Books published by Samuel French Ltd

This hard-hitting psychological drama swirls around a young Irishman who moves into lodgings in London already occupied by two bigots, one of them Irish and a student who's slumming to research his thesis. Damien is befriended by the student, who appreciates his intellect, and by the student's girlfriend, a devotee of causes and an aspiring journalist. When the IRA mounts a bombing campaign in London, it appears that the enigmatic Damien may be involved. Tension mounts as he remains noncommittal in the face of inquires. Gradually, Damien is drawn into an affair with the student's girlfriend, a lady attracted by the IRA specter. Realizing he has misled those around him, Damien tells her the truth: he's a dispatch clerk with absolutely no IRA ties. Back at the lodging house, misconceptions and resentments explode into sudden violence.

Four people have come to the Paradise Lounge on the same night for the same reason - to kill the singer. The four do not know each other, and therefore, do not know that the others are there for the same purpose. As the singer, Cindy, is onstage for her first set, the villains discuss with their accomplices the reason and method they've devised for Cindy's death. One by one, they each set a trap in Cindy's dressing room. Cindy finishes her set and leaves the stage to change clothes for the secon

Two people move into an empty room and begin to construct a life together in this work by the author of Noises Off, Copenhagen, Benefactors and numerous other well known plays. Should the bed go here and the table go there? Or the bed there and the table here? Everything inside this small space is for them to decide. The responsibility is daunting - especially when they reflect that it has taken the whole history of the world to get them together in this particular place at this particular time and that the whole future of the world will be different if the table is here instead of there. But how can they decide anything when the other person keeps disagreeing and when the woman downstairs maddeningly dumps unwanted furniture on them that they do not have the heart to refuse?

Comic drama Characters: 2 male, 4 female Interior, exterior or unit set. A warm drama played against the hatred in Northern Ireland, Remembrance charts the love that develops between a Protestant father and a Catholic mother who meet in the cemetery where their sons are buried, both victims of violence. Family members burden the courtship with personal antagonisms. "An absorbing, powerful and touching play.... A gripping account of the brutality of bigotry that knows

This stage biography of gifted short-story writer Katherine Mansfield is set in the tuberculosis sanitarium where she went with her devoted companion, Ida Baker, to regain her health over the winter of 1920-21. The play focuses on the relationship between these two ladies and on this important literary figure's sensibilities as a writer and a woman, while revealing harsh truths about her marriage to a writer and critic who treated her with selfish insensitivity.

Comedy Characters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set This amusing and insightful look at marriage focuses on one middle aged couple, Barry and Gen, in whose marriage it is possible to see most of the agony and the ecstasy of the institution. Barry, for example, has difficulty accepting that Gen wants to have a career and, indeed, an identity of her own. She wants to be more than merely Mrs. Barry. Eventually, of course, he comes around.

Denis Diderot, Translated and adapted by Shelley Berc and Andrei Belgrader Comic DialogueCharacters: 2 male Simple Interior SetThe two characters in this amazing, almost theatre of the absurd play are an aloof 18th century philosopher and a callow youth who happens to be the nephew of a great French court composer. The young man has recently offended his rich patron and been cut loose. The philosopher maintains that he should swallow his pride and beg forgiveness. As they argue, this tour de force becomes more and more manic. "It has the charm of Amadeus, the irony of Shaw.... The whole evening is one to be seen, savored and treasured." -New York Post

A collection of short plays selected by New York theatre critics, professionals, and the editorial staff of Samuel French, Inc. as the most important plays of the 15th Annual Off Off Broadway Original Short Play Festival, sponsored by Love Creek Productions. This collection includes: The Adventures of Captain Neato-Man by Timothy Harris, A Chance Meeting by Frederick Stroppel, Chateau Rene by Sam Ingraffia, Does This Woman Have A Name? by Theresa Rebeck, For Anne by Peter Gruen, The Heartbreak T

Genre: Comedy Characters: 4 males and 2 females Scenery: Interior This is a riotous comedy about divorce. Arthur and Norma, ex-spouses, live in separate apartments in the same building. Norma has second thoughts about her ongoing affair with Arthur's best friend, while Arthur isn't so sure he wants to continue his dalliance with Sonia. Dennis, Sonia's husband, doesn't mind his wife having an affair as long as she provides him with titillating accounts of it while he is dressed as a lady traffic cop. She greatly embellishes the tales to make him happy. Comic sparks are ignited into farcical flames when Dennis arrives at Arthur's flat for lessons in love making. "Riotous! A domestic laughter romp! A super play. You'll laugh all the way home, I promise you." - Eastbourne News "Very funny.... A Churchill comedy that most people will thoroughly enjoy." - The Stage

Characters: 4 male, 2 female 2 Interiors Maestro Vito De Angelis, an egomaniacal but charming conductor, is under contract to a major publisher to deliver his autobiography. The publisher has paid a huge advance and Vito has just fired his fifth ghost writer. The publisher sends pretty Iris Peabody, knowing that Vito is a sucker for the ladies, to gain his cooperation as she ghost writes the book. The stratagem works, a fact that distresses Mrs. Vito, former opera star Rachel Garla

Successful mystery playwright Chuck Reynolds has had his plays lauded by all critics except Charity Starr. When she shows up at his home and has the unmitigated gall to ask his expert help in writing a play of her own, Chuck fiendishly insists that their teacher/pupil sessions be held over lunch with Charity footing the bill at the most expensive restaurants in New York City. Lunatic waiters provide a uniquely hilarious touch to these meetings. Love blossoms despite the scheming of Chuck's amorous neighbor. Charity's play opens on Broadway and she finds out what it's like to be a target for all her critical confreres. Non stop fun, romance, and explosive hilarity make this an ideal show for the entire family.

Comedy Characters: 1 male, 2 female Interior Set Marcia returns to her flat to find it has not been painted as she arranged. A part time painter who is filling in for an ill colleague is just beginning the work when the wife of the man with whom Marcia is having an affair arrives to tell all to Marcia's husband. Marcia hires the painter a part time actor to impersonate her husband at the confrontation. Hilarity is piled upon hilarity as the painter, who takes his acti

Comedy Johnnie Mortimer & Brian Cooke Characters: 2 male, 4 female Interior Set Based on a very popular British sit com, this riotously funny play is classic British sex farce. When Mildred and Ethel go off on a trip to Paris, the "mice will play". Egged on by Ethel's philandering husband Humphrey Pomfrey, George agrees to invite two charming little sex kittens over. Well, you know already what happens, don't you the wives come home prematurely. "The audience screamed with laughter as the farcical comedy events unfolded. The plot is simple and slight risque with machine gun quick repartee. Unbridled laughter, by the theatre load." -Brisbane Telegraph "An amusing evening." -The Middlesex Chronicle

When Cliff Tucker inherits an orphan on the eve of his wedding to wealthy Bobbi Ralston, he figures he can handle matters until the foundling turns out to be full grown and gorgeous with an infant in her arms. While Cliff is fielding this disaster, his lawyer, who is in love with Bobbi, plots to scuttle the wedding. Plans backfire and lunacy multiplies when a struggling actor arrives and Cliffs housekeeper/sister lets him move into the apartment Cliff is vacating. Three convoluted romances culminate in a climactic engagement party in the final act that leaves audiences roaring with laugher. The deranged events involve a dress that looks like a Christmas tree, a stuffed monkey subbing for the baby, a telltale birthmark, and a startling dinner entree called 'Penguin Wellington.' This farce quickly accelerates from amusing to hilarious and is a fine frolic for the entire family to enjoy.

ComedyCharacters: 11 male, 6 female Various sets. Art Carney and Phyllis Thaxter played the Broadway roles of parents of two typical American girls enroute to college. The story is based on the wild and wooly experiences the authors had with their daughters, Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, themselves now well known writers. The phases of a girl's life are cause for enjoyment except to fearful fathers. Through the first two years, the authors tell us, college girls are fright

Comedy / Characters: 2 male, 1 female, 1 m. extraScenery: Interiors and Exterios simply suggestedPhilip Bosco, David Groh and Priscilla Lopez starred Off Broadway in this light hearted tale of two middle aged brothers on a vacation in Aruba by the author of Other People's Money. The men are searching for fun and adventure i.e., women but also for their misplaced happiness. Their father has recently passed away and the brothers decide some fun in the sun might be just the thing to kick the blues away. Phil, somewhat of a swinger, tries to advise his timid and married brother Norman on the ins and outs of getting laid. When Phil's ex wife Elizabeth arrives to raise a little hell, Norman puts what he's learned to use to hilarious and touching results.

Category: Comedy, Thriller Characters: 4 males, 3 females When nice Mrs. Collier and her two horrendous children are chosen to star in a shampoo commercial, it's not just the dandruff that has to go! "Polished, fast moving and thoroughly entertaining." - The Plymouth Evening Herald "A positive mine field of surprises." - Croydon Advertiser "A must for theatre fans." - The Derbyshire Times

This delightful comedy is about marriage, adultery, career choices, opposing a domineering father and finding one's own identity. Buddy Apple, an aspiring writer, ventures off into an adulterous affair because of frustrations with his lack of career success and his unhappiness with his wife. Eventually, he learns that the perfect life he has been seeking is right there at home.

MusicalCharacters: 1 male, 3 female Interior Set Book and Lyrics by Alan Ayckbourn. Music by Paul Todd. Mrs. Mary Yately is no run of the mill housewife-- she has been chosen by the Evening Echo as Mum of the Year. And, Mrs. Yately is no ordinary character in this brilliantly inventive new musical by Britain's comic master-- she is three separate personalities, played by three actresses. One actor plays all the men in Mary's life, all of whom are, shall we say, not on this world to make her life easier. "We know that Alan Ayckbourn writes more ingenious comedies than anyone else. Now, he is starting to write more ingenious musicals as well. Me, Myself and I offers more civilized pleasure than any other British musical I've seen this year."-- London Guardian. "Splendid, galloping music and rapid fire lyrics."-- London Standard.

Full Length, Drama / 3m, 2f / Bare stage This fascinating drama, staged to acclaim in London and New York, has in its cast of characters Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and Claire Goodwin. The play is about radicalism artistic, political and more. Taking place in Italy, it concerns the characters' various ideas about radical politics and free love. Along the way, a number of serious questions are raised, not the least of which is why fervent radicals seem so often to be done in

A fictitious songwriter and fifty years of his music provide an ideal spoof of musical revues.

Characters: 1m, 1f / Dramatic ComedyUnapologetically flamboyant, New York sculptor Louise Nevelson's life was one marked by intrepid artistic triumphs as well as deep inner turmoil. In Edward Albee's Occupant, both her public accomplishments and private emotional conflicts are thoroughly examined by an unnamed interviewer who questions the posthumous Nevelson with an unabashed scrutiny. From her unique vantage point beyond the grave, Nevelson answers his queries with a clarity born of the dist

5m, 2f / Drama Based on historical fact, Nest is a taut domestic love triangle set against the landscape of a fledgling nation on the verge of realizing its manifest destiny at a terrible bloody cost. The play re-imagines the real life story of Susanna Cox, a young indentured servant from Pennsylvania who murdered her baby in 1809, and the story of the man who wrote the ballad that was sold at her hanging. The play is a searing exploration of American dreams and violence and their place in the national psyche. "[Susanna Cox's] tale is uniquely American, involving all our national obsessions: sexuality, class, gender roles, the search for national identity, and, most of all, the insidious, hypocritical piety coded into our cultural DNA...Doran is particularly deft at constructing dialogue filled with small, characterizing moments to elucidate her themes."-Washington City Paper "Bathsheba Doran has crafted this seemingly simple but gripping 90-minute work from the true story of Susanna Cox"- talkinbroadway.com "Nest...is no simple costume-drama rendering of [a] young woman's life and death....When the artificial walls of the earlier scenes fall away and the stage is flooded by the cast working as a kind of chorus, one feels the heart of the playwright."- MetroWeekly

2m / Dramatic Comedy / Unit set It's 1965 and two comedians, "Steady Eddie" & "Doug the Mug," knock 'em dead every night in the Catskills. Punchlines and cheap shots fly -- on stage and off -- as Doug and Ed battle for the spotlight over a decade, pushing each other to the cusp of a new direction of stand up comedy. With their personal and professional lives uncovered at center stage, Eddie and Doug must find a way to laugh it off while staying at the top of their game. Sam Marks' The Joke takes a look at the friendship and the rivalry between two comic partners during the golden years of the Borscht Belt. "A tasty two-hander by Sam Marks...A comedy team working the Catskills in the 1960s and '70s, getting few laughs while undergoing all the stresses of a doomed marriage...And just as in a marriage in which one half of the couple changes while the other stays the same, the relationship deteriorates. Allusions to a woman and to the historical context as the '60s give way to the '70s are tantalizing but not overdone; the focus stays on the two men.". - Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times

3m, 2f / Dark Comedy / Unit Set In a suburban subdivision with identical houses, parents find their teenagers addicted to an online horror video game. The game setting? A subdivision with identical houses. The goal? Smash through an army of zombies to escape the neighborhood for good. But as the line blurs between virtual and reality, both parents and players realize that fear has a life of its own. "Playing like a nifty episode of 'The Twilight Zone', the story builds to an affectingly grues

Mystery Drama / 2m, 4f / Interior setRecipient of the 2008 Mystery Writer's of America Edgar Award for Best Play.Paris, 1963. Director Henry Lockwood has come to the City of Light for the premiere of his new film, Panic. Accompanied on the trip by his wife Emma and his secretary Miriam, Lockwood expects nothing more than to enjoy another cinematic success and to bask in the adulation of young French film critic Alain Duplay. But when Lockwood is accused of a hideous crime---a crime that could

Drama / 4 m, 3 f / Interior Set in the break room of a quasi-governmental organization, Smoke and Mirrors follows Anita and a handful of her co-workers through the course of a seemingly normal day, complete with bad cafeteria food, inept bosses, inappropriate e-mails and blood-stained lab-coats. Smoke and Mirrors mingles the comic with the nightmarish, creating a world composed of patriotism and cupcakes, of paranoia and air freshener---a world uncomfortably close to our own. "In Smoke and Mirrors, playwright Joseph Goodrich conjures up a wickedly amusing portrait of a stultifying but nerve-racking workplace." -Backstage.com "If Kafka scripted an episode of The Office, it might resemble Joseph Goodrich's bizarre and often intriguing Smoke and Mirrors, set in the smoking room of a nebulous American corporation." -Time Out New York

Large Cast / Flexible Age Range / Unit Set A touching musical based on the well-loved story by Oscar Wilde... the golden statue of the Happy Prince stands high above the city looking down on the misery and poverty beneath him. Desperate to bring hope and happiness to the poor people, he asks a swallow to distribute his gold and jewels to them. The generosity of the Happy Prince and the courage of the swallow help to overcome the greed of the powerful mayor and we are shown that the most precious things in life are often the least obvious. THE HAPPY PRINCE has been specially written for a large cast with a mixed range of ages and abilities making it suitable for schools, youth theatres or amateur groups. The 16 principal roles are augmented by much chorus work which can be adapted according to the size of the company. Helpful and detailed Director's Notes are included to assist with every aspect of the production. The running time is approximately 80 minutes.