Plays and Playlets
Full-length:
Cyrano
Synopsis:
This is a musical adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, which is set in 1930s gangster mode in an unnamed American city—think Chicago.
History:
I was asked by Griff Rhys-Jones, then a student at Cambridge, now a prominent figure in British theater and television, to adapt the script for a production on the university stage. I rushed handwritten bits of script to the actors just in time for them to rehearse each scene, and as a result there is still no typescript for the play, only a manuscript-literally. Both The Guardian and The Cambridge Evening News praised the play highly.
One-act:
Swedes on the Danube
Synopsis:
This is a highly-stylized play that focuses on four nuns in an Austrian convent during the Thirty Years War of the 17th century, although audiences need not know any of the history to understand the play perfectly. The women assume they will be captured by French soldiers but soon learn that their captors will be Swedes, whom they consider far more frightening. The play asks: what do we do when time is short, as it always is. Each character reacts in a very different way.
History:
First produced at Cambridge University, the play then went to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where the daily newspaper, The Scotsman, called it “a beautiful, finely-cut diamond of a play…With classical sparseness and precision…”
The Death of Big Momma
Synopsis:
A sniper kills people he does not know but not at random. He is very selective, believing that he is an artist, a reformer, and a crusading terrorist. He is clear about his art but not his motives, especially about what he wants to reform The play has one major part and eight small ones.
History:
The play was performed on several stages at Cambridge University and then taken to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where the newspaper The Scotsman, said, it “is concerned with related issues of death, war, and urban guerrillas. The density of meaning that arises is unexpected and thought provoking."
Xingu
Synopsis:
This is a comedy about a young British Foreign Service officer (although he could easily be American) who decides to give up his career and live with the aboriginal people deep in the Xingu (pronounced shing-GOO) region of Brazil. There are three other characters--a young woman, who thinks his plans interesting, or at least amusing, and his mother and an older colleague, both of whom think he has lost his mind. They try in various ways to dissuade him. The action takes place in the Rio de Janeiro airport.
History:
The play was requested for an evening of three one-acts at Cambridge University on the theme of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. I was asked to do Heaven. Later the show was performed at the Summer Festival of the Source Theatre in Washington, DC, to full houses and enthusiastic audiences.
Ten-minute:
Remember Nora?
Synopsis:
A 10-minute sequel to Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” the play opens with Nora shouting “Torvald, I’m back!” She has taken a course in assertiveness in New York. Meanwhile, Torvald is in bed with Christine, who mistakenly thinks he got a divorce. Things unfold, or unravel, from there. It is not necessary to remember Ibsen’s play to enjoy this one, although it would increase the fun.
History:
The Source Theatre in Washington, DC, requested the play to be part of a series of 10-minute plays. It was very well received and its run extended from one to four nights, the Festival’s maximum run.
Atoning for Joan
Synopsis:
The play presumes that the two characters are America’s first two women fighter pilots to go into combat and that this is their first combat mission. It explores certain issues for women in war, in this case whether the true challenge is to be the best warrior possible or whether being a warrior at all means playing a very bad man’s game.
History:
The Play was requested by the Washington, DC, Source Theatre for its summer festival. It was one of three very short plays on a theme of Joan of Arc done at the French Embassy.