The Pests
Play Description
Molière’s deliciously trifling comedy in a garden setting won the favor of the Sun King in 1661 and set his course to become the most-produced comic writer in the history of theatre. This neglected classic marked Molière’s first mingling of sparkling verse dialogue and dance numbers. While written for a courtly audience, the play dared to mock recognizable personalities and their obnoxious eccentricities. For modern audiences, the human foibles still look familiar and very funny. Desperately in love with the coquettish Orphise, Eraste tries to maintain his aristocratic composure as one obnoxious person after another interrupts his pursuit. Can he appreciate Lysandre’s self-taught, self-proclaimed genius as a singer and dancer? Will he defy the king’s ban on dueling to serve as second for a friend who took offense at another’s unfortunate word choice? Can he follow the card player’s compulsion to recount every move? Or the hunter’s venting about horse and hounds? How can he politely put a stop to the scholar’s torrent of verbiage? Or the financial wheeler-dealer’s spiel? Will Orphise let him explain about the two women smothering him with their theorizing about lovers? In counterpoint to the swatting of pests, three dance interludes allow the company’s creativity to go wild. And there’s a fight scene. Of course, Eraste gets the girl in the end.
Production Info
Cast: 15 total (4 female, 11 male, 2 nonspeaking parts)Full Length Comedy (about 85 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“Flashy, effervescent and downright fun … It is such a joy to watch the ensemble bring tradition into the now. PESTS obviously has literary accessibility and near-perfect timing, but it also has guts, and in rhyming verse.” —Lonita Cook, Black Bee Buzz
“Londré’s translation highlights the show’s whimsy and the cast does an impressive job of handling Molière’s rhyming couplets.” —Vivian Kane, Kansas City Studio
“Londré’s translation updates the dialogue, but like the original, it’s in verse … It is, to borrow a word from the production’s description, a trifle. But a délicieux one.” —Christine Pivovar, Kansas City Magazine
“Dr Felicia Londré’s translation is superb — wonderfully accessible while also lovingly devoted to Molière’s intentions. I have spent a quarter of a century working with classical texts and the most important thing to remember is that they were all new at one point. They were never intended to be revered at a distance by the viewer, but rather presented in a lively and engaging way. Our production embraces this fully by mixing our contemporary age with the classical style of Molière’s era. Audiences will delight in the witty banter of the tex …” —director Matt Schwader, interviewed by Emily Park, INKansasCity
“… a fantastic and lively adaptation which is even more thrilling and vibrant thanks to some of the best talent Kansas City has to offer. I think we’re all ready for this rollicking, frolicking, romping good time!” —Broadway World Kansas City
Author(s)
MolièreJean-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.
Felicia LondréFelicia Londré translated THE PESTS as part of her three-year immersion in Molière's work during Kansas City MO's build-up to celebrating the great comic playwright's 400th birthday (15 January 2022). Felicia is president of KC MOlière: 400 in 2022, Inc., which she co-founded with the late Kip Niven and which has generated many stage productions of Molière's plays, lectures, school programs, a mascot-head MoMo at events, a Molière coloring book, and even a new pastry (The Molière) and dessert wine (Joie de Molière). Dr. Londré is Curators' Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she taught theatre history for 42 years, supervised 90 M.A. theses, published 17 books and hundreds of articles and reviews. Her 2008 book The Enchanted Years of the Stage won the Theatre Library Association's George Freedley Memorial Award. She served a term (2012–14) as Dean of The College of Fellows of the American Theatre. Felicia's recognitions include ATHE's 2001 Outstanding Teacher of Theatre in Higher Education Award and the 2011 Betty Jean Jones Award for Outstanding Teacher of American Theatre and Drama. She taught a semester at Hosei University in Tokyo as well as presenting papers at many national and international conferences. As Honorary Co-Founder of Kansas City's Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, she served twelve years (1992–2004) on that board. She was resident dramaturg for Missouri Repertory Theatre, 1978–2001. Felicia's other translations that have been produced are AN ITALIAN STRAW HAT by Labiche, TRIO by Kado Kostzer and Alfredo Arias, THE SHOW-MAN by Andrée Chedid, THE SNOWMAIDEN by Ostrovsky, TWO MAPLES by Shvarts, and LITTLE HUMPBACKED HORSE by Malyarevsky.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 3/15/2022 |
| Pages | 52 |
| ISBN | 9780881459272 |
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
Upcoming and Recent Productions
Nonprofessional
Related Plays
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
A comical, anachronistic, and witty retelling of the Greek myth, composed “after Kleist by way of Molière with a little bit of Giraudoux.”
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male)Full Length Comedy (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
A masterpiece by one of the greatest writers of the Spanish Golden Age. When the people of the town of Fuente Ovejuna revolt against their tyrannical overlord and murder him, the authorities attempt to find out who is responsible, leading to one of the most memorable acts of resistance in world drama.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (4 female, 12 male, flexible casting up to 8 women and 20 men)Full Length Drama (about 180 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
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
The story of a young woman forced into an unhappy marriage to her dull, sickly cousin and smothered by her overbearing aunt. When her husband’s childhood friend enters her life, it leads Thérèse into a torrid affair that sets her spirit free for the first time but with shattering consequences. Steeped in the atmosphere of 19th-century France with a darkly rich foreboding.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95
Play Description
A sardonic comedy about Dutrecy, a man of the most unbridled selfishness, who arranges his life to provide himself maximum comfort. With a similar friend De la Porcheraie he hopes to acquire land where a new street is to be built, cheating the owner before news gets out. He also intends to marry his teen-aged niece Therese in hopes she'll be his nurse in his old age. Meanwhile his nephew Armand has saved the banker's son Georges; bosom friends, each assumes the other loves Therese. Eventually, everything works out to the satisfaction of the young people and the discomfiture of Dutrecy.
Production Info
Cast: 11 total (2 female, 9 male)Full Length Comedy (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$0.00–$15.95
Play Description
In 1692, as the Salem Witch Trials rage in nearby Salem, the residents of Peabody, Massachusetts are going through their own crucible, and they are just, like, really sick of crucibles. The surprising election of the boorish lout Dunning Kruger to be the local reverend has thrown the town into turmoil and pitted the townsfolk against each other like never before in the history of the New World, and that’s saying something because the history of the New World is really messed up. Ezekiel Farmer and his wife Verity must reconcile their differences (she voted for Kruger, he for the more experienced female challenger, Goody Constant Bending) and somehow find a way to resist the ugly tide that threatens them all. TOO MANY CRUCIBLES is an extremely unsanctioned companion piece to Miller’s classic THE CRUCIBLE that proves some witch hunts turn up witches.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male, doubling, flexible casting, up to 37 actors)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$100.00
Play Description
A loving homage to Eugène Labiche and the High Vaudeville style he was instrumental in establishing a century and a half ago.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (3 female, 7 male)Full Length Comedy (about 105 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
$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
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
$11.95–$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
$15.00
Play Description
A Play with Music — the music of Frederic Chopin. George Sand had many lovers — but the one to whom she was most attached, and who almost ruined her life, was Frederic Chopin. His illness and dependency, the rivalries of two artists living under the same roof, the conflicting demands of two careers, all these batter the relationship. But most damaging is what the affair does to her family. Sand is hailed as an icon of female liberation. In GEORGE AND FREDERIC we see what can be the consequences of that liberation. Her rebellious daughter, Solange, embraces the tenets of feminism as an excuse for wild behavior, eventually causing the final rift between her mother and her mother’s lover. To assert his own creativity in this maelstrom, Maurice, George’s doting and doted-upon son, creates puppets of each member of this explosive ménage, puppets who, throughout the play, comment wryly on all the heated goings-on with humor, irony, and wit.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (2 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 125 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00
Play Description
Eric Overmyer’s sparkling adaptation and synthesis of Beaumarchais’s THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO and Ödön von Horváth’s FIGARO GETS A DIVORCE. FIGARO/FIGARO follows the iconic characters of Figaro, Susanna, the Count and Countess Almaviva, and other favorites through the ups and downs inherent in all relationships — husband and wife, master and servant, family ties and the like.
Production Info
Cast: 17 total (6 female, 11 male)Full Length Drama (about 160 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes