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Dramatists Play Service, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Drama

One Act

2

5

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Notes: An up-to-date and imaginative interpretation of events in the life of the young Oedipus, before he goes on to the fateful encounter detailed in Oedipus Rex. Presented with great success at New York's Julliard School, the play is especially recommended for

Synopsis: The scene is a mountain pass in ancient Greece, on the road to Thebes. The pass is guarded by a priestess from the temple of Hera and by a sphinx who must ask a riddle of all who pass. If the traveler cannot solve the riddle he is hurled to his death, but if he can he is allowed to passand proceed to his doom. A young man approaches, and while the priestess pleads that he be allowed to turn back, or to pass unchallenged, the sphinx is adamant that the riddle must be posed. The priestess retires, and the sphinx accosts the young man, Oedipus, who has come from Delphi, where he has consulted the oracle. At first he denies this, but the sphinx knows his story without his telling itand foretells what lies ahead for him as well. In keeping with the casual, offhand mood of the play, Oedipus attempts to treat these disclosures lightly, but inevitably he cannot. The riddle is asked, and solved, the sphinx vanishes forever, and Oedipus proceeds to the awful fate that the gods have ordained for him.

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Samuel French, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Adaptation

9

11

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Notes: Original Playwright - Jean Giraudoux

Synopsis: a charming young lady in a provincial French town is obsessed by the supernatural, she then falls in love a discovers the joys of the natural world

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Drama

One Act

7

3

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Notes: after a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Synopsis: In the sinister recesses of her kitchen Mother Rigby, the witch, fashions a scarecrow and then, christening him Lord Feathertop, she sends the scarecrow off to the house of Judge Gookin, a rich and haughty man who has repeatedly claimed that no young suitor in the town is good enough for his daughter. Lord Feathertop impresses Gookin as a person of refinement and importance and he quickly invites the town's leading citizens to meet this most eligible of young men. His daughter, Polly, who is already in love with another, is not equally taken with the mysterious stranger but her father, sensing that Feathertop's supposed connections with the powerful lords of England will be of benefit to him, flatters and cajoles his guest and even offers to betray his rivals in the Colony. Having little in his head to begin with, Feathertop has even less to say in response to all this, which convinces everyone that he is indeed a wise and weighty man. Then Polly catches a glimpse of him in a mirror, and what she sees is not the glittering Lord whom the others have deluded themselves into accepting, but the scarecrow that he really is. Polly faints at the sight of him and Feathertop, struck with the sham of his existence, forces the others to look too, and then goes back to Mother Rigby in sad dismay. He no longer wants to live knowing what he is and what others are like beneath their veneer and, casting his pipe aside, he becomes once more the straw-filled scarecrowalbeit one with a real tear of human emotion trickling down his painted cheek.

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Adaptation

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Principal roles for 17 men and 8 women plus a number of minor roles, some without lines: 20 total

Notes: Original Playwright - Jean Giraudoux

Synopsis: The play is a kind of poetic and comic fable set in the twilight zone of the not-quite-true. At the Cafe Chez Francis, a group of promoters plot to tear up Paris in order to unearth the oil which a prospector believes he has located in the neighborhood. These grandiose plans come to the attention of The Madwoman of Chaillot who is ostensibly not normal in her mind but who is soon shown to be the very essence of practical worldly goodness and common sense. She sees through the crookedness of the prospector and insists that the world is being turned into an unhappy place by the thieves and those who are greedy for worldly goods and power. At a tea party attended by other "mad" women of Paris, she has brought together representatives of the despoilers of the earth and wreckers of its happiness, and has them tried and condemned to extermination. In a scene which mounts into the realms of high poetic comedy, she sends the culprits one by one, lured by the scent of oil and undreamed-of riches, into a bottomless pit which opens out of her cellar. The exodus of the wicked is accompanied by another and more beautiful miracle: Joy, justice and love return to the world again.

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Samuel French, NY

1956

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Adaptation

17

11

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Notes: Original Playwright - Jean Giraudoux

Synopsis: out of the night and out of the sea springs a beautiful nymph who falls in love with a handsome knight only to discover that their love is too ideal to survive the shocks of the world

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Samuel French, NY

1956

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Adaptation

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Notes: -

Synopsis:

HB Playwrights Foundation, Off Broadway, NY

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Play/Drama

7

8

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Notes: -

Synopsis: The time is the present, the place the ruins of Agamemnon's palace at Mycenae, where a guide points out matters of interest to a group of tourists. As they move on, a young man stays behind to speak to the young girl who has been silently watching the group and, magically, almost imperceptibly, the centuries begin to fall away. She is Electra, and he is Orestes, the children of the slain Agamemnon. They are joined shortly by their mother, Clytemnestra, and her paramour, Aegisthus, and the great tale of crime and retribution begins to unfold. Electra thinks only of revenge against her mother, who killed Agamemnon father and married her lover, and she has been waiting anxiously for Orestes to return and carry out the dreaded punishment. At first Orestes pleads that he wants nothing to do with his family and its troubles but, gradually, inexorably, the force of events draws him on to the fatal deedthe slaying of his mother and her conspirator. But then, in the shocked silence which follows, the past vanishes as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving us once again to contemplate the quiet, dusty ruins, and the haunting, terrible secrets which they hold.

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Dramatists Play Service, NY

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Comedy

16

4

many bits

Notes: -

Synopsis: Howard Taubman's description of "At the outset he shows us the radiant Alcestis greeting King Admetus, her husband, returned from the wars after another victory. Her acceptance of her duty to honor and adore her master knows no questioning. He insists that his triumph was lucky, but she will not believe him. When death seeks him out, and it is decreed that he can be saved only if someone takes his place, she alone in all Thessaly accepts the grim destiny as if it were a glorious privilege. Thus far Mr. Valency pursues the main lines of the legend&In the second half THE THRACIAN HORSES gets down to its ironic business. It suggests that Alcestis, brought back by Heracles from Hades, is outraged to discover that she has been robbed of her chance of lasting fame. She turns into a shrewish tigress. She tells Admetus that she has always detested his vapid, fat face. Crito has some conventionally cynical remarks to make. Alcestis and Admetus bicker like a pair of fishmongers. Peace is restored only when Zeus, from a perch above the troubled multitude, appears and speaks of his and his creatures' problems. He is a wise, quavering old party, and he observes, as if Pirandello had never said it, that reality is merely illusions. Thereupon he restores the illusion of love to Admetus and Alcestis."

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2001

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Musical

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Notes: Book by Terrence McNally, based on the play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (adapted by Maurice Valency); Music by John Kander; lyrics by Fred Ebb

Synopsis: Though written in 1956, Dürrenmatt's The Visit, heralded as a masterpiece of 20th century German-language literature, seems a cross between a 19th Century melodrama and a contemporary satire. Claire Zachanassian fled a mythical central-European town (in the original play, the town name translates as Manure). As a pregnant teen not only rejected by her lover but betrayed by the legal system from which she sought redress, Claire survived in spades, careening from prostitution through a succession of wealthy husbands to become the richest widow in the world. Her ex-lover/nemesis, Anton, abandoned her to marry the town shopkeeper's daughter and thereby secure his fortune. Flash forward roughly 40 years and Claire's agents have purchased virtually all property and economic enterprise in and surrounding her hometown. Claire secretly has pulled the financial carpet out from under such that all of her former townsfolk are now impoverished, and despondently so. Thus Claire's devil's bargain: kill Anton and she will endow the town collectively as well as each resident individually with wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Playwright Dürrenmatt was known to represent the play as a comedy. Well, in a culture which invented the word 'schadenfreude,' this story is no doubt a barrel of laughs. Terrence McNally's adaptation is very faithful to the original, deliciously spiced with some delightful Bette Davis-like barbs for Claire to toss off.
Gary McMillan, DC Theatre Scene

Dundee Rep

2005

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Adaptation

7

5

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Notes: Original Playwright - Friedrich Durrenmatt, adap. Maurice Valency, tr. Peter Arnott

Synopsis: Relocates the action from a post-war Swiss backwater to the deserted airport of a bankrupt town somewhere in 21st century Scotland to allow a warts-and-all view of people in power

New York

1958

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Samuel French, NY

1960

If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Adaptation

25

8

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Notes: Original Playwright - Friedrich Durrenmatt

Synopsis: A rich woman returns to her poverty stricken hometown and agrees to rescue it - for a price.