As Bees in Honey Drown


Douglas Carter Beane - 1998
    Book annotation not available for this title.

Wonder of the World: Trade Edition


David Lindsay-Abaire - 2002
    The New York production featured knockout performances by Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Sedaris. Ben Brantley, in the "New York Times" wrote "clearly, Mr. Lindsay-Abaire hasn't lost his playfully wicked eye, equally appalled and affectionate . . . his style both embraces and spoofs the All-American appetite for spiritual lift, sitcom perkiness, and slimy tabloid prurience." A firm believer in destiny-and inspired by a Marilyn Monroe movie-Cass leaves her husband and boards a bus to Niagara Falls, where she hopes to meet the unknown man she believes herself fated to end up with. Along the way toward the inevitable climax on the brink of the waterfall, she checks items off her list of "things to do in life," and takes the audience on an often moving, always hilarious journey.

Wrecks and Other Plays


Neil LaBute - 2007
    Meet Edward Carr: loving father, successful businessman, grieving widower. In this concise powerhouse of a play, LaBute limns the boundaries of love, exploring the limits of what society will accept versus what the heart will desire. This collection also features rarely staged short plays, including "Liars' Club," "Coax," and the never-before-seen "Falling in Like."

The Graduate


Terry Johnson - 2000
    It premiered in April 2000 at the Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, starring Kathleen Turner as Mrs RobinsonCalifornia in the 60s. Benjamin's got excellent grades, very proud parents and, since he helped Mrs Robinson with her zipper, a fine future behind him… A cult novel, a classic film, a quintessential hit of the 60s, now Benjamin's disastrous sexual odyssey is brought vividly to life in this world stage premiere production."Terry Johnson is that rare creature: a moralist with wit. He writes with responsible gaiety" (Guardian)

Barefoot in the Park


Neil Simon - 1963
    He's a straight-as-an-arrow lawyer and she's a free spirit always looking for the latest kick. Their new apartment is her most recent find-too expensive with bad plumbing and in need of a paint job. After a six day honeymoon, they get a surprise visit from Corie's loopy mother and decide to play matchmaker during a dinner with their neighbor-in-the-attic Velasco, where everything that can go wrong, does. Paul just doesn't understand Corie, as she sees it. He's too staid, too boring and she just wants him to be a little more spontaneous, running "barefoot in the park" would be a start...

Betty's Summer Vacation - Acting Edition


Christopher Durang - 2000
    But Betty's luck turns to delicious lunacy when this sensible Everywoman gets drawn into the chaotic world of some very unsavory housemates - her friend Trudy, who talks too much; the lewd, seminaked Buck, who tries to have sex with everyone; and Keith, a serial killer who hides in his room with a mysterious hatbox. With sand between her toes, walking a thin line between sanity and survival, poor Betty will leave her summer vacation more terrorized than tan.

Don Juan in Soho: After Molière


Patrick Marber - 2007
    Moliere's farcical, tragic, anarchic Don Juan (1665) is the inspiration for Patrick Marber's new play in which the action of the original is relocated to present day Soho, London.Whereas Moliere condemned his anti-hero to a literal Hell, Marber condemns him to a hell of his own making.Don Juan in Soho premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in December 2006.

The God of Carnage


Yasmina Reza - 2007
    Jacobs Theater, New York City, in March 2009.

Woman in Mind


Alan Ayckbourn - 1986
    By turns sad and funny, satiric and moving, Alan Ayckbourn's intelligent British comedy Woman in Mind charts, without sentimentality or heartless irony, a frowsy middle-aged Englishwoman's hopeless descent into psychosis.

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire


Caryl Churchill - 1992
    It was first staged in 1976 at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and revived at the National Theatre in 1996.Caryl Churchill has written for the stage, television and radio. A renowned and prolific playwright, her plays include Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, Bliss, Love and Information, Mad Forest and A Number. In 2002, she received the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Sex with Strangers


Laura Eason - 2014
    As attraction turns to sex, and they inch closer to getting what they want, both must confront the dark side of ambition and the near impossibility of reinventing oneself when the past is only a click away. Sex with Strangers had its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company; it will have its New York premiere at Second Stage Theatre in June 2014, directed by David Schwimmer.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee


William Finn - 2006
    Vocal selections from the popular Broadway musical, including: 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee * My Friend, the Dictionary * Pandemonium * I'm Not That Smart * Magic Foot * Prayer of the Comfort Counselor * My Unfortunate Erection * Woe Is Me * I Speak Six Languages * The I Love You Song.

Dry Land


Ruby Rae Spiegel - 2015
    Amy is curled up on the locker room floor. DRY LAND is a play about abortion, female friendship, and resiliency, and what happens in one high school locker room after everybody’s left.

Proof


David Auburn - 2000
    His death has brought into her midst both her sister, Claire, who wants to take Catherine back to New York with her, and Hal, a former student of Catherine's father who hopes to find some hint of Robert's genius among his incoherent scribblings. The passion that Hal feels for math both moves and angers Catherine, who, in her exhaustion, is torn between missing her father and resenting the great sacrifices she made for him. For Catherine has inherited at least a part of her father's brilliance -- and perhaps some of his instability as well. As she and Hal become attracted to each other, they push at the edges of each other's knowledge, considering not only the unpredictability of genius but also the human instinct toward love and trust.

Spring Storm


Tennessee Williams - 1999
    His professor, the renowned E. C. Mabie, remarked as he got up and dismissed the seminar, "Well, we all have to paint our nudes!" Tom's earlier comment in his journal that the play "is well-constructed, no social propaganda, and is suitable for the commercial stage" seems accurate enough in 1999, but woefully naive deep in the Depression when the play's sexual explicitness—particularly its matter-of-fact acceptance of a woman's right to her own sexuality—would have been seen as not only shocking but also politically radical. Spring Storm would later be disavowed by the author as "simply a study of Sex—a blind animal urge or force (like the regenerative force of April) gripping four lives and leading them into a tangle of cruel and ugly relations."But the solid and deft characterizations of the four young people whose lives intertwine—the sexually alive Heavenly Critchfield, her earthy lover Dick Miles, Heavenly's wealthy but tongue-tied admirer Arthur Shannon, and the repressed librarian Hertha Nielson who loves Arthur—are archetypes of characters we will meet again and again in the Williams canon. Epic in scope, a bit melodramatic in execution, tragic in outcome, Spring Storm created a wave of excitement among theatre insiders when it was given a staged reading at The Ensemble Studio Theatre's Octoberfest '96. This edition has been prepared, with an illuminating introduction, by Dan Isaac, who initiated the Octoberfest production.