THE STORY: In need of a job, a man answers a help wanted ad, and is told to report to a Second Avenue bar at two in the morning. When he arrives only the bartender and a piano player are there--and they are disturbingly vague as to what sort of job
THE STORY: Set in a seedy hotel of a black neighborhood in a Midwestern city, the play introduces a series of finely drawn representative characters: a pimp who sends his girl out on the street to earn money for his drugs; the light-skinned dancer
Live theatre was once the main entertainment medium in the United States and the United Kingdom. The preeminent dramatists and actors of the day wrote and performed in numerous plays in which crime was a major plot element. This remains true today, especially with the longest-running shows such as The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables and Sweeney Todd. While hundreds of books have been published about crime fiction in film and on television, the topic of stage mysteries has been largely unexplored. Covering productions from the 18th century to the 2013-2014 theatre season, this is the first history of crime plays according to subject matter. More than 20 categories are identified, including whodunits, comic mysteries, courtroom dramas, musicals, crook plays, social issues, Sherlock Holmes, and Agatha Christie. Nearly 900 plays are described, including the reactions of critics and audiences.
THE STORY: Robert and Eleanor Clyde, a happily married couple, have one child, a son, Robin, whom they both adore. Eleanor is away on a visit and Robert is taking his secretary, Jane, home one night when he runs over a man on a bicycle. Jane is afr
(Applause Books). Curtain Times is a uniquely comprehensive, uniquely detailed and uniquely contemporaneous history of the New York theater in the seasons from 1964-65 up to 1987. This is a collection of more than two decades of annual critical surveys (originally published in the Best Plays series of yearbooks) in a single volume. Each of these surveys is a report and criticism of a whole New York theater season: its hits and misses onstage and off, its esthetic innards. Each is a comprehensive overview which takes in every play, musical, specialty and revival, foreign and domestic, produced on and off Broadway during the theater season. Hardcover.