Book picks similar to
The God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch
plays
lgbtq
jewish
judaica
Look Back in Anger
John Osborne - 1957
He browbeats his flatmate, terrorizes his wife, and is not above sleeping with her best friend-who loathes Jimmy almost as much as he loathes himself. Yet this working-class Hamlet, the original Angry Young Man, is one of the most mesmerizing characters ever to burst onto a stage, a malevolently vital, volcanically articulate internal exile in the dreary, dreaming Siberia of postwar England.First produced in 1956, Look Back in Anger launched a revolution in the English theater. Savagely, sadly, and always impolitely, it compels readers and audiences to acknowledge the hidden currents of rottenness and rage in what used to be called "the good life."
Machinal
Sophie Treadwell - 1928
Among her assignments was the sensational murder involving Ruth Snyder, who with her lover, Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and gone to the electric chair. Out of this came MACHINAL, a powerful expressionist drama about the dependent status of women and the living hell of a loveless marriage. Successfully premiered on Broadway in 1928 with Clark Gable as the lover, the play was seen in London two years later, provoked a sensation in Tairov's version in Moscow in 1933, and was then largely forgotten until revivals in New York and London in the 1990s.
Bread Givers
Anzia Yezierska - 1925
Sarah's struggle towards independence and self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share. Beautifully redesigned page for page with the previous editions, Bread Givers is an essential historical work with enduring relevance.
The Playboy of the Western World
J.M. Synge - 1907
Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Dear Evan Hansen
Steven Levenson - 2017
Evan is shy, lonely, and bullied for it―teeming with the irrepressible emotions all too familiar with anyone who's ever been a teenager. After a tragedy strikes, Evan's life suddenly gets turned around, but is it ultimately for the better?
Heroes and Saints and Other Plays: Giving Up the Ghost, Shadow of a Man, Heroes and Saints
Cherríe L. Moraga - 1994
Included are: "Shadow of a Man," winner of the 1990 Fund for New American Plays Award; "Heroes and Saints," winner of the Dramalogue, the PEN West, and the Critics Circle awards, as well as the Will Glickman Prize for Best Play of 1992; and "Giving Up the Ghost," first published by West End Press in 1986, and now presented here in its revised stage version.
Wit
Margaret Edson - 1995
What we as her audience take away from this remarkable drama is a keener sense that, while death is real and unavoidable, our lives are ours to cherish or throw away—a lesson that can be both uplifting and redemptive. As the playwright herself puts it, “The play is not about doctors or even about cancer. It’s about kindness, but it shows arrogance. It’s about compassion, but it shows insensitivity.” In Wit, Edson delves into timeless questions with no final answers: How should we live our lives knowing that we will die? Is the way we live our lives and interact with others more important than what we achieve materially, professionally, or intellectually? How does language figure into our lives? Can science and art help us conquer death, or our fear of it? What will seem most important to each of us about life as that life comes to an end?The immediacy of the presentation, and the clarity and elegance of Edson’s writing, make this sophisticated, multilayered play accessible to almost any interested reader. As the play begins, Vivian Bearing, a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the intricate, difficult Holy Sonnets of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne, is diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. Confident of her ability to stay in control of events, she brings to her illness the same intensely rational and painstakingly methodical approach that has guided her stellar academic career. But as her disease and its excruciatingly painful treatment inexorably progress, she begins to question the single-minded values and standards that have always directed her, finally coming to understand the aspects of life that make it truly worth living.
A Man for All Seasons
Robert Bolt - 1960
The classic play about Sir Thomas More, the Lord chancellor who refused to compromise and was executed by Henry VIII.
Spike Heels
Theresa Rebeck - 1991
The combatants are a sexy, volatile young woman and three Back Bay types a writer, a lawyer and a fiancee in sensible shoes. The setting is Boston, the ending is happy and laughter abounds."Stinging one liners." N.Y. Daily News."Places a superior wryly pleasing ... fashionable femin
The Dybbuk
S. Ansky - 1914
Based on Jewish folklore, its dark implications of mysterious, other-worldly forces at work in a quaint and simple village make for gripping, suspenseful theater. To the Chassidic Jews of eastern Europe, a dybbuk was not a legend or a myth; rather it remained a constant and portentous possibility. During that age of pervasive mysticism, when rabbis became miracle workers and the sinister arts of the Kabbala were fearsomely invoked, it was never doubted that a discontented spirit from the dead could cross the barrier between the “real” and the “other” worlds to enter a living human body. The Dybbuk is a masterful play, full of deep-rooted obsessions and dramatic suspense, fascinating for the glimpse it provides of the rich, poetic, and often tragic culture of the Chassidim. In this classic translation by Henry Alsberg and Winifred Katzin, the authentic cadences of the original Yiddish are deftly preserved.
Faust, First Part
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1808
Here indeed is a monumental Faust, an audacious man boldly wagering with the devil, Mephistopheles, that no magic, sensuality, experience, or knowledge can lead him to a moment he would wish to last forever. Here, in Faust, Part I, the tremendous versatility of Goethe’s genius creates some of the most beautiful passages in literature. Here too we experience Goethe’s characteristic humor, the excitement and eroticism of the witches’ Walpurgis Night, and the moving emotion of Gretchen’s tragic fate.This authoritative edition, which offers Peter Salm’s wonderfully readable translation as well as the original German on facing pages, brings us Faust in a vital, rhythmic American idiom that carefully preserves the grandeur, integrity, and poetic immediacy of Goethe’s words.
The Ferryman (NHB Modern Plays)
Jez Butterworth - 2017
The Carney farmhouse is a hive of activity with preparations for the annual harvest. A day of hard work on the land and a traditional night of feasting and celebrations lie ahead. But this year they will be interrupted by a visitor.Developed by Sonia Friedman Productions, The Ferryman premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in April 2017, before transferring to the West End. The production was directed by Sam Mendes.
Christopher Durang Explains it All for You
Christopher Durang - 1983
' dentity CrisisRecovering from a nervous breakdown, Jane is nursed and nagged by her energetic and overwhelming mother, Edith Fromage, who claims to have invented cheese. She also criticizes Jane for her suicide attempt, but then claims it never happened. Plus Jane is very confused by the fact that her mother and her brother Dwayne seem to be having an affair. But then at other times, her brother turns into her father, and then into her grandfather, and sometimes into a French count. So Jane isn’t really sure who he is. Her psychiatrist makes a house call and listens sympathetically to Jane’s recurring memory of attending a nightmarish production of “Peter Pan” in her youth. But then he goes off and has sex change, and returns as a woman, and Jane has trouble recognizing him. Then his wife shows up, also with a sex change, and the wife now looks like the psychiatrist. So poor Jane feels crazier still, though Edith and Dwayne/father/ grandfather/count think the new company is great fun, and everybody ends by conjugating the verb “dentity” : I dentity, you dentity, he she or it denties.The Actor's NightmareThe Actor's Nightmare is a short comic play by Christopher Durang. It involves an accountant named George Spelvin, who is mistaken for an actor's understudy and forced to perform in a play for which he doesn't know any of the lines.
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)
Ann-Marie MacDonald - 1997
Escaping into her research, Constance decodes the Gustav Manuscript, and discovers a pair of comedies that she believes are the source for Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet. Transported into the world of her theory, she comes face-to-face with Desdemona and Juliet and discovers that, far from shrinking violets, they are hellions full of surprises. What follows is a riotous retelling of theatrical legend that brings Constance out of her gloom and straight into a new and confident self.