Books published by Samuel French Ltd

p>Comedy Barry Conners Characters: 5 male, 4 female, but can be doubled. The story concerns Patricia Harrington, a girl who "runs second" to her older sister. She is the patsy who is blamed whenever anything goes wrong, and is forced to remain in the background in order that her sister may be presentd to advantage. Her father, a traveling man, is on her side, and finally declares his independence by putting Ma in her proper place. This brings about Patsy's ultimate triumph, and, needless to say, affords her happiness as the bride of the man she loves. This is an ideal comedy for schools, colleges and churches.

Tragedy Denis Cannan and Pierre Bost, adapted from Graham Greene. Characters: 28 male, 9female, extras Unit set, frags., travellers. In the revolutionary days of Mexico a priest decides to stay with his people in disguise rather than escape. It is little consolation, however. For wherever the priest goes with the Mass and the Sacraments, the police are sure to follow executing those who harbored him. Though he is a humanly weak priest, with a past of ma

Baba Goya is a loudmouth mother who goes through husbands and orphans like the Turkish coffee she makes in a dirty old soup pan. In Queens, she presides over a household comprised of a childish orphan who happens to be a cop, an elderly gentleman who explodes every time somebody calls him "Grandpa," a dying husband, and an errant daughter who cries all night. The husband, Baba's fifth, is already submitting an ad for her sixth. The cop catches a Japanese man stealing cameras and chains him to a radiator, the daughter guiltily confesses she voted for Nixon and runs off, and the husband, who may not die after all, insists they must wait out Watergate for a Democratic president.

Paul Green and Richard WrightAdapted from the classic novel by Richard Wright DramaCharacters: 15 male, 14 female (w/doubling)Multiple SetsThe story of Bigger Thomas, a black youth seeking his identity in the white world. This adpatation was originally produced by Orson Welles and John Houseman.

Full Length, Drama Characters: 1 male, 3 female, chorus.InteriorThe early life cycle of a girl growing up with her sister and her mother in a lower class black neighborhood, with scenes switching back and forth in time to show her both as she is now and as she was when a little girl. Her mother was an evangelist, and her father a very likeable but contentious alcoholic. Her sister became a whore early in life. One night after the father has left the family, mother plans a pilgrimage to another town; and so this is the night that sister decides to bring home a white man and initiate the younger girl in the rites of sex. Sensing trouble, however, mother returns unexpectedly and discovers all. Ever since that night, sister has disappeared, and the girl has gone searching for her everywhere, ending up a prostitute herself. Her one remaining hope is her lover, who has made her pregnant. "Complex but moving, well written, compassionate Black play." N.Y. Times.

Comedy / Characters: 7 male, 4 female Set in the turbulent 1970's, this bittersweet romance by the author of Moonchildren and Spoils of War, starred Kevin Kline at Circle-In-The-Square on Broadway. Paul is a Peace Corps dropout and Susan is in freefall when they meet on a beach in Bali. Later in Boston, they live together and then marry. Separating briefly, then reconciling in a New York penthouse, she has become a successful photographer; he a successful film editor. Paul wants children and

Drama / Characters: 3 male, 8 femaleScenery: InteriorEdward G. Robinson starred on Broadway with Gena Rowlands in this May-December romance. He is an over-50 dress manufacturer and she a 20-ish young bride. When they meet and begin an affair, their love creates a dynamic fissure among the respective families as the 'real world' looks on in disapproval.

Mawby Green and Ed Feilbert from "Une Nuit Chez Vous... Madame!" by Jean de Letraz Full Length, FarceCharacters: 3 male, 4 femaleInterior SetGaston Dubois and his beautiful wife Huguette are bored with the monotony of married bliss. Fidelity is strained when the quietude of their Paris apartment becomes the playground for would be and ex lovers. The mad capers reach an amazing peak of hilarity in when everyone lands in bed with the wrong person or persons, including an uptight maiden aunt."Can only be given a blanket recommendation as one of the most boisterous, roisterous and side splitting comedies that has ever graced any stage."-Cape Cod Standard Times "One of the funniest plays ever to come to the theatre."-Citizen Patriot, Jackson, MI "Leaves audiences virtually limp from laughter."-Variety "A gale of non stop laughs."-Middlesex Chronicle, England

A dignified, aristocratic woman living quietly in her London home is gradually surrounded by diabolically clever crooks who ingeniously alienate her family and friends and nearly convince them that she is hopelessly insane. It looks as though the kind lady is doomed to lose her property and her sanity, but a supreme effort of courage and skill conveys the true situation to the outside world in this intensely exciting drama.

Farce comedy Georges Feydeau and Maurice Desvallieres, Translation by Peter GlenvilleCharacters: 13 male, 8 female, extrasInterior SetsThis mad French bedroom frolic finds an assortment of refined people stealing through the halls and rooms of a cheap hotel comically intent on assignations. "One of the funniest comedies since the silent movies." N.Y. Daily News. "Mr. Glenville's conception of this rumpus is riotous ... bold, reckless and funny." N.Y. Times.

Tragic Drama / Characters: 10 male, 5 female, 5 extras.Scenery: Interior/ExteriorThis Obie-winning drama was first produced at New York's American Place Theatre and made a star of Faye Dunaway. A highly volatile drama in blank verse, Hogan's Goat is set in a turn-of-the-century Brooklyn populated by Irish Catholic immigrants teeming with hopes of "the American Dream". The current mayor Quinn has been caught in a scandal and the time is ripe for a reform ticket. Ambitious Matthew Stanton ha

Henrik Ibsen Translated by Christopher HamptonFull Length, DramaCharacters: 3 male, 2 femaleInterior Set This riveting family drama is a classic of the modern theatre. Oswald Alving returns for the dedication of the orphanage to his father's memory and has a flirtation with the family maid who, it turns out, is his father's illegitimate daughter. As the long-supressed truths collide, the orphanage is destroyed by fire, the maid deserts the family in disgust

p>DramaCharacters: 8 male, 6 female Platform with area staging. This striking story of a middle class Black family in a small Northeastern city is told on two levels: events that transpire on one hot June weekend and flashbacks to the memories of the visiting grandmother as a young woman. She recalls the three men, two black and one white, who are the fathers of her three children. A resourceful woman, she feels some regrets, no shame and feels she has had a useful life. Lou

Tragic Drama / Characters: 8 male, 3 female, extras w/doublingWinner of Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award!"A great part a tragic hero, cheated, degraded, and at last brutally beaten. Mr. Sackler has used his hero, a figure based on the first Black heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson (played by James Earl Jones), as a symbol in part of Black aspiration...Has an epic scope and range...It picks up the Johnson story soon after the Australian day in 1908 when Johnson whipped Tommy B

Full Length, Comedy Characters: 9 male, 13 femlae Interior Set A delightful comedy of English country people. The story is concerned with Samuel Sweetland, a Devonshire farmer and a widower, who decides to marry again. Aided and abetted by his house keeper Araminta, he makes out a list of the various eligible women in the count and proposes to them in turn. But they all refuse him, and in the end he finds at home in Araminta, the one woman.

Comedy Sylvia Regan Characters: 6 male, 7 female Interior Set The scene is the plush show-room-and-office of two partners in the clothing business who have gorgeous models, beautiful furnishings, and no business. They live in constant fear of bankruptcy, then mortgage their shirts to pot on a good show for a prospective buyer. It is the models, rather than the clothes, that sell the biggest buyer of them all and pull the partners out of the hole. Meanwhile the fast life snarls both partners in love affairs, and nearly wrecks the marriage of the younger before he snaps out of it . "Full of loud laughs and unexpected jokes."�N.Y. Daily News. "Irresistible fun. For it boasts heart and hilarity."�N.Y. Mirror.

N. Richard NashFull Length, DramaCharacters: 2 male, 1 female Interior SetA young man and woman build a low keyed paradise of happiness within an asylum, only to have it shattered by the intrusion of the outside world. The two characters search, at times agonizingly, to determine the difference between illusion and reality. The effort is lightened by moments of shared love and "pretend" games, like decorating Christmas trees that are not really there. The t

Comedy / 5 m., 4 f. / Int. Adapted from the novel by Richard Gordon about the off duty lives of a group of medical students, this play weaves their happy triumphs and brave failures, love affairs and parties into a many colored pattern. Several individuals confined under the same roof employ a blithe exterior to hide their hopes and fears, ineffectually concealing an underlying earnestness of purpose. The play provides a good variety of character parts: young men, some playboys, some serious; the college porter and the eccentric professor; the dragon matron; nurses pretty and dull; and the landlady extraordinary. FEE: $75 per performance.

MelodramaCharacters: 5 male, 5 femaleUnit setBased on the famous NBC Radio-Television series. This adaptation of one of the most famous radio and television programs reproduces the authenticity, the terseness, the real-life characters, and the gripping, suspenseful and highly topical incidents for which the original is noted. Taken from the files of the Los Angeles Police Department, the case treated in the play is that of a supposed suicide, Karl Hamlin. Sergeant Joe Friday and his partner, Officer Frank Smith, working out of Homocide, are called to the home of Karl Hamlin's estranged wife, Nora. There they are informed that Hamlin has locked himself in the study and shot himself. The detectives are forced to smash a window to gain entrance to the study, where they find Hamlin dead and, clutched in his hand, a revolver from which one shot has recently been fired. On the surface, it looks like a routine case, with all the indications confirming the suicide theory. But - a laboratory check proves conclusively that the fatal bullet could not have been fired from the revolver, and Friday and Smith are confronted with a seemingly insoluable problem. Through a brilliant feat of detection, Friday is able to unmask the killer in a stunning and totally unexpected climax, and justice is belatedly served.

Comedy / 6m, 1f, 6c or 4m, 4f, 3c / 4 ints. Judy is a pretty drudge in a New England orphanage. One day a visiting trustee becomes interested in her and decides to give her a chance. She does not know the name of her benefactor, but simply calls him Daddy Long Legs. She writes him letters brimming over with fun and affection. From the home she goes to a fashionable college where a romance develops that constitutes much of the play's charm. The orphans appear only in the first act and may be pl

Melodrama Barry England.Characters: 14 male, 4 female, extras. Interior Set In late 19th century India, two new lieutenants join the British regiment to open a play that exposes the spuriousness and brutality beneath the romantic veneer of spit and polish. A widow at the post accuses one of the lieutenants of attempting to assault her. A kangaroo court is convened. The case is cut and dried until the defense counsel notes discrepancies in the accounts of what happened and turns the investigation upon one of the older, more honored officers. "A rattling good play and a wonderful whodunit!" N.Y. Times.

Young Londoner Cleo was given her ‘gift’ at age seven – except that ‘gift’ left her with type 3 Female Mutilation.How can Cleo love her body, when her husband brutally sexually assaults her? Finding strength after this hideous act, Cleo resolves to go against her family’s wishes and seek reversal surgery. On her journey of healing, she’s sent to live with Aunt Winnie and meets Eve, a fellow FGM survivor who is instantly drawn to her. Will Cleo set an example and empower Eve to stand against this practice, or will she give in to family pressure and finally embrace Aunt Winnie’s deeply embedded traditional beliefs?A fight for love, hope and acceptance in a culture where a ‘gift’ can bear the ultimate price.Played by an all-female cast, this piece shines a light on a violent act nested in our society which is a transgression of human/women/children’s rights.

Little-known fact: On August 6, 1970 a group of Yippies planned an Invasion of Disneyland and forced the park to an early close. But who were the Yippies, and how did they leave such a mark in Disney history? In this docudrama-style retelling, Shirley Bowlby, a research historian, documents Terry Altman, the wild-but-weary leader of the Yippies, as he organizes the protest in Disneyland - with secret hopes of digging into Clyde, a former friend who has betrayed him.

When a senseless act of violence changes her life forever, a liberal college professor finds herself inexplicably drawn to the very weapon used to perpetrate the crime - and to the irresistible feeling of power that comes from holding life and death in her hands. Peering down the barrel of a uniquely American crisis, she begins to suspect that when it comes to gun violence, we're all part of the problem.

Stuck in a town near Scranton, Pennsylvania are Jamie and Mary. Mary is working at a bakery while taking care of her veteran brother, and Jamie is taking care of his ill mother. When Jamie's brother, Rufus, comes to visit from New York with his girlfriend, Peta, to hopefully bolster their waning relationship, desires of lives passing by are brought to the surface. Five Mile Lake is a tender, realistic portrayal of relationships between those who leave to the city, those who stay home, and those

Klass, a homeless, young Black man, sets up residence in the courtyard of the housing project where Ida Peters lives. Triggered by a fatal confrontation between a local street vendor and the police, Klass and Ida quickly develop a precarious bond against the backdrop of a restless neighborhood. Inspired by the Greek myth Leda and the Swan, Blacktop Sky examines the intersection of love, violence, and seduction.

When Wes, a Millenial fashion designer, purchases an abandoned building in the French Quarter of New Orleans, he finds himself transported to the UpStairs Lounge, a vibrant '70s gay bar. As this forgotten community comes to life, Wes embarks on an exhilarating journey of self-exploration that spans two generations of queer history. This smash Off-Broadway hit features a gritty, glam rock score and a tight-knit ensemble of unforgettable characters. The View UpStairs asks what has been gained and lost in the fight for equality, and how the past can help guide us through an uncertain future."Highly theatrical, unexpected and marvelous...channels a vintage camp that is all too rare nowadays." THE NEW YORK TIMES"Vibrant! The View UpStairs is a moving homage to LGBT culture, past and present. The show swells with heart."ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY"The View Upstairs is a hot ticket because it's funny, touching, musically remarkable and revelatory about a forgotten piece of history, as well as our current times...revolutionary and daring" OUT MAGAZINE"A jambalaya of sexed-up tunes...The View UpStairs has all the ingredients of an iconic cult phenomenon." EDGE MEDIA

On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed twenty-six innocent souls before taking his own life. These twenty-six innocent deaths, like pebbles thrown into a pond, created ripples and vibrations that were felt far beyond the initial rings. This is the story of those vibrations.

A gender-bending, patriarchy-smashing, hilarious new take on the classic tale. Robin Hood is (and has always been) Maid Marian in disguise, and leads a motley group of Merry Men (few of whom are actually men) against the greedy Prince John. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, who will stand for the vulnerable if not Robin? What is the cost of revealing your true self in a time of trouble? Modern concerns and romantic entanglements clash on the battlefield and on the ramparts of Notti

Helen meets with James in a quiet field somewhere far from the city. Years later, she meets with Marcus in a crowded restaurant in Los Angeles. These two goodbyes explore the process of losing the people we love, and how we remember the people we don't.