Book picks similar to
Oppenheimer by Tom Morton-Smith
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The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Bertolt Brecht - 1941
A dizzyingly intelligent political satire on the (ir)resistibleness of political thuggery, Arturo Ui satirizes the rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany by dressing it up as “the gangster film” we thought we knew. In Arturo Ui, the metamorphosis of thug-to-politician through corruption, intimidation and all manner of brutality is thinly masked by a Chicago gangland epic where the young Arturo Ui stages a violent takeover of the green grocer trade.
Equivocation
Bill Cain - 2009
King James commissions Shakespeare to write a play about the Gunpowder Plot.
All in the Timing
David Ives - 1994
Ives's characters plunge into black holes called "Philadelphias," where the simplest desires are hilariously thwarted. Chimps named Milton, Swift, and Kafka are locked in a room and made to re-create Hamlet. And a con man peddles courses in a dubious language in which "hello" translates as "velcro" and "fraud" comes out as "freud."At once enchanting and perplexing, incisively intelligent and side-splittingly funny, this original paperback edition of Ives's plays includes "Sure Thing," "Words, Words, Words," "The Universal Language," "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," "The Philadelphia," "Long Ago and Far Away," "Foreplay, or The Art of the Fugue," "Seven Menus," "Mere Mortals," "English Made Simple," "A Singular Kinda Guy," "Speed-the-Play," "Ancient History," and "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread."
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.
Fires in the Mirror
Anna Deavere Smith - 1993
Derived from interviews with a wide range of people who experienced or observed New York's 1991 Crown Heights racial riots, Fires In The Mirror is as distinguished a work of commentary on current Black-White tensions as it is a work of drama.
The Works of John Leguizamo: Freak, Spic-o-rama, Mambo Mouth, and Sexaholix
John Leguizamo - 2007
In this new Harper Paperback edition, all four shows are compiled into one phenomenally entertaining volume.Mambo Mouth (1991), Leguizamo's first show, was an off Broadway sensation. Leguizamo's portrayal of seven different Latino characters earned him both Obie and Outer Critics Circle awards. His follow up, Spic–O–Rama (1993), a "dysfunctional family comedy," presents 24–hours in the life of one family. It enjoyed a sold–out run in Chicago before relocating to New York where it won its creator a Drama Desk Award. Freak (1998), Leguizamo's Broadway debut, is his own coming–of–age story. A "demi–semi–quasi–pseudo–autobiography," the show was a critical and commercial success and won an Emmy when it was shown on TV. Sexaholix: A Love Story (2001), based on the sold–out national tour of John Leguizamo Live! was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award as well as a Tony Award.Alternately hilarious and poignant, always candid and searingly intelligent, The Works of John Leguizamo is a must–have for fans of this inimitable performer.
The Last Five Years
Jason Robert Brown - 2002
The show's unconventional structure consists of Cathy, the woman, telling her story backwards while Jamie, the man, tells his story chronologically; the two characters meet only once, at their wedding in the middle of the show.Jason Robert Brown won Drama Desk Awards for the music and the lyrics after the Off-Broadway premiere in 2002 starring Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott. The show has since been produced at almost every major regional theater in the U.S., and has been seen in Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, Canada, Spain, and the UK.
Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons
Sam Steiner - 2015
But what if there were a limit? Oliver and Bernadette are about to find out.Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons imagines a world where we’re forced to say less. It’s about what we say and how we say it; about the things we can only hear in the silence; about dead cats, activism, eye contact and lemons, lemons, lemons, lemons, lemons.
Boom
Jean Tay - 2009
Boom tells the story of an elderly woman and her property agent son in Singapore, who are struggling over the potential en bloc sale of their home. Their destinies become interwoven with that of an idealistic civil servant, Jeremiah, who is facing the greatest challenge of his career—persuading a reluctant corpse to yield its memories. Boom is a quirky yet poignant tale about the relocation of both dead and living, and how personal stories get left behind in the inexorable march of progress.Written by economist-turned-playwright Jean Tay, Boom was conceptualised at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2007, and developed and staged by the Singapore Repertory Theatre in September 2008. It was nominated for Best Original Script for The Straits Times’ Life! Theatre Awards in 2009 and is now an O- and N-Level Literature text in Singapore schools.“Jean Tay is one of the most gifted playwrights I have come across in years.” —Gaurav Kripalani, Artistic Director, Singapore Repertory Theatre
Ruined
Lynn Nottage - 2009
. . . Lynn Nottage’s beautiful, hideous and unpretentiously important play [is] a shattering, intimate journey into faraway news reports.”—Linda Winer, Newsday“An intense and gripping new drama . . . the kind of new play we desperately need: well-informed and unafraid of the world’s brutalities. Nottage is one of our finest playwrights, a smart, empathetic and daring storyteller who tells a story an audience won’t expect.”—David Cote, Time Out New YorkA rain forest bar and brothel in the brutally war-torn Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage’s extraordinary new play. The establishment’s shrewd matriarch, Mama Nadi, keeps peace between customers from both sides of the civil war, as government soldiers and rebel forces alike choose from her inventory of women, many already “ruined” by rape and torture when they were pressed into prostitution. Inspired by interviews she conducted in Africa with Congo refugees, Nottage has crafted an engrossing and uncommonly human story with humor and song served alongside its postcolonial and feminist politics in the rich theatrical tradition of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage.Lynn Nottage’s plays include Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Fabulation, and Intimate Apparel, winner of the American Theatre Critics’ Steinberg New Play Award and the Francesca Primus Prize. Her plays have been widely produced, with Intimate Apparel receiving more productions than any other play in America during the 2005-2006 season.