of London's second-longest-running comedy after a decade at the Criterion Theatre. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) is one of the world's most frequently produced plays, and has been translated into several dozen languages. Featured are all 37 of Shakespeare's plays, meant to be performed in 97 minutes, by three actors. Fast paced, witty, and physical, it's full of laughter for Shakespeare lovers and haters alike.

The Gore Supremacy


James Wolcott - 2012
    (He died on July 31st, 2012 at the age of 86.) The triumphant arc of Vidal’s literary career wasn’t solely a mastery of language, though that never hurts. Handsome, poised, slim, charismatic, able to hold his own in verbal fisticuffs without losing his imperious cool, Vidal was the premiere star author of his generation, the one who elevated the role of talk-show guest to a command performance--a theatrical event. He brought the electronic crackle of the TV screen to his prose and the tactical precision of his prose to combat debate on TV. His near-violent altercations on camera with William F. Buckley, Jr. and Norman Mailer are the stuff of YouTube legend and the secret to The Gore Supremacy. A contributing writer to Vanity Fair, a partisan observer of pop culture, and the author of the New York-in-the-70s memoir Lucking Out (which comes out in paperback this fall), James Wolcott has been a closeup observer of Vidal on-camera and off for more years than seems respectable. This, his first Kindle Single, is his way of paying homage--and saying goodbye.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Tennesse Williams (York Notes Advanced)


Steve Roberts - 2007
    One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.

Serjeant Musgrave's Dance


John Arden - 1959
    In Arden's introductory note to the text, he describes it as "a realistic, but not a naturalistic" play. The work follows three privates in the British Army and their sergeant, all of whom are deserters from a foreign imperialist war. Serjeant Musgrave and his men, Hurst, Sparky and Attercliffe, come to a northern English coal mining town in 1879. The community is in the grip of a coal strike and cut off by winter snow. The one means of reaching the town is by canal barge. They arrive in the company of the Bargee, a foul-mouthed, disrespectful individual who teases and abuses everyone, especially those in authority. In the local inn the soldiers meet Mrs. Hitchcock, who runs the inn, and the barmaid Annie. The soldiers are greeted by the mayor, parson and constable, who ask them to recruit men in hopes of alleviating some of the town's unemployment as a way to rid the town of their economic dead weight. Musgrave pretends that this is indeed his goal, and asks Mrs. Hitchcock about Billy Hicks, a dead fellow soldier from the mining town. It is revealed that Billy was the father of Annie's illegitimate child, but the baby died, and Annie's sanity has suffered from the loss of both Billy and her child.

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Novel for Serious People


Charles Osborne - 2000
    This edition contains substantial excerpts from the original four-act version which was never produed, as well as the full test of the final three-act version, selections from Wilde's correspondence, and commentary by George Bernard Shaw, Max Beerbohm, St. John Hankin, and James Agate.

The Importance of Being Earnest with Connections


Oscar Wilde - 1999
    This edition contains substantial excerpts from the original four-act version which was never produced, as well as the full text of the final three-act version, selections from Wilde's correspondence, and commentary by George Bernard Shaw, Max Beerbohm, St. John Hankin, and James Agate.

Goodbye Charles


Gabriel Davis - 2012
    Concerned something has happened to her husband, Jill follows a string of clues to try and find out the secret Charles was keeping from her.

Liliom


Ferenc Molnár - 1949
    He works intermittently as a barker for a merry go round and many servant girls fall victim to his charms. Among these girls is Julie, whom he eventually marries. Learning that he is about to become a father Liliom participates in a robbery to enhance his fortunes. But he is caught and stabs himself rather than submit to arrest. He is tried in the Magistrate's court on high, but they see through him there. They know what repentance is in his heart though he is much too cocky to admit it. He is sentenced to a term of years in the purifying fires with the promise that after that sentence has been served he can go back to earth with a chance to do one good deed there. A tender and moving story told with a master's touch.

The Illusion


Tony Kushner - 1994
    This adaptation offers readers the exquisite wordplay, beguiling comedy and fierce intelligence found in all of Kushner's work.The Illusion follows a contrite father, Pridamant, seeking news of his prodigal son from the sorcerer Alcandre. The magician conjures three episodes from the young man's life. Inexplicably, each scene finds the boy in a slightly different world: names change, allegiances shift and fairy-tale simplicity evolves into elegant tragedy. Pridamant watches, enthralled by the boy's struggles, but only as the strange tale reaches its conclusion does the father confront the ultimate-and unexpected-truth about his son. An enchanting argument for the power of theatrical imagination over reality, "The Illusion" weaves obsession and caprice, romance and murder, fact and fiction, into an enticing exploration of the greatest illusion of all-love.

The Diviners


Jim Leonard - 1983
    platforms Winner of the American College Theatre Festival, this marvelously theatrical play is the story of a disturbed young man and his friendship with a disenchanted preacher in southern Indiana in the early 1930s. When the boy was young he almost drowned. This trauma and the loss of his mother in the same accident has left him deathly afraid of water. The preacher, set on breaking away from a long line of Kentucky family preachers, is determined not to do what h

Three Plays: Exit the King / The Killer / Macbett


Eugène Ionesco - 1974
    As he dies, his kingdom also dies. His armies suffer defeat, the young emigrate, the seasons change overnight, and his kingdom’s borders shrink to the outline of his throne. At last, as the curtain falls, the king himself dissolves into a gray mist.

The Roaring Girl and Other City Comedies [The Shoemaker's Holiday, Every Man In His Humour, Eastward Ho!] (Oxford English Drama)


Thomas Dekker - 2001
    Included are The Roaring Girl, The Shoemaker's Holiday, Eastward Ho!, and Every Man in His Humour. The text is freshly edited using modern spelling. A critical introduction, a wide-ranging annotation, and an informative bibliography illuminate the plays' cultural contexts and theatrical potential for reader and performer alike.

Roman History, Books I-III


Livy - 2004
    The title of his most famous work, Ab Urbe Condita ("From the Founding of the City"), expresses the scope and magnitude of Livy's undertaking. He wrote in a mixture of annual chronology and narrative. Livy claims that lack of historical data prior to the sacking of Rome in 387 BC by the Gauls made his task more difficult. He wrote the majority of his works during the reign of Augustus. However, he is often identified with an attachment to the Roman Republic and a desire for its restoration. His writing style was poetic and archaic in contrast to Caesar's and Cicero's styles. Also, he often wrote from the Romans' opponent's point of view in order to accent the Romans' virtues in their conquest of Italy and the Mediterranean.

Responsibilities and other poems


W.B. Yeats - 1914
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.