• My Account
  • Quick Order
  • Cart
  • Checkout
 
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Clients

 
  • Home
  • The Plays
    • The Plays
    • Not Yet Published
    • Newly Published
    • Bestsellers
    • Classics
    • Collections
    • Bundles
    • Catalog
  • Performance Rights
    • Restrictions
    • Payments
    • Performance Rights
    • Upcoming Productions
  • Authors
  • FAQs
    • FAQs
    • Shipping Info
    • Refund Policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Submissions
    • Wholesale Customers
    • Desk Copies
    • Standing Orders
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
Menu
  • Home
  • The Plays
    • The Plays
    • Not Yet Published
    • Newly Published
    • Bestsellers
    • Classics
    • Collections
    • Bundles
    • Catalog
  • Performance Rights
    • Restrictions
    • Payments
    • Performance Rights
    • Upcoming Productions
  • Authors
  • FAQs
    • FAQs
    • Shipping Info
    • Refund Policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Submissions
    • Wholesale Customers
    • Desk Copies
    • Standing Orders
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
 

  • Home
  • The Plays
    • The Plays
    • Not Yet Published
    • Newly Published
    • Bestsellers
    • Classics
    • Collections
    • Bundles
    • Catalog
  • Performance Rights
    • Restrictions
    • Payments
    • Performance Rights
    • Upcoming Productions
  • Authors
  • FAQs
    • FAQs
    • Shipping Info
    • Refund Policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Submissions
    • Wholesale Customers
    • Desk Copies
    • Standing Orders
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
 
  • Home
  • >
  • The Plays
  • >
  • The Imaginary Invalid

    The Imaginary Invalid

    Molière, adapted by Constance Congdon, based on a new translation by Dan Smith
    Acting Edition$11.95
    ePlay$15.00 + $10.00 per additional user
    Performance Rights

    Play Description

    Love is funny. Love is trickery. Love is … smelly? It's certainly a merry-go-round of misplaced desires and hidden agendas in Constance Congdon's fresh and hilarious new take on Molière's skewering of a health-care crisis from an entirely different century. To quell his growing pile of medical bills, Monsieur Argan, a chronic hypochondriac, will go to any length to marry his daughter off to a doctor. Of course, his daughter has other ideas. A narcotic cocktail of romantic triangles, double entendres, and mistaken identities ensues, promising to leave you gasping, giggling, and possibly … in stitches.

    Production Info

    Cast: 9 total (3 female, 6 male)
    Full Length Comedy (about 110 minutes)
    Minimal Set Requirements
    Period Costumes
    Categories: The Plays, Classics Tags: French, 17th Century
    • Reviews
    • About the Author(s)
    • About the Book
    • Special Notes
    • Productions

    Press Quotes

    “Molière penned his final play, the slapstick comedy THE IMAGINARY INVALID more than 450 years ago, and it is not only amazing that this lesser-known play still stands the test of time, but how visionary this comedy, currently being seen in Constance Congdon’s new adaptation at the American Conservatory Theatre, has become. Or should we really be surprised in this age of plentiful medication — as doctors scribble prescriptions faster than it takes to gulp a handful of pills down with a glass of water — that THE IMAGINARY INVALID feels as relevant today as it did when healers swore by snake oil and holy water rather than Nexium and Zoloft? Moreover, Congdon has folded in a healthy dose of present-day nuances and innuendos, as well as beefed up the plot. The result is an entertaining and jovial romp … The great Frenchman’s last contribution to the world’s stage — he died onstage while playing Argan — proves that time has stood still when it comes to the eternal nature of the hypochondriac.” —TheaterMania.com, Tiffany Maleshefski

    “Lean, clean and comically bent … a bright evening of amusement and occasional hilarity.” —Variety, Dennis Harvey

    Author(s)

    • Molière

      Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622 – 1673), known as Molière, was a French dramatist, director, and actor, and one of the world's greatest masters of comic satire. Of his nearly 40 plays, his most famous are TARTUFFE, THE MISER, THE LEARNED LADIES, THE MISANTHROPE, and THE IMAGINARY INVALID.

    • Constance Congdon

      Constance Congdon has been called "one of the best playwrights our country and our language has ever produced" by playwright Tony Kushner in Kushner's introduction to her collection TALES OF THE LOST FORMICANS AND OTHER PLAYS. In addition to TALES OF THE LOST FORMICANS, which has had more than 200 productions worldwide, Congdon's plays include: CASANOVA, DOG OPERA, NO MERCY, LOSING FATHER'S BODY, LIPS and NATIVE AMERICAN. PARADISE STREET, was produced in Los Angeles and Amherst. Three commissions from the American Conservatory Theater: A MOTHER, starring Olympia Dukakis, a new verse version of THE MISANTHROPE, and a new adaptation of THE IMAGINARY INVALID, were all produced by ACT. Also at ACT: MOONTEL SIX, a commission by the ACT Young Conservatory and subsequently performed at London's National Theatre, followed by another production of the two-act version at San Francisco's ZEUM. THE AUTOMATA PIETÀ, another YC commission, received its world premiere at San Francisco's Magic Theatre in 2002; NIGHTINGALES went to the Theatre Royale Bath's Youth Theatre. Congdon's NO MERCY, and its companion piece, ONE DAY EARLIER, were part of the 2000 season devoted to Congdon at the Profile Theatre. She has written a number of opera libretti and seven plays for the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis. THE CHILDREN OF THE ELVI, Congdon's epic and NOT suitable for children, play received its premiere at the Key City Public Theater in 2007. Congdon's plays have been produced throughout the world, including Cairo, Tokyo and Berlin. Her new verse version of TARTUFFE is in a single-volume Norton Critical edition and in the Norton Anthology of Drama. In 2013, Congdon was the Honored Playwright at the GPTC and had a fully-staged workshop of her play about the water crisis in the West, TAKE ME TO THE RIVER. Her recent play HAIR OF THE DOG is about Shakespeare and Marlowe. Her most recent play, ENEMY SKY, is about drones, Islamaphobia, and late-in-life love. Congdon has received three NEA grants, two Rockefeller grants (one for Bellagio), an Albert Sloan grants for TAKE ME TO THE RIVER, The Berilla Kerr Award, Helen Merrill Award, The Albert Weissberger Award, New York Newsday's Oppenheimer Award for Best New Play in NYC, New England Theater Conference Award for Distinguished Service to the Theater (2004), two Great Plains Theater Conference Awards, one for Distinguished Service to the Theater and the other as the 2013 Honored Playwright. She is an alumnus of New Dramatists, The Playwright's Center of Minneapolis, and a current member of The Dramatists Guild and PEN. Congdon has taught playwriting at the Yale School of Drama, but her home is as playwright-in-residence at Amherst College where she has taught playwriting for 25 years. Her work is published by Norton, TCG, Inc, but mostly by Broadway Play Publishing.

    Book Information

    Publisher BPPI
    Publication Date 2/5/2016
    Pages 80
    ISBN 9780881456097

    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:

    World Premiere by the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in 2007, San Francisco, CA

    In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:

    The Imaginary Invalid is produced
    by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
    www.broadwayplaypub.com

    Upcoming and Recent Productions

    Nonprofessional


    10/27/2021 – 10/31/2021
    Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
    Edwardsville, IL

    11/15/2019 – 11/18/2019
    Jacksonville State University
    Jacksonville, AL

    11/14/2019 – 11/16/2019
    Phillips Academy Andover
    Andover, MA

    2/7/2019 – 2/16/2019
    Western Washington University
    Bellingham, WA

    11/14/2018 – 11/18/2018
    Notre Dame Film, Television, And Theatre
    Notre Dame, IN

    Related Plays

    $11.95–$15.00
    Phèdra
    Jean Racine, translated by Julie Rose
    $11.95–$15.00

    Play 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
    $11.95–$15.00
    The Illusion
    Tony Kushner, freely adapted from Pierre Corneille's L'ILLUSION COMIQUE
    $11.95–$15.00

    Play 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
    $15.00–$15.95
    The Loser
    Georges Feydeau, translated by Laurence Senelick
    $15.00–$15.95

    Play 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
    $15.00–$15.95
    Antony
    Alexandre Dumas, translated by Laurence Senelick
    $15.00–$15.95

    Play Description

    “ANTONY is not a melodrama, ANTONY is not a tragedy, ANTONY is not a stage play. ANTONY is an acting-out of love, jealousy and anger in five acts.” —Alexandre Dumas (père)

    Production Info

    Cast: 14 total (6 female, 9 male, extras)
    Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Period Costumes
    $11.95–$15.00
    Anything to Declare?
    Maurice Hennequin and Pierre Vebér, translated by Laurence Senelick
    $11.95–$15.00

    Play Description

    This classic and hilarious French farce commences when a customs official barges into newlyweds Robert and Paulette's train compartment at a most inopportune moment on their wedding night, rendering the poor fellow impotent. His parents-in-law demand that he consummate the marriage or it will be annulled, and Paulette will marry La Baule instead. Enter Mademoiselle Zeze, a courtesan, and let the games begin.

    Production Info

    Cast: 12 total (5 female, 7 male)
    Full Length Comedy (about 130 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Period Costumes
    $11.95–$15.00
    The Marriage of Figaro
    Pierre Beaumarchais, adapted by Richard Nelson
    $11.95–$15.00

    Play Description

    A Count's valet prepares to marry the Countess' chambermaid — until it becomes clear the Count wishes to revive an old law that will allow him to take advantage of the bride before the wedding. The valet's schemes to thwart the Count show the growing French endorsement of an aristocracy of merit and wits rather than birth, in Pierre Beaumarchais' 1784 play.

    Production Info

    Cast: 11 total (4 female, 7 male)
    Full Length Comedy (about 110 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Period Costumes
    $15.00
    The Abdication
    Ruth Wolff
    $15.00

    Play Description

    Why, having become Queen in childhood, would Christina of Sweden give up the throne? Confused about her sexual identity and religious beliefs, and thwarted in love, she decides to abdicate, convert to Catholicism, and throw herself, for life, on the hospitality of the Vatican. Once there, this proud but troubled woman is stunned to discover that, before she can be received by the Pope, she must submit to intense questioning by Cardinal Azzolino. At first she sees him as an adversary. But then, against all rules and expectations, Christina finds herself falling in love with her inquisitor. A probing exploration of the nature of woman, whether queen or commoner, is the subject of this highly original play.

    Production Info

    Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 140 minutes)
    Minimal Set Requirements
    Period Costumes
    The Awful Tooth
    Georges Feydeau, translated from the French by Laurence Senelick

    Play Description

    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.”

    Production Info

    Cast: 9 total (3 female, 6 male)
    Short Comedy (about 45 minutes)
    Single Set
    Period Costumes
    $15.00–$19.95
    The Lady from Maxim’s
    Georges Feydeau, translated by Laurence Senelick
    $15.00–$19.95

    Play Description

    Often described as Feydeau's masterpiece, THE LADY FROM MAXIM'S charts the trials and tribulations of a certain proper Doctor Petypon who wakes up with a hangover only to find in his bed “The Shrimp,” a dancer at the Moulin Rouge and lady of the night. The Shrimp finds the doctor's lifestyle quite appealing and decides to hang around in spite of the appearance of the doctor's devoutly religious wife, which launches into motion the kinds of farcical twists and turns of deceit and the threats of imminent discovery that no author has ever accomplished with more expertise, panache, and hilarity than Feydeau.

    Production Info

    Cast: 28 total (11 female, 17 male, doubling possible, extras)
    Full Length Comedy (about 180 minutes)
    Minimal Set Requirements
    Period Costumes
    $15.00–$15.95
    Danton’s Death
    Georg Büchner, adapted by Robert Auletta
    $15.00–$15.95

    Play 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
    $11.95–$15.00
    A Flea in Her Ear
    Georges Feydeau, translated by Kenneth McLeish
    $11.95–$15.00

    Play Description

    This classic French farce was written in 1907. It is, perhaps, Feydeau’s best known play, and its intricate choreography draws together two classic farce plots — that of the suspicious wife who sets a trap to expose her faithless partner, and the venerable comic device of mistaken identity.

    Production Info

    Cast: 14 total (5 female, 9 male)
    Full Length Comedy (about 200 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Period Costumes
    $15.00–$15.95
    Around the World in 80 Days
    Jules Verne, adapted by Laura Eason
    $15.00–$15.95

    Play Description

    Jules Verne’s classic adventure tale is reimagined for the stage in this enchanting adaptation.

    Production Info

    Cast: 8 total (2 female, 6 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
    Minimal Set Requirements
    Period Costumes

    Contact Info

    BROADWAY PLAY PUBLISHING INC

    148 W 80th St, NY, NY 10024

    Working Days: Monday – Friday

    Working Hours: 8 am – 6 pm EST

    Phone: 212­-772-­8334

    Email: info@broadwayplaypub.com

    Website: www.broadwayplaypub.com

    Company Info

    • About Us
    • Shipping Info
    • Refund Policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Submissions
    • Contact Us

    Pages

    • Home
    • The Plays
    • Performance Rights
    • Authors
    • FAQs
    • Blog

    Newsletter Sign Up

    • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
    © Broadway Play Publishing Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

    ‹ › ×
      Posting....