Book picks similar to
Pygmalion / My Fair Lady by George Bernard Shaw
plays
classics
fiction
drama
All My Sons
Arthur Miller - 1947
Deever was sent to prison while Keller escaped punishment and went on to make lots of money. In a work of tremendous power, a love affair between Keller's son, Chris, and Ann Deever, Herbert's daughter, the bitterness of George Keller, who returns from the war to find his father in prison and his father's partner free, and the reaction of a son to his father's guilt escalate toward a climax of electrifying intensity.Winner of the Drama Critics' Award for Best New Play in 1947, All My Sons established Arthur Miller as a leading voice in the American theater. All My Sons introduced themes that thread through Miller's work as a whole: the relationship between fathers and sons, and the conflict between business and personal ethics.
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."
Harold and Maude
Colin Higgins - 1971
He fakes suicides to shock his self-obsessed mother, drives a customized Jaguar hearse, and attends funerals of complete strangers. Seventy-nine-year-old Maude Chardin, on the other hand, adores life. She liberates trees from city sidewalks and transplants them to the forest, paints smiles on the faces of church statues, and “borrows” cars to remind their owners that life is fleeting—here today, gone tomorrow! A chance meeting between the two turns into a madcap, whirlwind romance, and Harold learns that life is worth living. Harold and Maude started as Colin Higgins’ master’s thesis at UCLA Film School, and the script was purchased by Paramount. The film, directed by Hal Ashby, was released in 1971 and it bombed. But soon this quirky, dark comedy began being shown on college campuses and at midnight-movie theaters, and it gained a loyal cult following. This novelization was written by Higgins and published shortly after the film’s release but has been out of print for more than 30 years. Even fans who have seen the movie dozens of times will find this companion valuable, as it gives fresh elements to watch for and answers many of the film’s unresolved questions.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Dale Wasserman - 1970
w. inset. Kirk Douglas played on Broadway as a charming rogue who contrives to serve a short sentence in an airy mental institution rather in a prison. This, he learns, was a mistake. He clashes with the head nurse, a fierce artinet. Quickly, he takes over the yard and accomplishes what the medical profession has been unable to do for twelve years; he makes a presumed deaf and dumb Indian talk. He leads others out of introversion, stages a revolt so that they can s
The Duchess of Malfi
John Webster - 1614
An entirely new introduction sets the tragedy in the context of pre-Civil War England and gives a revealing view of its imagery and dramatic action.From its well-documented early performances to the two productions seen in the West End of London in the 1995-96 season, a stage history gives an account of the play in performance. Students, actors, directors and theatre-goers will all find here a reappraisal of Webster's artistry in the greatest age of English theatre, which highlights why it has lived on stage with renewed force in the last decades of the twentieth century.
Guys and Dolls
Damon Runyon - 1932
Take in the atmosphere of the Great White Way in its heyday at a little speakeasy called Good Time Charley's. Here are thirty-two of Damon Runyon's best-loved, most "Runyonesque" stories, each woven around the mobsmen, chorus girls, gamblers, and racetrack hustlers of the Broadway he knew and loved. Runyon captures with an acute eye and ear the colorful lives and language of a bygone era, one that lives on in our imagination—and on stage.
The Painted Veil
W. Somerset Maugham - 1925
Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.
The Rover
Aphra Behn - 1681
It is a revision of Thomas Killigrew's play "Thomaso", or "The Wanderer" (1664), and features multiple plot lines, dealing with the amorous adventures of a group of Englishmen and women in Naples at Carnival time. According to Restoration poet John Dryden, it "lacks the manly vitality of Killigrew's play, but shows greater refinement of expression." The play stood for three centuries as "Behn's most popular and most respected play."
The Way of the World
William Congreve - 1700
With Mirabell? You call my blood into my face with mentioning that traitor. She durst not have the confidence. I sent her to negotiate an affair, in which if I'm detected I'm undone. If that wheedling villain has wrought upon Foible to detect me, I'm ruined. O my dear friend, I'm a wretch of wretches if I'm detected.
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand - 1897
Set in Louis XIII's reign, it is the moving and exciting drama of one of the finest swordsmen in France, gallant soldier, brilliant wit, tragic poet-lover with the face of a clown. Rostand's extraordinary lyric powers gave birth to a universal hero--Cyrano De Bergerac--and ensured his own reputation as author of one of the best-loved plays in the literature of the stage.This translation, by the American poet Brian Hooker, is nearly as famous as the original play itself, and is generally considered to be one of the finest English verse translations ever written.
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade
Peter Weiss - 1963
But this play-within-a-play is not historical drama. Its thought is as modern as today's police states and The Bomb; its theatrical impact has everywhere been called a major innovation. It is total theatre: philosophically problematic, visually terrifying. It engages the eye, the ear, and the mind with every imaginable dramatic device, technique, and stage picture, even including song and dance. All the forces and elements possible to the stage are fused in one overwhelming experience. This is theatre such as has rarely been seen before. The play is basically concerned with the problem of revolution. Are the same things true for the masses and for their leaders? And where, in modern times, lie the borderlines of sanity?
The Cripple of Inishmaan
Martin McDonagh - 1997
No one is more excited than Cripple Billy, an unloved boy whose chief occupation has been grazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank. And as news of his audacity ripples through his rumor-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a world so comically cramped and mean-spirited that hope is an affront to its order.
About a Boy
Nick Hornby - 1998
He's single, child-free, goes to the right clubs and knows which trainers to wear. He's also found a great way to score with women: attend single parents' groups full of available (and grateful) mothers, all hoping to meet a Nice Guy.Which is how Will meets Marcus, the oldest twelve-year-old on the planet. Marcus is a bit strange: he listens to Joni Mitchell and Mozart, looks after his mum and has never owned a pair of trainers. But Marcus latches on to Will - and won't let go. Can Will teach Marcus how to grow up cool? And can Marcus help Will just to grow up?
Tales from Shakespeare
Charles Lamb - 1807
Presents an introduction to Shakespeare's greatest plays including Hamlet Othello, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest and Pericles.