Plays

Peter Brown, Terence

The Comedies

Editura: Oxford University Press, USA

Anul aparitiei: 2010

'I thought you'd do what the common run of slaves normally do, cheating and tricking me because my son's having an affair.' Terence's comedies have provided plots and characters for comic drama from classical times to the present; the outstanding comic playwright of his generation at Rome, he has influenced authors from Moliere and Wycherley to P. G. Wodehouse. Scheming slaves, parasites, prostitutes, pimps, and boastful soldiers populate his plays, which show love triumphing over obstacles of various kinds, and the problems that arise from ignorance, misunderstanding, and prejudice. Although they reflect contemporary tensions in Roman society, their insights into human nature and experience make them timeless in their appeal. Peter Brown's lively new translation does full justice to Terence's style and skill as a dramatist.

Tennessee Williams

Sweet Bird of Youth

Editura: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Anul aparitiei: 2008

The acclaimed classic in a new edition, now with an insightful new introduction, the author's original foreword, and the one-act play, "The Enemy: Time," on which "Sweet Bird of Youth" was based. Sometime actor and full-time male hustler Chance Wayne returns to the Gulf Coast town of St. Cloud in an attempt to retrieve his lost innocence by reuniting with his high school girlfriend, Heavenly Finley. But Chance arrives there with his current employer, the drug-addicted, over-the- hill movie star, Alexandra Del Lago, who uses Chance, teaches him to use others, and doesn't intend to let him go. Chance learns that when he left St. Cloud years before, he left Heavenly with a crippling venereal disease. Heavenly's brother and her father--the powerful Boss Finley, a politician who has been responsible for local lynchings--have marked Chance as "a criminal degenerate" and plan to castrate him. Williams knew how to tell a good tale, and this gritty and wrenching play also reveals the dark side of the American dreams of youth and fame by implicating small town injustice, systemic racism, and the depth of suffering that results from personal and public corruption.

William Shakespeare

Richard II

Editura: Modern Library

Anul aparitiei: 2010

Eminent Shakespearean scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen provide a fresh new edition of Richard II, chronologically the first of the eight plays in Shakespeare's History Cycle, which marks the beginning of a great schism within the nobility of England that will leave the nation riven by bloody conflict for the next hundred years. This volume also includes more than a hundred pages of exclusive features, including: - an original Introduction to Richard II - incisive scene-by-scene synopsis and analysis with vital facts about the work - commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers - photographs of key RSC productions - an overview of Shakespeare's theatrical career and chronology of his plays Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions from the Royal Shakespeare Company set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.

Henrik Johan Ibsen

Four Great Plays: A Doll's House, the Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, the Master Builder

Editura: Pocket Books

Anul aparitiei: 2005

Enduring Liturature Illuminated by Practical Scholarship Four of the most popular and profound works from the playwright known as the "father of modern theater." This Enriched Classic Edition includes: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context • An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations • Detailed explanatory notes • Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work • Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction • A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential. Series edited by Cynthia Brantley Johnson

William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet

Editura: Simon & Brown

Anul aparitiei: 2010

Page dim. 229 x 152 x 8 Weight: 213 grams

Oscar Wilde

Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

Editura: HarperCollins Publishers

Anul aparitiei: 2003

In print since 1948, this is a single-volume collection of Oscar Wilde's texts. It contains his only novel, "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" as well as his plays, stories, poems, essays and letters. Illustrated with many photographs, the book includes introductions to each section by Wilde's grandon, Merlin Holoand, Owen Dudley Edwards, Declan Kibertd and Terence Brown. A comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Oscar Wilde together with a chronological table of his life and work are also included.

William Shakespeare

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Alexander Text

Editura: Collins UK

Anul aparitiei: 2007

The Complete Works of Shakespeare contains the recognized canon of the bard's plays, and his sonnets and poems. The texts were edited by the late Professor Peter Alexander, making it one of the most authoritative editions, recognized the world over for its clarity and scholarship. Page dim. 203 x 131 x 53 Weight: 1228 grams

Thornton Wilder

The Skin of Our Teeth

Editura: Harper Perennial

Anul aparitiei: 2003

A timeless statement about human foibles . . . and human endurance, this beautiful new edition features Wilder's unpublished production notes, diary entries, and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder. Time magazine called The Skin of Our Teeth "a sort of Hellzapoppin' with brains," as it broke from established theatrical conventions and walked off with the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama. Combining farce, burlesque, and satire (among other styles), Thornton Wilder departs from his studied use of nostalgia and sentiment in Our Town to have an Eternal Family narrowly escape one disaster after another, from ancient times to the present. Meet George and Maggie Antrobus (married only 5,000 years); their two children, Gladys and Henry (perfect in every way ); and their maid, Sabina (the ageless vamp) as they overcome ice, flood, and war -- by the skin of their teeth.

Thornton Wilder

Our Town: A Play in Three Acts

Editura: Harper Perennial

Anul aparitiei: 2003

This beautiful new edition features an eyeopening Afterword written by Tappan Wilder that includes Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material. Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.

Thornton Wilder

Three Plays: Our Town, the Skin of Our Teeth, and the Matchmaker

Editura: HarperCollins Publishers

Anul aparitiei: 2007

Three of the greatest plays in American literature collected in one volume This important new omnibus edition features an illuminating foreword by playwright John Guare and an extensive afterword for each play drawing on unpublished letters and other unique documentary material prepared by Tappan Wilder. Our Town--Wilder's timeless 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning look at love, death, and destiny is celebrated around the world and performed at least once each day in the United States. The Skin of our Teeth--Wilder's 1942 romp about human follies and human endurance starring the Antrobus family of Excelsior, New Jersey. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1943. The Matchmaker--Wilder's brilliant 1954 farce about money and love starring that irrepressible busybody Dolly Gallagher Levi. This play inspired the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly .

Thornton Wilder

Our Town: A Play in Three Acts

Editura: HarperCollins

Anul aparitiei: 2003

This beautiful new edition features an eyeopening Afterword written by Tappan Wilder that includes Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material. Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.

Jane Wagner

The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

Editura: Harper Paperbacks

Anul aparitiei: 1991

Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and a Tony for Best Actress, Lily Tomlin (The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe) played to nonstop, standing-room-only crowds for two years on Broadway. Now this spectacular dramatic comedy will be a major motion picture starring Tomlin. 78 photos.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The Plays of Anton Chekhov

Editura: Harper Perennial

Anul aparitiei: 1998

These critically hailed translations of The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and the other Chekhov plays are the only ones in English by a Russian-language scholar who is also a veteran Chekhovian actor. Without compromising the spirit of the text, Paul Schmidt accurately translates Chekhov's entire theatrical canon, rescuing the humor "lost" in most academic translations while respecting the historical context and original social climate. Schmidt's translations of Chekhov have been successfully staged all over the U.S. by such theatrical directors as Lee Strasberg, Elizabeth Swados, Peter Sellars and Robert Wilson. Critics have hailed these translations as making Chekhov fully accessible to American audiences. They are also accurate -- Schmidt has been described as "the gold standard in Russian-English translation" by Michael Holquist of the Russian department at Yale University.

Peter Shaffer

Amadeus: A Play by Peter Shaffer

Editura: Harper Perennial

Anul aparitiei: 2001

0riginating at the National Theatre of Great Britain, Amadeus was the recipient of both the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics Award. In the United States, the play won the coveted Tony Award and went on to become a critically acclaimed major motion picture winning eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Now, this extraordinary work about the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is available with a new preface by Peter Shaffer and a new introduction by the director of the 1998 Broadway revival, Sir Peter Hall. Amadeus is a must-have for classical music buffs, theatre lovers, and aficionados of historical fiction.

Paul Rudnick

The Collected Plays of Paul Rudnick

Editura: It Books

Anul aparitiei: 2010

"Paul Rudnick is a champion of truth (and love and great wicked humor) whom we ignore at our peril." --David Sedaris, author of Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk This definitive collection of Paul Rudnick's plays presents the pinnacle of theatrical hilarity from one of America's great humorists. Popular for his wickedly funny novels, including I'll Take It and Social Disease, comic screenplays like In & Out and Addams Family Values, and the Augusten Burroughs-like memoir I Shudder, Rudnick remains best known for his cerebral but side-splitting theatrical writing. With echoes of Neil Simon, Thornton Wilder, and Noel Coward, Rudnick plays like I Hate Hamlet, Jeffrey, and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told are outstanding fixtures of America's comedic canon.

The Actor's Book of Scenes from New Plays: 70 Scenes for Two Actors, from Today's Hottest Playwrights

Editura: Penguin Books

Anul aparitiei: 1988

Today's most exciting work for the stage is emerging far from Broadway's "mainstream," at Off and Off-off Broadway theaters, at regional companies around the country, and from abroad. Here is an up-to-the-minute collection of scenes--ideally suited for both classroom and audition use--from the best dramatists now being produced.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

The Portable Chekhov

Editura: Penguin Books

Anul aparitiei: 1977

Anton Chekhov remarked toward the close of his life that people would stop reading him a year after his death. But his literary stature and popularity have grown steadily with the years, and he is accounted the single most important influence on the development of the modern short story. Edited and with an introduction by Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Portable Chekhov presents twenty-eight of Chekhov's best stories, chosen as particularly representative of his many-sided portrayal of the human comedy--including "The Kiss," "The Darling," and "In the Ravine"--as well as two complete plays; The Boor, an example of Chekhov's earlier dramatic work, and The Cherry Orchard, his last and finest play. In addition, this volume includes a selection of letters, candidly revealing of Chekhov's impassioned convictions on life and art, his high aspirations, his marriage, and his omnipresent compassion.

LUIGI PIRANDELLO

Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays

Editura: Penguin Books

Anul aparitiei: 1996

Pirandello is the founding architect of twentieth-century drama, brilliantly innovatory in his forms and themes, and in the combined energy, imagination and visual colours of his theatre. This volume of plays, translated from the Italian by Mark Musa, opens with Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's most popular and controversial work in which six characters invade the stage and demand to be included in the play. The tragedy Henry IV dramatizes the lucid madness of a man who may be King. In So It Is (If You Think So) the townspeople exercise a morbid curiosity attempting to discover 'the truth' about the Ponza family. Each of these plays can lay claim to being Pirandello's masterpiece, and in exploring the nature of human personality each one stretches the resources of drama to their limits. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished ...

Ariel Dorfman

Death and the Maiden: Tie-In Edition

Editura: Penguin Books

Anul aparitiei: 1994

Ariel Dorfman's explosively provocative, award-winning drama is set in a country that has only recently returned to democracy. Gerardo Escobar has just been chosen to head the commission that will investigate the crimes of the old regime when his car breaks down and he is picked up by the humane doctor Roberto Miranda. But in the voice of this good Samaritan, Gerardo's wife, Paulina Salas, thinks she recognizes another man the one who raped and tortured her as she lay blindfolded in a military detention center years before."

Arthur Miller

The Crucible

Editura: Penguin Books

Anul aparitiei: 1996

A haunting examination of groupthink and mass hysteria in a rural community, presented here with enlightening criticism and commentary "I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history," Arthur Miller wrote in an introduction to The Crucible, his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminate the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence. Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller ...