Bøger udgivet af BROADWAY PLAY PUB INC (NY)

A lyrical study in the ways, perhaps misguided, that He and She love. "OBJECTIVE LOVE, Megan Terry's new play dwells on the phony appearances upon which modern romance depends ... Actors float in and out of the performance as if they were clouds. The only recurring figures are named merely 'He' and 'She, ' perhaps representing the American Every Couple ... There is no lack of love in the world, Ms Terry reflects. But it's channeled to other things: mindless jobs, motorcycles, clothing, mathematics, things. Her words are sometimes as abstract and striking as the props that surround them. At times the work is poetically vivid ... Other times they are hilariously funny ... OBJECTIVE LOVE, in short, is an exciting mélange of images and words that seems light years more contemporary than any other theatrical stab at the subject." -Roger Catlin, Omaha World Herald "OBJECTIVE LOVE, a witty and visually striking study of how people love others as objects, not as individuals." -J W, Sunday Nonpareil

Carol, an underappreciated and seemingly invisible suburban homemaker, finds herself wondering what the hell happened to her life. She rediscovers stifled thrill and passion in the secret, sexy world of cyberspace. As her husband obsesses over their local property tax assessment and the cost of their current kitchen renovation, the state of their marriage (along with their roof) is about to collapse under the weight of what they haven't addressed. Their 17-year-old "activist" daughter, who is about to leave the nest and save the world, is torn between going to college or Tibet. Taking place in Pittsburgh during the summer of 2001, Carol solicits a face-to-face meeting with her online lover in New York City. When fantasy collides with reality in his studio apartment, Carol confronts the choices she's made against the desires she has suppressed in the quest for self-fulfillment. "Tammy Ryan is so Irish that nothing is too terrible to be funny ... CONFLUENCE is what we'd call a 9/11 play ... it's also about marriage, parenting, cybersex and especially dreams ... it's engrossing, perceptive and very very funny ... Carol's rebellion is a hoot, involving some very funny sex scenes, remember this is a master class in turning existential despair into comedy. Leave the young children at home." -Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "... The most original aspect of the play concerns on-line chat rooms and the contrast between sexual fantasies and attempts to follow them through in real life. Ryan gets good comic mileage out of on-line connected simulated sex and the subsequent connection of real people ... a good and touching closing scene, which ... contains sweet surprises." -Gordon Spencer, W R C T

DWARF is the story of the five ages of Man and in particular, the five ages of one George Leroy Tirebiter, a man named after a dog "The Beatles of comedy." -Library of Congress "The Firesign Theatre is a comedy group that uses the recording studio at least as brilliantly as any rock group ..." -Robert Christgau "... [Firesign is] the funniest team in America today, combining elements of W C Fields, James Joyce, Lord Buckley, contemporary television and Thirties radio, scrambling it all up in a collective consciousness that defies description, and then spewing it out in a free-form half-hour epic presentation of sheer insanity ... Their timing is dynamite, their dialog kaleidoscopic, and their satire is, so to speak, acidic. WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN ... a masterpiece of paranoia." -Ed Ward, Rolling Stone

A childless, Latino couple kidnap a young girl in order to create a family, but the little girl has ideas of her own, and when her imaginary friend, the Grinch, comes to life to help her, the couple ends up with far more than they bargained for. A dark, gothic fairy tale for the contemporary world. "New York theatergoers are mostly godless heathens, right? So how is a playwright to evoke genuine otherworldly chills in her audience? Desi Moreno-Penson's new drama, DEVIL LAND, taps into every Gothamite's primal fears by invoking the one all-powerful figure who inspires both terror and awe: the super ... this creepy drama starts off as a more or less ordinary abduction story. The childless Bronx super Americo and his straitlaced, religious wife, Beatriz, kidnap an eccentric 12-year-old neighbor and imprison her in their building's boiler room. Below the surface antics of Americo's growing lecherousness and Beatriz's punitive religiosity, however, an eerier narrative unfolds. The captive child calls upon her 'imaginary' playmate the Grinch and the ancient spirits of the Taíno Amerindians (her Puerto Rican ancestors) to keep her safe and to uncover the couple's many mysteries - like what happened to their real child. Spooky and compelling ... several interludes narrated in Seuss-like rhymed couplets are weirdly effective, the Taíno mythology is handled surely and suggestively, and the play's insistence that we make superstitions as well as sense of the world around us, even today, is spot on. You may never want to check on the boiler again - and anyway, isn't that a job for the super?" -Jessica Branch, Time Out New York "Desi Moreno-Penson's DEVIL LAND may be the scariest new play of the season. It's a modern-day gothic horror story; a thriller whose psychological elements are well-enough fleshed out to be both credible and authentically disturbing. It's a unique evening of theater ..." -Martin Denton, NYTheatre.com

This collection includes two short plays: WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN, OR SOMEONE LIKE HIM and TEMPORARILY HUMBOLDT COUNTY. WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN, OR SOMEONE LIKE HIM is a mad Kafkaesque journey that takes a confused tourist into a shadowy world of Byzantine fascists. TEMPORARILY HUMBOLDT COUNTY is a short history of European expansion and Native American displacement. "The Beatles of comedy." -Library of Congress "The Firesign Theatre is a comedy group that uses the recording studio at least as brilliantly as any rock group ..." -Robert Christgau "... [Firesign is] the funniest team in America today, combining elements of W C Fields, James Joyce, Lord Buckley, contemporary television and Thirties radio, scrambling it all up in a collective consciousness that defies description, and then spewing it out in a free-form half-hour epic presentation of sheer insanity ... Their timing is dynamite, their dialog kaleidoscopic, and their satire is, so to speak, acidic. WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN ... a masterpiece of paranoia." -Ed Ward, Rolling Stone

Danger is Firesign's take on the hard-boiled detective character, with firstperson narration and crazy adventures that often involve mistaken identity, and of course there's always a dangerous dame. The skits spoof the conventions of those old detective radio shows, right down to the special effects, the sponsors, the on-air host, the convoluted plots, and just about anything else that one might have heard on a classic serial. "The Beatles of comedy." -Library of Congress "The Firesign Theatre is a comedy group that uses the recording studio at least as brilliantly as any rock group ..." -Robert Christgau "... [Firesign is] the funniest team in America today, combining elements of W C Fields, James Joyce, Lord Buckley, contemporary television and Thirties radio, scrambling it all up in a collective consciousness that defies description, and then spewing it out in a free-form half-hour epic presentation of sheer insanity ... Their timing is dynamite, their dialog kaleidoscopic, and their satire is, so to speak, acidic. WAITING FOR THE ELECTRICIAN ... a masterpiece of paranoia." -Ed Ward, Rolling Stone

In this discomfiting study of McCarthyism, Richard Packard, a teacher, is contacted by an F B I agent and asked to spy on his colleagues. "... Judy GeBauer's haunting new Red Scare drama, EVERY SECRET THING ... More than 50 years after McCarthy, EVERY SECRET THING ought to feel as incongruous and innocuous as a Twilight Zone episode. Seriously: The F B I muscles an eighth-grade civics teacher into spying on his fellow teachers? Ridiculous. Except it's not. Instead, the play ripples through the years like a direct timeline to today ... two aspects keep this old subject feeling disquietingly new. First: While most think McCarthyism targeted the Hollywood elite, EVERY SECRET THING shows just how insidiously it infiltrated suburban middle America. And second: As was the case then, and as is the case now, when adults speak, our children listen ... It's a disquieting and refreshingly civil look at a disease still infecting our country long aster we've thought it lulled into remission." -John Moore, Denver Post "... EVERY SECRET THING by Judy GeBauer ... begs to be absorbed by every human being from 7th grade on up. Astute 5th and 6th graders with civic minded parents could indeed wrap their minds around EVERY SECRET THING, speaking directly to a slice of history that dares not, for one second, be ignored." -Holly Bartges, Backstage

Joan moves from the city to the country with her air traffic controller husband and their twelve-year-old daughter in search of peace and safety. Instead the move creates a growing sense of anxiety in Joan. When young girls begin to disappear, her anxieties are confirmed and the growing tension begins to tear apart the family. Interweaving fairytales with Joan's memories of her own sexual coming of age, DARK PART OF THE FOREST follows Joan back through her fears until she can emerge transformed. "Tammy Ryan should have called her new play 'The Dark Part of the Marriage' instead of the DARK PART OF THE FOREST ... in the play's potent debut ... Joan and Bill's faltering marriage is the main event. What's also intriguing about DARK PART OF THE FOREST is the abundance of fairy tale imagery ... Ryan has written no fairy tale, though. She can be grimmer than the Grimm brothers - but just as enigmatically entertaining." -Peter Filichia, The Star-Ledger "Hauntingly poetic language." -Anna Rosenstein, In Pittsburgh "... compact, poetic, turbulent writing ... a vivid appreciation of how dark the forest that surrounds us can be ... a topic this is both timely and eternal ..." -Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "There are few contemporary plays ... that leave audiences frozen in their seats ... the writing is eerily real ..." -Keren Schultz, The Westfield Leader

DEVIL'S ADVOCATE captures an agonizing struggle between General Manuel Noriega and Archbishop Laboa on Christmas Eve, Panama, 1989. "... there are plenty of interpersonal fireworks exploding between the two characters who bring this two-act work alive. But the biggest explosions are reserved for the U.S. military, as this production is set during the Yanqui invasion of Panama in 1989, the so-called 'Operation Just Cause.' That duo of aforementioned characters is Archbishop Jose Sebastian Laboa and General Manuel Antonio Noriega ... the main force generating conflict in DEVIL'S ADVOCATE is none other than politics. Imperialism, covert actions, narco-trafficking, gun running, terrorism, torture, psyops, money laundering, the Panama Canal, the Contras, Fidel, George H W Bush (hell's hottest seat is reserved for this evil genius of mediocrity and his satanic son), et al, form the complex backdrop to a fairly simple plot. During Bush's invasion of Panama, Noriega flees to the Papal Nuncio, the archbishop's residence, to seek - in the immortal words of Quasimodo - sanctuary. There, 'Pineapple Face' (as the pockmarked Noriega was derisively called) confesses his 'sins' to Laboa, who - as the Vatican's Grand Inquisitor - served, literally, as the eponymous 'Devil's Advocate.'" -Ed Rampell, Hollywood Progressive

A laugh-out-loud parody par excellence of Shakespeare's tragedies. Wickedly whimsical, delightfully devious, with six blended tragedies, thirty-one parts, forty location changes and one enormous sword-swinging battle of twenty thousand men. "Much like the bit in Reduced Shakespeare's COMPLETE WORKS (ABRIDGED) that combines all of the Bard's comedies into one gigantic super-comedy, SHAKESPEARE'S 'KING PHYCUS' is a pithy mash-up of the more memorable Tragedies. In this hilarious parody, Hamlet and Juliet are siblings, the former married to the Scottish Macbetty, the latter betrothed to the deformed Gloucester by their father the great King Phycus, whose Queen, Gertrude, has recently been murthered. Meanwhile, incongruously, Brutus is an Italian ambassador and Romeo a Roman spy. If this seems like a lot to handle, it is - and that's not even all of it. Yet the ingenuity of Tom Willmorth's script is well matched by an ensemble of energetic performers and increasingly clever staging ... Miraculously, the plot somehow comes together, despite its many comedic detours. Although it does end with a bunch of dead bodies onstage, SHAKESPEARE'S 'KING PHYCUS' is no tragedy." -Neal Ryan Shaw, Newcity (Chicago) "... from the delightful opening pantomime, set to a recording of Frank Sinatra singing 'If I Had You, ' of a young couple meeting, courting, and deciding to marry, it's clear that a refreshingly original sensibility is at work. Mitnick has a lot more on his mind than obvious laughs in this consistently inventive and surprising comedy-drama." -Erik Haagensen, Backstage "Mitnick seems to be the rare young playwright more interested in his elders than in his contemporaries." -Alexis Soloski, Village Voice "Mitnick displays classy wit, gentle humanity, and flashes of formal innovation." -Scott Brown, New York

Responsible Meg has always taken care of her bipolar younger brother Matt. But when she decides to get pregnant - and have her embryos screened for bipolar disorder - is she taking the idea of "being responsible" too far? A funny and surprising play about bioethics, siblings, and the limits of unconditional love. "... Instead of slipping into pedantic debate, the play successfully broaches these topics through subtle theatrical devices ... [GOOD EGG] has a powerful message that addresses important social themes that need much attention." -The Happiest Medium "In a heated moment, Matt says to Meg that ' ... when you have everything you want, sometimes you don't like anything you get.' Those words are powerful in a myriad of ways, all pointing to the value of restraint. Just because you have the power and every reason to do something, that doesn't mean you should. [the play] hits this sentiment right on the nose." -Stage and Cinema "... a brilliant monologue that Fortenberry nails [is] the playwright's attempt to share not only the human side of bipolar disorder, but also the scientific realities and questions about the illness ... Fortenberry tells her story through the clever technique of juxtaposition and foil, which helps the audience feel both sympathy and repulsion for the chaotic but artistically passionate Matt as well as the dependable but perfectionistic Meg." -Not As Crazy As You Think "GOOD EGG thus effectively lays out the moral dilemmas involved in choosing whether or not to screen for hereditary disorders and diseases, as well as believably presenting a bipolar character who has a chance to describe the internal processes of the brain during high and low points ... The science-driven arguments are refreshingly poignant ... Particularly captivating is Matt's monologue about his [bipolar] disorder." -Theatre Is Easy "Playwright Dorothy Fortenberry doesn't try to teach us a lesson here. Is Matt's illness an inner demon? From the perspective of those who must live with him - of Meg - of course, it appears that way. But, as he says later on, 'Maybe I don't want to be sane. Maybe sane is overrated.'" -BlogCritic

This collection includes three full-length plays: AGAMEMNON, THE LIBATION BEARERS, and THE EUMENIDIES, collectively known as THE ORESTEIA. In AGAMEMNON, the title character, having sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, to win the battle of Troy, returns to Argos. His wife, Clytaemnestra, murders him while her lover, Aegisthus, who will soon assume the throne, looks on. In THE LIBATION BEARERS Agamemnon's daughter Electra mourns her father's death. Her brother, Orestes, returns to Argos to kill their mother and stepfather, now king, and avenge their father's death. In THE EUMENIDIES Orestes, trying to escape the vengeance of the Furies, is rescued by the gods and ordered to stand trial in a democratic court in Athens. He is acquitted, and the Furies are transformed and civilized to end the cycle of violence. "THE ORESTEIA is the granddaddy of domestic-violence drama, and that's hardly Greek to us. The 2,500 year-old Aeschylean trilogy - on which Sonny kills Mom and her love, who made sword meat of Dad - is as American as apple pie ... Auletta - whose own works include WALK THE DOG WILLIE, RUNDOWN, and the Obie-winning STOPS and VIRGINS - seems an odd collaborator for Aeschylus. But he is in fact an old hand at diddling with old Greeks. He has adapted both Sophocles's AJAX and Aeschylus's THE PERSIANS for Peter Sellars. He also adapted Georg Büchner's DANTON'S DEATH for Robert Wilson." -Carolyn Clay, Phoenix (Boston) "... I very like very much the truncated colloquial that you've worked out. It's better than Ezra [Pound] managed and it's just right for the purpose you have, to provide a fast moving text for the stage ..." -letter from James Laughlin, New Directions "... Auletta's script glistens with old strokes highlighting rather than detracting from Aeschylus ..." -Ed Siegel, The Boston Globe

This collection includes two related one-act plays: DAUGHTER and SON. In DAUGHTER, a mother tries to reckon with injuries suffered by her daughter while serving in the U.S. military in Iraq. In SON, on the occasion of his sister's wedding, a man struggles with haunting flashbacks to the war and the bomb he dropped on a wedding party. "DAUGHTER is not only the best play of the five, but it's also the most accomplished. Medley writes about an African American mother dealing with the suicide of her daughter after she returns home from Iraq having her face blown off. DAUGHTER is a deep, uncompromising play about faith." -David Gordon, nytheatre.com

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the theater ... the Reduced Shakespeare Company boldly goes where few would dare - Tinseltown! America's "bad boys of abridgement" take on America's largest cultural and economic export (well, except for weapons) in this seriously silly show biz satire. Get your clapper boards ready as we rummage through the reels and flick through the films in this riotous carnival of the classics. Giving Hollywood more than just a nip and a tuck, they cut through the celluloid to condense the 186 greatest films in Hollywood's over 100-year history into a complete compilation of classic cinematic cliches - plus a few brand new cliches they just made up. "A hilarious and speedy take on Hollywood's highs and lows. I loved it! An instant classic!" -B B C "COMPLETELY HOLLYWOOD (ABRIDGED), is witty and wonderful, wowing audiences with its skillful skewering of American cinema." -Backstage "The abundant comedy springs as often from the visual as the verbal, spewing forth in a fusillade of playfully irreverent images and inventively juxtaposed ideas." -Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Critic's Choice! "A standing ovation ... Genuinely funny." -Benedict Nightingale, London Times "COMPLETELY HOLLYWOOD (ABRIDGED) has the kind of hallucinatory sideways comic logic that you find in, say, the films of the Marx Brothers or the early albums of the Firesign Theater." -KDHX Radio (St. Louis) "You'll nearly fall out of your theater seat laughing. Spectacularly high energy ... an absolute scream!" -The Arizona Republic