Book picks similar to
9 to 5: The Musical by Dolly Parton
plays
theatre
plays-i-ve-seen
sheet-music
The Real Inspector Hound & After Magritte
Tom Stoppard - 1969
The first of the plays, The Real Inspector Hound, is the longer of the two; here the author has created a looking glass comedy of great suspense and intrigue about two drama critics. The second play, After Magritte, is 'a surrealist comedy in detective form-or is it a comedy in surrealist form? A husband and wife argue whether the figure they saw in the street was a one-legged football player with the ball under his arm, or a man in pajamas with a tortoise under his arm. The play shows that Stoppard is as amusing and clever as always.'
The Underpants
Steve Martin - 2002
One Sunday morning they fall to her ankles right in the middle of town--a public scandal! Mortified, Theo swears to keep her at home until she can find some less unruly undies. Amid this chaos he's trying to rent a room in their flat. The prospective lodgers have some underlying surprises of their own. In The Underpants, Steve Martin brings his comic genius and sophisticated literary style to Carl Sternheim's classic 1910 farce. His hilarious new version was staged by Artistic Director Barry Edelstein, and opened in March '02 on Off-Broadway to critical acclaim.
Hughie
Eugene O'Neill - 1958
Only two characters appear on stage; Hughie, the third and most important one, is dead. It is Hughie's innocence, gullibility, and need to believe in a far more exciting existence than he ever knew which gives some kind of purpose to the shabby lives of the two who remain. O'Neill here again writes of the defeated and the courage that comes by way of illusions reflecting still other illusions in a world that needs them all.Hughie, the only surviving manuscript from a series of eight one-act monologue plays that O'Neill planned in 1940, was completed in 1941.
Lettice and Lovage: A Comedy
Peter Shaffer - 1987
As a tour guide at Fustian House, one of the least stately of London's stately homes, she theatrically embellishes its historical past, ultimately coming up on the radar of Lotte Schon, an inspector from the Preservation Trust. Neither impressed or entertained by Lettice's freewheeling history lessons, Schon fires her. Not one however, to go without a fight, Lettice engages the stoic, conventionial Lotte in battle to the death of all that is sacred to the Empire and the crown.
Come From Away: Welcome to the Rock: An Inside Look at the Hit Musical
Irene Sankoff - 2019
On September 11, 2001, 38 planes and 6,579 passengers were forced to land in the provincial town of Gander, Newfoundland. The local residents opened their arms to the displaced visitors, offering food, shelter, and friendship. In the days that followed, cultures clashed and nerves ran high, but uneasiness turned into trust, music soared into the night, and gratitude grew into enduring friendships.
Come From Away: Welcome to the Rock is the ultimate companion piece to Irene Sankoff and David Hein's smash-hit musical based on that extraordinary experience. Featuring the complete book and lyrics for the first time in print, a foreword by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and exclusive photos of the company and physical production, this essential companion also includes original interviews with passengers, Gander residents, and the actors who portray them. The narrative by theater historian Laurence Maslon details the events of that memorable and challenging week and also traces the musical's development from the ten-year reunion of residents and airline passengers in Gander, where the idea for the musical was born , to the global phenomenon it is today.
Come From Away: Welcome to the Rock gives an unprecedented look behind the curtain and demonstrates why the story has touched so many so deeply: Because we come from everywhere, we all come from away.
The Dreams of Tipu Sultan and Bali: The Sacrifice: Two Plays by Girish Karnad
Girish Karnad - 2004
This play, first staged at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre, is based on a tenth-century Jain myth about a king who finds his queen involved with an elephant-keeper.
She Kills Monsters: Young Adventurers Edition
Qui Nguyen - 2012
When Agnes finds Tilly's Dungeons & Dragons notebook, however, she stumbles into a journey of discovery and action-packed adventure in the imaginary world that was Tilly's refuge. In this high-octane dramatic comedy laden with homicidal fairies, nasty ogres, and 90s pop culture, acclaimed young playwright Qui Nguyen offers a heart-pounding homage to the geek and warrior within us all.
Polaroid Stories: An Adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses
Naomi Iizuka - 1999
Not all the stories these characters tell are true; some are lies, wild yams, clever deceits, baroque fabrications. But whether or not a homeless kid invents an incredible history for himself isn't the point, explains diarist-of-the-street Jim Grimsley. "All these stories and lies add up to something like the truth."Inspired in part by Ovid's Metamorphoses, Iizuka's Polaroid Stories takes place on an abandoned pier on the outermost edge of a city, a way stop for dreamers, dealers and desperadoes, a no-man's land where runaways seek camaraderie, refuge and escape. Serpentine routes from the street to the heart characterize the interactions in this spellbinding tale of young people pushed to society's fringe. Informed, as well, by interviews with young prostitutes and street kids, Polaroid Stories conveys a whirlwind of psychic disturbance, confusion and longing. Like their mythic counterparts, these modem-day mortals are engulfed by needs that burn and consume. Their language mixes poetry and profanity, imbuing the play with lyricism and great theatrical force.
All New People
Zach Braff - 2012
Away from the rest of the world, this perfect escape is interrupted by a motley parade of misfits who show up and change his plans. A hired beauty, a fireman, and an eccentric British real estate agent desperately trying to stay in the country all suddenly find themselves tangled together in a beach house where the mood is anything but sunny.This pithy piece portrays a scenario of attempted suicide with mordant humour, where a basis of social alienation leads to unexpected connections. The richly-drawn characters are quick-witted and narcissistic yet self-aware and the dialogue is fluid and witty."All New People" is centred around a clever concept which works as a catalyst for both angst-fuelled scrutiny and morbid humour.
Lonely Planet - Acting Edition
Steven Dietz - 1994
Jody is in his forties and runs a map store. Not one for the outside world, he stays in his store all the time. His friend, Carl is in his late thirties and has been bringing chairs of dead friends into Jody's store and leaving them there. When Jody needs to take an AIDS test, Carl tries to convince him it is not only okay to leave the store, but also that he must take responsibility for his life. If he doesn't, he will join the set of chairs that Carl has taken great pains to place in the right spots around the store. Jody finally leaves the map store to take his HIV test and return to find Carl sitting in a chair of his own. With this gesture, we know that Carl has joined the many of their friends who have died, but now Jody must take Carl's place as the caretaker.
A Strange Loop
Michael R. Jackson - 2021
Michael R. Jackson’s blistering, momentous new musical follows a young artist at war with a host of demons — not least of which, the punishing thoughts in his own head — in an attempt to capture and understand his own strange loop.
Master Class
Terrence McNally - 1995
Inspired by a series of master classes the great diva conducted at Juilliard toward the end of her career, this drama puts Maria Callas at center stage again as she coaxes, prods, and inspires students—"victims" as she calls them—into giving the performances of their lives while revealing her own. As she slips off into memories, we experience her days at La Scala, her marriage to Meneghini, and her great doomed love for Aristotle Onassis. But the dazzling theatricality comes from Callas's emotional explosions, her cutting wit, and the soaring music as each student sings an aria that exposes the Divina's vulnerabilities ... and her genius.