- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Pure, unadulterated magic … utterly beguiling … a high-spirited, imagination-filled escapade … Laura Eason’s exceptionally graceful adaptation of the Jules Verne classic … manages to be both wise and fun-filled … it lays its bets on enchantment and invariably comes up a winner … a show that should sail the world. Highly recommended.” —Chicago Sun-Times
“Light, cheerful and greatly entertaining … laudably committed to its theatricality … Eason’s staging is full of the visual imagination … It’s all a great deal of fun.” —Chicago Tribune
“An engaging, family-friendly show. Highly recommended.” —The Chicago Reader
“Eason’s affable adaptation plays up elements of Verne’s novel that are sometimes forgotten … Eason moves stylishly from set piece to set piece, from the cuckoo-clock orchestration of Fogg’s London life to teacups sliding across a shipboard table.” —Time Out Chicago
Author(s)
Laura EasonLaura Eason is the author of twenty plays, original work and adaptation, a musical book writer, and screenwriter. Selected productions of full-length plays include SEX WITH STRANGERS (Second Stage Theatre, NYC; Signature Theatre, DC; Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago; Sydney Theatre Company, AU; published by Overlook Press); THE UNDENIABLE SOUND OF RIGHT NOW (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre and Women's Project Theater, NYC; Rising Phoenix Rep, NYC); THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (Hartford Stage, CT; New Victory Theater, NYC; People's Light & Theatre Company, PA; Actors Theatre of Louisville, KY; The Kansas City Repertory Theatre; The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; Denver Center; published by DPS), and AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (New Vic and Royal Exchange, UK; Lookingglass Theatre Company; Baltimore Center Stage; published by Broadway Play Publishing). Produced short plays include: MR. SMITTEN (Humana Festival), CITI MOMS (Women's Project Theater, NYC), USA-001A (American Theater Company, Chicago), JACK AND THE COLLECTION (WET, NYC), LOST BOY IN THE RUINED CITY (Theatre Seven, Chicago), IT WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED (City Theatre, Miami), and LOST IN THE SUPERMARKET (Vital Theatre Company, NYC), among others. She wrote the book for the musicals DAYS LIKE TODAY, music and lyrics by Alan Schmuckler (Writers Theatre, Chicago) and SUMMERLAND, music by Jenny Giering, lyrics by Sean Barry (Chicago Shakespeare Theater commission). Additional plays include: THE VAST IN-BETWEEN (Denver Center commission, also developed by Vineyard Theatre, NYC), REMARKABLE INVISIBLE (Ambassador Theatre Group commission), EVERY REASON TO HOPE AND BELIEVE (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis commission), 40 DAYS (NEA grant, developed by New York Theatre Workshop), PLAINFIELD ACE (developed by Two River Theater, NJ and Atlantic Theater Company, NYC) and an adaptation of HANS BRINKER AND THE SILVER SKATES (Arden Theatre Company commission), among others. As a screenwriter, Laura wrote on season two and three of the Emmy-winning Netflix show House of Cards. She is an Ensemble Member and former Artistic Director of Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre (2011 Regional Tony Award). In New York, she is a member of Rising Phoenix Rep, New Georges, and a Women's Project Playwright's Lab alumna.
Jules VerneJules Gabriel Verne (1828 – 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
Originally produced by Lookingglass Theater, Chicago
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Upcoming and Recent Productions
Professional
Nonprofessional
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
In this delightful comedy about the French aristocracy, told with Molière’s signature wit, the atmosphere is frivolous, the morals are loose, the egos are larger than life and everyone is looking for love. Constance Congdon’s adaptation of this intelligent satire is both provocative and funny.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$19.95–$20.00Collection Description
This collection includes five long one-act plays: THE AWFUL TOOTH, BLASTED EVENT, DEAD WRONG, POTTY FAVORS, and SHE CAN’T BARE IT! Master Belle Époque farceur Georges Feydeau loosely based these brilliantly funny long one-acts on the failure of his own marriage. The plays, greatly admired in his time, were described by a prominent critic as “insane merriment, inextinguishable laughter.” With DEAD WRONG, the first play in the collection, Feydeau launched a new genre: the marital farce, the hell of couples. And “like the very great comic writers,” another critic noted, Feydeau “knows how to make the public laugh at his personal bitterness.” It was Feydeau himself who suggested that these five one-acts be collected under the title FROM MARRIAGE TO DIVORCE. This collection, which for the first time brings these plays together in English, honors that suggestion. Distinguished translator Laurence Senelick has taken care to preserve all of Feydeau’s stage directions as sure guides to staging the plays for maximum effect. DEAD WRONG: A husband and wife stay together by force of habit, their relationship based on nothing solid. The wife’s aggression and bitterness and the husband’s selfishness and irresponsibility are revealed, and their ferocious animosity unleashes such powerful comedy that it obscures the underlying darkness. POTTY FAVORS: Inspired by Feydeau’s wife’s obsession with giving the children laxatives, especially his eldest son, Jacques, every character is despicable for their moral cowardice and egoism, providing a hopeless (but hilarious) environment for child-rearing. SHE CAN’T BARE IT!: What to do about a wife going around the apartment in her nightie until lunchtime? BLASTED EVENT: Trapped in a misalliance, a husband is set upon by his wife, his in-laws, and the midwife. THE AWFUL TOOTH was the last new play of Feydeau to be produced in his lifetime, and its dentist’s chair offers a dose of sadistic hilarity. As translator Laurence Senelick notes, “Feydeau may be to dentists what Molière was to doctors.”
Plays in This Collection
Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
A lawyer, facing mortality, desperate to find the son he drove away years before, travels in the dead of night to a mysterious cave. There he engages the services of a wizard, who conjures up visions of the romantic, adventurous, perilous life the lawyer’s son has been living since his father expelled him from home. THE ILLUSION, freely adapted from Pierre Corneille’s L’ILLUSION COMIQUE, is Kushner’s most joyfully theatrical play, a wildly entertaining tale of passion and regret, of love, disillusionment and magic.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (2 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00Play Description
Molière's classic comedy comes to uproarious new life in a clever and contemporary adaptation Christopher Bayes and Steven Epp. The traditional story of a girl feigning illness to avoid an unwanted wedding erupts into hilarity when a pretend physician proves that love and laughter remain life's best medicine.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male, doubling)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play Description
Racine's 1677 reworking of Euripides's HIPPOLYTUS, celebrated for its tragic construction and the richness of its language. Consumed by an uncontrollable passion for her young stepson and believing Theseus, her absent husband, to be dead, Phèdra confesses her darkest desires and enters the world of nightmare. When Theseus returns, alive and well, Phèdra, fearing exposure, accuses her stepson of rape. Unable to see beyond her impassioned words to his own son's protestations, heartbroken and overcome, Theseus banishes Hippolytus and wishes him dead. But when the gods are always listening, you should be careful what you wish for.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (5 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 160 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
Play Description
A husband and wife stay together by force of habit, their relationship based on nothing solid. The wife’s aggression and bitterness and the husband’s selfishness and irresponsibility are revealed, and their ferocious animosity unleashes such powerful comedy that it obscures the underlying darkness.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (2 female, 2 male)Short Comedy (about 60 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$11.95Play Description
With a calloused and lustful heart, Don Juan indulges his sexual appetites with boundless enthusiasm. Heedless of warnings both earthly and otherwise, history's most notorious romantic devil rushes headlong toward retribution in Molière's sparkling comedy.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (3 female, 8 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00Play Description
The sweep of Eleanor’s entire life — from her early marriage to Louis VII, King of France, through her marriage to Henry II of England, to her imprisonment, reign and death — is encompassed in this action-packed, highly literate drama. Through every challenge, Eleanor, with her grace and independence — in a world which expected women to stay in their place — triumphs, as wife, soldier, mother, queen and patron of the Courts of Love.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (5 female, 11 male, doubling possible)Full Length Drama (about 140 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Harpagon thinks that his children are costing him too much money and must be married off. He has found an old man who won’t demand a dowry for his daughter, Elise, and a rich widow for his son, Cleante. Unfortunately Elise is already in love with Harpagon’s servant, and his son is in love with the penniless Mariane, whom Harpagon has already decided to take as his own wife.
Production Info
Cast: 13 total (4 female, 9 male)Full Length Drama (about 105 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Set during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, the play takes place from March 24 to April 4, 1794, when Maximilien Robespierre was in charge of the Committee of Public Safety that, along with the Revolutionary Tribunal, condemned people to the guillotine. Guillotine victims ranged from those who were seen as too radical to those who were viewed as royalist sympathizers and even simply moderates like Danton.
Production Info
Cast: 26 total (8 female, 18 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Pontagnac, an inveterate womanizer, follows Lucienne to her house and makes advances. When her husband appears, who is none other than Vatelin, one of Pontagnac’s friends, the kerfuffle is soon settled between them as Vatelin, knowing Pontagnac, forgives him. But an unforeseen event sows discord: Liesl, who had been Vatelin’s mistress in Vienna, arrives at his house. Pontagnac takes this opportunity to tell Lucienne that her husband is cheating on her and gives her proof that Vatelin has a date in a hotel room with Liesl. Meanwhile, earnest Redillon, Lucienne’s friend, also declares his love for her. What is Lucienne to do? From there Feydeau’s intricate plot catches you up in a whirlwind of amorous and vengeful hilarity that ends with — you may conclude — everyone getting just what they deserve.
Production Info
Cast: 17 total (6 female, 11 male, doubling possible, female and male bit parts)Full Length Comedy (about 180 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes