• 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
 
  • Home
  • >
  • The Plays
  • >
  • The Illusion

    The Illusion

    Tony Kushner, freely adapted from Pierre Corneille's L'ILLUSION COMIQUE
    Acting Edition$11.95
    ePlay$15.00 + $10.00 per additional user
    Performance Rights

    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
    Categories: The Plays, Bestsellers, Classics Tags: French
    • Reviews
    • About the Author(s)
    • About the Book
    • Special Notes
    • Production Notes
    • Productions

    Press Quotes

    “In an eminently playable, witty adaptation by Tony Kushner, THE ILLUSION comes across as downright entertaining, not an adjective anyone who reads Corneille in college is likely to expect. Unlike his better known plays, which have heroic subjects, THE ILLUSION is concerned with domestic matters, the alienation of parents from children, marital infidelity. While it is serious about these subjects, it puts them in an unusual context: A father has consulted a magician about his estranged son, and the magician shows him scenes from his son’s life … The comedy is elegant, full of depth …” —Howard Kissel, Daily News

    “What are the real powers of sorcery? To alter? To define? To transport? Tony Kushner and Pierre Corneille before him go for all three, which is only part of the magic in Kushner’s fanciful adaptation of Corneille’s L’ILLUSION COMIQUE. Freely adapted it is, in the best sense. For Corneille, whose later, loftier verse plays earned him the stodgy title of Father of French Tragedy, THE ILLUSION was a mildly satirical precursor to all that, a glitch, written when he was only twenty-nine. Yet even then, it was burdened by a ponderous 17-century neo-classical style that kept the word comique out of 20-century range. Kushner’s achievement is digging under all the circumlocution to salvage an ageless and universal tale, stripping the nugget of its ornamentation and serving it up to us lingually lucid and lean. There is some colloquial indulgence in the rewritten language, but it’s mostly judicious. We’re in on the joke, which never goes too far. Simply put, this the tale of a rigid father, Pridament, who, stricken with remorse for having provoked his son to flee the family home, searches out the magician Aleandre in the hope that he will help him find out what happened to the wayward boy. Aleandre does, and the ironic twist of the piece is that after several false starts, passionate re-enactments, comic delusions and confusions, the truth is revealed and Papa finds he doesn’t like it. The light-hearted ending is a cynical but honest lesson in selective affection. All the fun, however, is in getting there. THE ILLUSION takes us into territory on which theater thrives: fantasy, witchcraft, transcended place and time …” —Sylvie Drake, Los Angeles Times

    “What a fascinating, totally theatrical excursion we’re in for in this 17th-century fairytale-fable first spun by French classical dramatist Pierre Corneille. In 1639, L’ILLUSION COMIQUE was a comedy they didn’t know what to make of; 20th-century playwright Tony Kushner knows what to make of it. Triumphantly exhumed and enlivened three and a half centuries later in Kushner’s fresh, free adaptation; it proves indeed to be … ‘a prematurely modern play.’ Both modern and ancient, timeless and timely, flippant and profound … It is a thorough delight … L’ILLUSION COMIQUE was a masterpiece waiting for its time to happen. Tony Kushner made it happen and made it better. It is essence of theater, essence of archetypal magic. Carl Jung would have loved it.” —Polly Warfield, Drama-Logue

    Author(s)

    • Pierre Corneille

      Pierre Corneille studied law and then entered the Rouen parliament in 1629. He would serve as the king's counselor in the local office of the department of waterways and forests for twenty-one years, and, remarkably, he still found the time to write twenty plays during this period. After his retirement from the legal profession, he would write twelve more. Although Corneille is considered by most critics to be the father of French tragedy, six of his first eight plays were comedies. His first play, MÉLITE, was presented by a strolling troupe that happened through Rouen in 1629. He followed this initial offering with a series of comedies and tragicomedies, including CLITANDRE (1631), LA VEUVE or THE WIDOW (1632), LA GALERIE DU PALAIS or THE PALACE CORRIDOR (1633), LA SUIVANTE or THE MAIDSERVANT (1634), LA PLACE ROYAL (1634), and L'ILLUSION COMIQUE (1636). The playwright soon began to experiment with the tragic form and the result was the well-received: MÉDÉE (1635). Then, in 1637, Corneille stunned the French theatre with his first masterpiece: LE CID (1637), based on the life of an eleventh century Spanish hero. He quickly produced a string of tragedies that secured him a place in theatre history. The first of these masterworks, HORACE (1640), dramatizes the conflict of families divided by duty during a war between the ancient Romans and their Alban neighbors. Corneille followed this success with CINNA (1641), which tells the story of a conspiracy against the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar, who outwits his potential murderers by granting them a political pardon rather than attempting to have them executed as they expect, thus proving that he has strength enough to be merciful. And finally, POLYEUCTE (1643), considered by some critics to be Corneille's greatest work, tells the story of a born-again Christian who finds that his wife is in love with another man. In 1643, Corneille also achieved a remarkable success with a comedy of intrigue, LE MENTEUR or THE LIAR. In 1647, Corneille moved with his family to Paris and was admitted to the Académie Francaise.

    • Tony Kushner

      Born in New York City in 1956, and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Tony Kushner is best known for his two-part epic, ANGELS IN AMERICA: A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES. His other plays include A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY, SLAVS!, HYDROTAPHIA, HOMEBODY/KABUL, and CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, the musical for which he wrote book and lyrics, with music by composer Jeanine Tesori. Kushner has translated and adapted Pierre Corneille's THE ILLUSION, S.Y. Ansky's THE DYBBUK, Bertolt Brecht's THE GOOD PERSON OF SEZUAN and MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, and the English-language libretto for the children's opera BRUNDIBÁR by Hans Krasa. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols' film of Angels in America and Steven Spielberg's Munich. In 2012 he wrote the screenplay for Spielberg's movie Lincoln. His screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, Boston Society of Film Critics Award, Chicago Film Critics Award, and several others. His books include But the Giraffe: A Curtain Raising and Brundibar: The Libretto, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. His recent work includes a collection of one-act plays entitled TINY KUSHNER, and THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES. In addition, a revival of ANGELS IN AMERICA ran Off-Broadway at the Signature Theater and won the Lucille Lortel Award in 2011 for Outstanding Revival. Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN/Laura Pels Award, a Spirit of Justice Award from the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, a Cultural Achievement Award from The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, a Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement, and the 2012 National Medal of Arts, among many others. CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, produced at the National Theatre of Great Britain, received the EVENING STANDARD Award, the London Drama Critics' Circle Award and the Olivier Award for Best Musical. In September 2008, Tony Kushner became the first recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, the largest theater award in the US. He is the subject of a documentary film, Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, made by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris.

    Book Information

    Publisher BPPI
    Publication Date 12/31/2003
    Pages 72
    ISBN 9780881452310

    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:

    Commissioned and originally produced by New York Theatre Workshop
    Further developed and produced by Hartford Stage Company
    Mark Lamos, Artistic Director

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

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

    Production Notes

    The author will allow a woman to be cast in the role of Alcandre.

    Upcoming and Recent Productions

    Professional


    6/12/2021 – 6/13/2021
    Upstart Creatures
    New York, NY

    1/18/2019 – 2/10/2019
    Road Less Traveled Productions
    Buffalo, NY

    Nonprofessional


    2/17/2023 – 2/26/2023
    Manhattan Arts Center
    Manhattan, KS

    11/16/2022 – 11/20/2022
    Berry College
    Mt Berry, GA

    5/6/2022 – 5/15/2022
    Mesa College Theatre Company
    San Diego, CA

    2/24/2022 – 2/28/2022
    Olean Community Theatre
    Olean, NY

    2/18/2022 – 2/26/2022
    Wheaton College
    Wheaton, IL

    11/23/2021 – 11/25/2021
    University College School
    London, LDN, United Kingdom

    11/12/2021 – 11/21/2021
    Florida Atlantic University
    Boca Raton, FL

    11/5/2021 – 11/13/2021
    Palo Alto High School
    Palo Alto, CA

    6/25/2021 – 6/27/2021
    Montclair State University, Dept Of Theatre & Dance
    Montclair, NJ

    5/20/2021 – 5/23/2021
    Prattville High School
    Prattville, AL

    2/20/2020 – 3/7/2020
    The Prospect Playhouse, Cayman Drama Society
    Prospect, GC, Cayman Islands

    11/17/2019 – 11/18/2019
    The Pollock Center
    Camp Hill, PA

    11/14/2019 – 11/17/2019
    Springfield College Theater
    Springfield, MA

    11/7/2019 – 11/16/2019
    Belhaven University
    Jackson, MS

    6/1/2019 – 6/1/2019
    Franklin School For The Performing Arts
    Franklin, MA

    5/10/2019 – 5/11/2019
    Saint Anselm's Abbey School
    Washington, DC

    12/6/2018 – 12/9/2018
    Aquinas College
    Grand Rapids, MI

    11/22/2018 – 11/24/2018
    Manchester Metropolitan University
    Manchester, NA, United Kingdom

    6/15/2018 – 6/23/2018
    Waterworks Players
    Farmville, VA

    3/30/2018 – 4/7/2018
    School Of Theatre & Dance, Illinois State University
    Normal, IL

    2/22/2018 – 2/25/2018
    South Texas College
    McAllen, TX

    11/17/2017 – 11/19/2017
    Loras College
    Dubuque, IA

    11/3/2017 – 11/18/2017
    Ohlone College
    Fremont, CA

    11/2/2017 – 11/4/2017
    Paul Mellon Arts Center
    Wallingford, CT

    11/2/2017 – 11/12/2017
    University Of Southern Mississippi, Theatre Dept.
    Hattiesburg, MS

    8/19/2017 – 8/19/2017
    Broadway Center For The Performing Arts
    Tacoma, WA

    Related Plays

    She Can’t Bare It!
    Georges Feydeau, translated from the French by Laurence Senelick

    Play Description

    What to do about a wife going around the apartment in her nightie until lunchtime?

    Production Info

    Cast: 5 total (1 female, 4 male)
    Short Comedy (about 40 minutes)
    Single Set
    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
    Lorenzaccio
    Alfred de Musset, adapted by John Strand
    $15.00–$15.95

    Play Description

    Alfred de Musset’s 1832 play depicts Lorenzo de Medici, the 16th-century Florentine nobleman who killed his tyrannical cousin but did not establish a republican government afterwards and was forever disgraced by a debaucherous past.

    Production Info

    Cast: 12 total (4 female, 8 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Period Costumes
    $11.95–$15.00
    Ubu
    Alfred Jarry, translated by Kenneth McLeish
    $11.95–$15.00

    Play Description

    The satirical farce acclaimed as the touchstone for the Dada and Surrealist movements, the Theatre of the Absurd, and much of the rest of experimental theatre in the twentieth century.

    Production Info

    Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)
    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
    Escoffier, King of Chefs
    Owen S Rackleff
    $11.95–$15.00

    Play Description

    The first celebrity chef, Auguste Escoffier is revealed in all his culinary glory in this delightful one-man show.

    Production Info

    Cast: 1 total (1 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 75 minutes)
    Minimal Set Requirements
    Contemporary Costumes
    $15.00
    Eleanor of Aquitaine
    Ruth Wolff
    $15.00

    Play 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
    $11.95
    Molière or The Cabal of Hypocrites
    Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Richard Nelson, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
    $11.95

    Play Description

    One of the world’s great plays about censorship and the oppression of artists is now newly translated by the renowned translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonksy (winner of two PEN/Book-of-the-Month Translation Awards) and the playwright/director Richard Nelson (Tony Award, Olivier Award).

     

    Premiered on February 16, 1936 at the Moscow Art Theater, MOLIÈRE OR THE CABAL OF HYPOCRITES was banned after seven performances.

     

    “Put yourselves in our place, ladies and gentlemen … the performance is over.” —ACT FOUR

    Production Info

    Cast: 12 total (6 female, 6 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 85 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Period Costumes
    $11.95–$15.00
    The Learned Ladies
    Molière, translated from the French into English by A R Waller, adapted by Steven Pimlott and Colin Chambers
    $11.95–$15.00

    Play Description

    Molière's satire of intellectual snobbery focuses on the women folk of Chrysale's household, who look on all but intellectual pursuits as worthless and spurn love in favour of learning. The heroine, Chrysale's daughter Henriette, wants to marry Clitandre, but her mother wishes her to marry the poet Trissotin, who is worming his way into the household in order to marry Henriette for her family's fortune. When his avaricious plot is discovered, he is sent away in disgrace, leaving Henriette to marry Clitandre as she wishes.

    Production Info

    Cast: 13 total (5 female, 8 male)
    Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Period Costumes
    $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

    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.

    ‹ › ×