Play Readings

The pulitzer prize winning, Anna in the Tropics is set in Florida of 1929. A Cuban-American family owns a cigar factory where, in the old tradition, cigars are still rolled by hand. The story follows the arrival of the new “Lector”, who has come to read aloud to the workers. Choosing the passionate story Anna Karenina, he unwittingly becomes a catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropics and the American dream prove a volatile combination.

James Thurber was one of the finest humorists of the twentieth century (and a crack cartoonist to boot). A bestseller upon its initial publication in 1999, The Thurber Carnival captures the depth of his talent and the breadth of his wit. The stories compiled here, almost all of which first appeared in The New Yorker, are from his uproarious and candid collection My World and Welcome to It—including the American classic “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”—as well as from The Owl in the Attic, The Seal in the Bathroom, and Men, Women and Dogs.

Barry Champlain, Cleveland's controversial radio host, is on the air doing what he does best: insulting the pathetic souls who call in the middle of the night to sound off. Tomorrow, Barry's show is going into national syndication and his producer is afraid that Barry will say something that will offend the sponsors.

Scottie Templeton's a charming, irresponsible fellow. A sometime Broadway press agent and former scriptwriter, he's everyone's friend, nobody's hero and a great womanizer who's managed to live over fifty years without taking anything seriously including love, marriage and fatherhood. Life's been one continuous gag. But at fifty one, he finds the script's been rewritten as a tragedy: he is fatally ill. His son Jud, alienated by years of neglect, comes to visit. Scottie's one concern is to make friends with his son, for everyone else adores Scottie including his ex wife, his friend and boss, and his doctor, and after a bitter, revealing confrontation, father and son are reconciled. And it is Jud who gets Scottie to agree to be rehospitalized for treatment and then organizes a giant tribute to his father in a theatre.

The Glass Menagerie is a poignant memory play by Tennessee Williams, narrated by Tom Wingfield, who recounts his Depression-era life with his overbearing mother, Amanda, and fragile, crippled sister, Laura, in St. Louis. Trapped by reality, Amanda clings to memories of her Southern belle past, obsessed with finding a husband for the painfully shy Laura, whose only escape is her delicate collection of glass animals. When Tom brings home a "gentleman caller," Jim O'Connor, from his shoe factory job, their illusions shatter as Jim reveals he's engaged, forcing Tom to flee and leaving Laura's world irrevocably broken, much like her prized glass unicorn. 

A hilarious broadband comedy of errors,You've Got Hate Mail takes a hysterical look at the world of on-line hook-ups and break-ups. In You've Got Hate Mail, love "bytes" all when an extra-marital affair goes horribly wrong, thanks to a juicy e-mail sent to the wrong mailbox. The story is told entirely in e-mails and texts from laptop computers, iPads, and cell phones.

Set in an unnamed country that is, like the author's native Chile, emerging from a totalitarian dictatorship, the play explores the after effects of repression on hearts and souls. Paulina Escobar's husband Gerardo is to head an investigation into past human rights abuses. A Dr. Miranda stops at Escobars' to congratulate Gerardo. Paulina overhears them speaking and is convinced that Miranda supervised her prison torture sessions. She ties him to a chair and conducts her own interrogation, gun in hand. Escobar doesn't know whether to believe his distraught wife or his persuasive new friend. This white knuckle thriller is a rivetting intellectual and emotional tug of war.

It’s the opening night of The Golden Egg on Broadway, and the wealthy producer is throwing a lavish party in her equally lavish Manhattan townhouse. Downstairs the celebrities are pouring in, but the real action is upstairs in the bedroom, where a group of insiders have staked themselves out to await the reviews. The group includes the excitable playwright; the possibly unstable wunderkind director; the pill-popping leading lady who is treading the boards after becoming infamous in Hollywood, and the playwright’s best friend, for whom the play was written but who passed up this production for a television series. Add to this a drama critic who’s panned the playwright in the past and a new-in-town aspiring singer, and you have a prime recipe for the narcissism, ambition, childishness, and just plain irrationality that infuse the theatre – for comedy.