- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Jacobson’s clever play balances repressed Victorian sexuality, historical anecdote, over-the-top hilarity and vampire melodrama into an intoxicating brew.” —L A Weekly
“Tom Jacobson’s clever satiric pastiche pits Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle against the undead. Drawing on the three writers’ shared fascination with the occult, Jacobson assembles them at Wilde’s Irish estate for a demonstration by a sinister Indian mesmerist. A dizzying tapestry of literary and mythological vampire lore overlays Wilde’s own demons.” —Los Angeles Times
Author(s)
Tom JacobsonTom Jacobson has had more than 80 productions of his plays, including SPERM at Circle X Theatre Company, THE ORANGE GROVE at Playwrights Arena, and the award-winning BUNBURY, TAINTED BLOOD, OUROBOROS and THE FRIENDLY HOUR at The Road Theatre Company. THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY WAY premiered at The Theatre @ Boston Court and the New York International Fringe Festival (five Ovation Award nominations, four Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle nominations, one GLAAD Award nomination, Fringe Festival Award for Outstanding Production of a Play, PEN Center Award for Drama) and moved Off Broadway to Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. MAKING PARADISE: THE WEST HOLLYWOOD MUSICAL was produced by Cornerstone Theater Company (Critic's Choice in Back Stage West). He has been a co-literary manager of The Theatre @ Boston Court, a founding member of Playwrights Ink, and a board member of Cornerstone Theater Company and The Theatre @ Boston Court. Most recent productions include the world premieres of THE CHINESE MASSACRE (ANNOTATED) at Circle X and HOUSE OF THE RISING SON at Ensemble Studio Theatre-LA (Critic's Choice in Back Stage West and Los Angeles Times, nominated for a GLAAD Award and winner of two Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards). Film: PRAIRIE SONATA (based on THE FRIENDLY HOUR). Opera: HOPSCOTCH, commissioned by The Industry.
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:
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
Related Plays
$15.00 Play Description
In this comedy about the nature of marriage, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley battle out their relationship at the gates of Heaven and Hell. Predeceasing Mary by several decades, Shelley can hardly wait for her to come to him in Limbo — but when she does, he is astonished to find that the woman who seemed for all her life to worship him now wants an independent existence. The Archangel/Devil must adjudicate between them and decide whether, in this afterlife, they will enter Heaven or Hell.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$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
$0.00–$15.95 Play Description
Danger is Firesign’s take on the hard-boiled detective character, with first-person 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.
Production Info
Cast: 4 total (4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 60 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Jane Austen’s mastery of manners and morals is on full display in Christopher Baker’s acclaimed stage adaptation of her beloved masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice. In the Bennet sisters’ world, marriage is the prize, but for second-eldest, Lizzy, companionship trumps blind courtship. Enter Mr. Darcy, and one of literature’s most iconic and tempestuous romances takes flight. Journey through a world quite unlike — and yet perhaps not so different from — our own, as Lizzy and Darcy learn that first impressions aren’t all they seem, and that second chances can lead to answers that have been there the entire time.
Production Info
Cast: 18 total (10 female, 8 male, 18 speaking roles or with doubling 14 actors)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
KRAKEN explores the true-life encounter between legendary American novelists Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1856. Melville, in the midst of a spiritual journey to the Holy Land, stops to visit with his old friend Hawthorne, now the American consul in Liverpool. As they spend the evening together, they discuss and confront their, fears, failures, things of this world and the next, books and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.95 Play Description
The play tells the story of a ragtag troupe of actors as they head West during the Gold Rush, seeking fortune and fame and performing Shakespeare for enthusiastic ’49ers. But with stiff competition, romantic entanglements, and an Indian chief who sees himself in King Lear, their ambitious cross-country adventure is complicated by the teeming challenges and glories of the new American frontier. Embracing elements of Shakespearean comedy and American vaudeville, HOW SHAKESPEARE WON THE WEST is a jubilant celebration of the human spirit.
Production Info
Cast: 13 total (4 female, 9 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
The classic 1851 farce. Fadinard is on the way to his wedding when his horse eats a straw hat hanging on a bush. The owner of the hat is a former girlfriend who insists that Fadinard buys her a new hat instantly. He sets off to find a replacement hat, followed by his fiancée and all their guests. The play develops into a delirious chase as Fadinard hunts the hat and the guests hunt Fadinard and comic misunderstandings litter every scene.
Production Info
Cast: 18 total (6 female, 12 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Richard Nelson’s critically lauded adaptation of Strindberg’s classic, in which a power struggle between husband and wife leads to devastating consequences.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 95 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
What if Blanche Dubois didn’t go crazy? Or the Three Sisters actually made it to Moscow? When he discovers he’s fictitious, a never-seen character in an Oscar Wilde play, Bunbury joins forces with Rosaline, Romeo’s never-seen obsession from ROMEO AND JULIET. Together they infiltrate and alter classic literature, including giving ROMEO AND JULIET a happy ending.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Set in a country weighed down by political, ideological and spiritual stagnation, Chekhov's compelling early play is rooted in the revolutionary atmosphere of Russia at the turn of the 20th century.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$19.95–$20.00 Collection 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 120 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Pulled from the stomach of a whale, an American whaler is bleached blind and becomes a modern Tiresias in the court of Louis XVI. He seduces Marie Antoinette and sets the king on a path to destroy France and ultimately humankind. A tragicomedy in rhymed couplets.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Comedy (about 140 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes