Book picks similar to
Harvey by Mary Chase
plays
drama
theatre
classics
Big Fish
Daniel Wallace - 1998
He saved lives, tamed giants. Animals loved him. People loved him. Women loved him (and he loved them back). And he knew more jokes than any man alive.Now, as he lies dying, Edward Bloom can't seem to stop telling jokes -or the tall tales that have made him, in his son's eyes, an extraordinary man. Big Fish is the story of this man's life, told as a series of legends and myths inspired by the few facts his son, William, knows. Through these tales -hilarious and wrenching, tender and outrageous- William begins to understand his elusive father's great feats, and his great failings.
Lysistrata
Aristophanes
Led by the title character, the women of the warring city-states of Greece agree to withhold sexual favours with their husbands until they agree to cease fighting. The war of the sexes that ensues makes Lysistrata a bawdy comedy without peer in the history of theatre.
Peter and Alice
John Logan - 2013
Enchantment and reality collide at a 1932 meeting between Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the original Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Llewelyn Davies, the original Peter Pan. Peter and Alice, which opened on London's West End in March 2013, stars Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw.
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.
Forrest Gump
Winston Groom - 1986
After accidentally becoming the star of University of Alabama's football team, Forrest goes on to become a Vietnam War hero, a world-class Ping-Pong player, a villainous wrestler, and a business tycoon -- as he wonders with childlike wisdom at the insanity all around him. In between misadventures, he manages to compare battle scars with Lyndon Johnson, discover the truth about Richard Nixon, and survive the ups and downs of remaining true to his only love, Jenny, on an extraordinary journey through three decades of the American cultural landscape. Forrest Gump has one heck of a story to tell -- and you've got to read it to believe it...
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 Mousetrap: A Play
Agatha Christie - 1952
Who can it be? One by one the suspicious characters reveal their sordid pasts until at the last, nerve-shredding moment the identity and the motive are finally revealed.The Mousetrap is the longest-running play in the history of London's West End
The Play That Goes Wrong
Henry Lewis - 2013
I'm Inspector Carter. Take my case. This must be Charles Haversham! I'm sorry, this must've given you all a damn shock.After benefitting from a large and sudden inheritance, the inept and accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society embark on producing an ambitious 1920s murder mystery. They are delighted that neither casting issues nor technical hitches currently stand in their way. However, hilarious disaster ensues and the cast start to crack under the pressure, but can they get the production back on track before the final curtain falls?The Play That Goes Wrong is a farcical murder mystery, a play within a play, conceived and performed by award-winning company Theatre Mischief. It was first published as a one-act play and is published in this new edition as a two-act play.
Trifles
Susan Glaspell - 1916
Her short story, "A Jury of Her Peers", was adapted from the play a year after its debut. It was first performed by the Provincetown Players at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts on August 8, 1916. In the original play, Glaspell played the role of one of the characters, Mrs. Hale. It is frequently anthologized in American literature textbooks. The play begins as the county attorney, the sherrif, Mr. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale enter the Wright's empty farm house. On prompting from the county attorney, Mr. Hale recounts his visit to the house the previous day, when he found Mrs. Wright behaving strangely and found her husband upstairs with a rope around his neck, dead. Mr. Hale notes that, when he questioned her, Mrs. Wright claimed that she was fast asleep when someone strangled her husband.Often hailed as one of the quintessential feminist plays, 'Trifles' earned Glaspell a Pulitzer Prize and renewed literary recognition.
The Philadelphia Story
Philip Barry - 1939
This Broadway hit starred Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord of the Philadelphia Lords, an inhibited and spoiled daughter of the privileged. Divorced from C.J. Dexter Haven, she is engaged to a successful young snob. A gossip weekly sends a reporter and a camera woman to report the wedding arrangements and they are injected into the house by Tracy's brother who hopes to divert their attention from father's romance with a Broadway dancer. Tracy finds herself growing int