Cover design by Carol Devine Carson
Two Shakespearean Actors
This play is included in the collection:
Play Description
Based on a true story. The year is 1849, the place New York City. Two arch rivals — the English star William Macready and the American matinee idol Edwin Forrest — tempt fate when both perform the Scottish Play on the same night in neighboring downtown theaters. Their feud helps incite the already-inflamed rage of anti-British theatergoers, who riot right outside Macready’s theater. Thirty-four people die in the fray.
Production Info
Cast: 24 total (7 female, 17 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“TWO SHAKESPEAREAN ACTORS commemorates and embellishes events surrounding a sensationally tragic event in New York theatrical history. The source of the trouble was the rivalry between two stage stars of the 19th century: the American Edwin Forrest and the British William Macready. Their simultaneous performances of MACBETH in 1849 caused riots in which at least 30 people lost their lives and many more were injured. Playwright Richard Nelson dramatizes the cataclysmic episode in robustly theatrical fashion. With a degree of justifiable dramatic license, Mr. Nelson and his actors simulate the circumstances of a spectacle grounded in an era when theatrical celebrities occupied the kind of pop status that rock stars enjoy today.” —John Beaufort, The Christian Science Monitor
Author(s)
Richard NelsonRichard Nelson's plays include the four-play series, THE APPLE FAMILY (THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING, SWEET AND SAD, SORRY, REGULAR SINGING (Nominated for Outstanding Play in Drama Desk Awards 2014; Public Theater, 2010 – 2013), NIKOLAI AND THE OTHERS (Lincoln Center Theater, 2013), FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE (Hampstead Theatre, 2012), HOW SHAKESPEARE WON THE WEST, (Huntington Theater, 2008), CONVERSATIONS AT TUSCULUM (Public Theater, 2008), FRANK'S HOME (Goodman Chicago, Playwrights Horizons, 2007), RODNEY'S WIFE (Playwrights Horizons, 2004), WHERE I COME FROM (National Theatre Connections), MADAME MELVILLE (which ran in the West End starring Macaulay Culkin and Irene Jacob and opened in May 2001 Off-Broadway); GOODNIGHT CHILDREN EVERYWHERE (winner of Olivier Award for Best New Play, 2000), KENNETH'S FIRST PLAY (with Colin Chambers, RSC), THE GENERAL FROM AMERICA (at the RSC and the Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York), NEW ENGLAND (RSC and Manhattan Theater Club), MISHA'S PARTY (with Alexander Gelman, RSC and Williamstown Theater Festival), TWO SHAKESPEAREAN ACTORS (Tony nomination for Best Play, RSC and Broadway), COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY OF JAPAN (RSC Barbican), SOME AMERICANS ABROAD (Olivier nomination, Best Comedy; RSC, Lincoln Center and Broadway), LEFT, BETWEEN EAST AND WEST (Hampstead), PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORAE (winner of Time Out Award, RSC and Manhattan Theater Club), THE RETURN OF PINOCCHIO, AN AMERICAN COMEDY, BAL, CONJURING AN EVENT, RIP VAN WINKLE, JUNGLE COUP, THE KILLING OF YABLONSKI, THE VIENNA NOTES (Obie Award). His musicals include JAMES JOYCE'S THE DEAD (starring Christopher Walken and Blair Brown; Playwrights Horizons, Belasco Theatre, Broadway, Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, Kennedy Center, Washington; for which he received a Tony Award in 2000 for Best Musical Book), CHESS (the book for the Broadway musical), PARADISE FOUND (dir: Harold Prince and Susan Strohman), MY LIFE WITH ALBERTINE (with Ricky Ian Gordon; Playwrights Horizons), UNFINISHED PIECE FOR A PLAYER PIANO (with Peter Golub). His translations and adaptations include TYNAN starring Corin Redgrave (with Colin Chambers, RSC and West End), LOLITA with Brian Cox (National), Molnar's THE GUARDSMAN (Kennedy Center), Carriere's THE CONTROVERSY (Public Theater), Fo's ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST (Broadway), Strindberg's THE FATHER with Frank Langella (Broadway) and MISS JULIE (Yale Rep), Beaumarchais' THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (the Guthrie and Broadway); Molière's DON JUAN, Ibsen's WILD DUCK and ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, Pirandello's ENRICO IV, Goldoni's IL CAMPIELLO, Erdmann's THE SUICIDE. With the esteemed translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, he was co-translated Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD, Gogol's THE INSPECTOR, Turgenev's A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY and Bulgakov's DON QUIXOTE. Films: Hyde Park on Hudson, staring Bill Murray and Laura Linney (Dir: Roger Michell), Ethan Frome, starring Liam Neeson (Dir: John Madden); Sensibility and Sense, staring Elaine Stritch and Jean Simmons (Dir: David Jones). Television: The End of a Sentence with Edward Herrmann (Dir: David Jones). Radio Plays include: HYDE PARK ON HUDSON, LANGUAGES SPOKEN HERE (Giles Cooper Award), EATING WORDS (Giles Cooper Award), ADVICE TO EASTERN EUROPE, AN AMERICAN WIFE (all BBC).
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
Play Description
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.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male, 1 child)Short Comedy (about 50 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00Play 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
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Lord Loveworthy has a problem. His only daughter is soon to be married. And the only way to pay for her wedding is to blackmail the vicar who’s seducing his wife. But how does a Victorian pornographer commit extortion, without inordinate discord, at tea?
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Comedy (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Ghosts drift through Strindberg's haunted and haunting dreamscape where a student idealizes the inhabitants of a stylish Stockholm apartment building, only to discover that their lives, perhaps even life itself, may be a kind of hell from which salvation can only be achieved through suffering.
Production Info
Cast: 14 total (7 female, 7 male, bit parts)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Crazy Horse, the Sioux leader, engages General Crook, Indian fighter, in a confrontation that results in the death of Crazy Horse.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (6 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play 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
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
Play Description
Veteran journalist Ambrose Bierce, whose wit is as sharp as a scalpel, is sent by yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst to the Pacific Western Railroad, the symbol of big business corruption at the turn of the century. Bierce has his hands full, not only with bought-off senators and railroad goons but with a son who has a dangerous proclivity for the ladies and a weariness with his incessant battle against “goodness.”
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (3 female, 6 male)Full Length Comedy (about 85 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00Play Description
Set in Denmark in the early 1890s, Nina, the Snow Queen, has migrated south yet once again to find her “boy” for the season. Upon running into Christian, she chooses him and whisks him away up north for the winter. But relationships are never that easy, and even though Nina has all the glitz and glamour on her side, as the winter draws to an end and spring appears, Analiese, the young heroine, journeys north to find her love. Thus a timeless tale wrought with danger, adventure, and love, THE SNOW QUEEN is a fairytale for adults who still believe in magic. Based on the classic Hans Christian Anderson story.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 60 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00Play 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
$15.00–$15.95Play Description
Adapted from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, MONSTER takes a disturbing yet poignant look at one man’s obsession with creating life and the destructive after effects of abandoning his creation.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (4 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 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)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes