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Latest Broadway Books

Polaroid Stories

(1/1/1999)

Naomi Iizuka’s 1997 play, Polaroid Stories, consciously uses stories, characters and themes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to tell the stories of street kids living on the edge in a desolate, urban landscape. Because these characters are named after Orpheus and Eurydice, and Echo and Narcissus, or based on stories of Dionysus, and Ariadne and Theseus, and because scenes are entitled “The Story of Semele” or “Theseus in the Labyrinth,” Iizuka creates a world that has two dimensions: the g...

The Complete Lyrics Of Lorenz Hart

(1/1/1995)

This expanded edition includes an appendix of previously uncollected and newly discovered lyrics.

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Musicals!: A Complete Selection Guide for Local Productions

(12/2/1994)

From A . . . My Name Is Alice to The Zulu and the Zayde, this second edition of a title first published in 1984 contains information about 500 musicals (100 of which are new to this edition) available for production by community theaters and schools. Listed alphabetically by title, each entry includes date of original production, playwright, composer, lyricist, plot summary, licensing agent and music publisher, recordings and librettos available (for in-depth research by the user), and cast (num...

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The Story of Starlight Theatre

(3/1/1992)

Starlight Theatre is a magic place where an evening of musical theatre under the stars in Kansas City's Swope Park speaks so strongly of emotion that the audience is transformed by the presence of the creative experience. This book is filled with historical photos and provides a "behind the scenes" look at the real workings of the second largest outdoor theatre in the United States. A must for theatre goers everywhere. Unlike many other art forms, live outdoor theatre is a participatory expe...

The Director's Voice: Twenty-One Interviews

(1993)

Arthur Bartow is the Artistic Director of the Department of Drama at New York University. He is the author of The Director's Voice (TCG) and has been a consultant and a producer. He staged the original production of Short Eyes by Miguel Pinero and Elizabeth Swados' The Beautiful Lady.

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Arcadia

(1994)

Arcadia takes us back and forth between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ranging over the nature of truth and time, the difference between the Classical and the Romantic temperament, and the disruptive influence of sex on our orbits in life. Focusing on the mysteries—romantic, scientific, literary—that engage the minds and hearts of characters whose passions and lives intersect across scientific planes and centuries, it is “Stoppard’s richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play...

Rewrites: A Memoir

(1998)

After serving an apprenticeship under Sid Caesar and Phil Silvers in Los Angeles, Neil Simon returned to New York at age 30 to embark on a career as a playwright. Some 35 years and three dozen plays later, the most successful comedy writer in the history of the American stage is still at it. In Rewrites, Simon reflects on his career, his relationship with his older brother and mentor Danny, and the loss of his wife Joan to cancer. Along the way, he reveals the price he has paid for his achieveme...

Side Show

(1998)

This collection features PVG arrangements of 16 songs from the recent Broadway run of this controversial, critically acclaimed new musical that will be opening next year in Europe. Songs include: Come Look at the Freaks * The Devil You Know * Feelings You've Got to Hide * I Will Never Leave You * Leave Me Alone * Like Everyone Else * One Plus One Equals Three * Private Conversation * Say Goodbye to the Freak Show * Tunnel of Love * We Share Everything * When I'm by Your Side * You Should Be Love...

Sam Shepard: Seven Plays

(1984)

Sam Shepard is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of more than forty-five plays. He was a finalist for the W. H. Smith Literary Award for his story collection Great Dream of Heaven, and he has also written the story collection Cruising Paradise, two collections of prose pieces, Motel Chronicles and Hawk Moon, and Rolling Thunder Logbook, a diary of Bob Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder Review tour. As an actor he has appeared in more than thirty films, and he received an Oscar nomination in 1984 for...

Hurlyburly and Those the River Keeps: Two Plays

(1995)

Full Length, Drama Characters: 4 male, 3 female Interior Set This riveting drama took New York by storm in a production directed by Mike Nichols and starring William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Judith Ivey, Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Cynthia Nixon and Jerry Stiller. Characters nose deep in the decadent, perverted, cocaine culture that is Hollywood, pursing a sex crazed, drug-addled vision of the American Dream. Later stage and screen incarnations have attracted such actors as Ethan Hawke,...

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The Birthday Party and The Room: Two Plays

(1994)

In The Birthday Party, a musician who escapes to a dilapidated boarding house becomes the victim of a ritual murder in which everyone- assassins, victim, and observers- implacably plays out the role assigned him by fate.The Room, a derelict boarding house again becomes the scene of a visitation of fate when a blind Black man suddenly arrives to deliver a mysterious message.

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Betrayal

(1994)

Part of a collection of Harold Pinter's works, this is a comedy of sexual manners in which Pinter captures the psyche's sly manoeuvres for self-respect with sardonic forgiveness. Written in 1978 by the author of "The Caretaker", "The Lover", "The Homecoming" and "The Birthday Party". --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Death of a Salesman

(1996)

The tragedy of a typical American--a salesman who at the age of 63 is faced with what he cannot face: defeat and disillusionment.

Lips Together, Teeth Apart

(1992)

The author of such critically acclaimed plays as The Lisbon Traviata and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Terrence McNally has graced the American theater with a voice that captures our fear of intimacy in the modern age with dead-on insight, wit, and poignancy. But never has he blended these disparate elements into such a brilliantly cohesive whole as he has in Lips Together, Teeth Apart,hailed by Frank Rich of the New York Times as McNallys"most ambitious and most accomplished play yet...

The Cripple of Inishmaan

(1998)

In 1934, the people of Inishmaan learn that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighboring island to film a documentary. No one is more excited than Cripple Billy, an unloved boy whose chief occupation has been grazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank. And as news of his audacity ripples through his rumor-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a w...

The Beauty Queen of Leenane and Other Plays

(1998)

These three plays are set in a town in Galway so blighted by rancor, ignorance, and spite that, as the local priest complains, God Himself seems to have no jurisdiction there. The Beauty Queen of Leenane portrays ancient, manipulative Mag and her virginal daughter, Maureen, whose mutual loathing may be more durable than any love. In A Skull in Connnemara, Mick Dowd is hired to dig up the bones in the town churchyard, some of which belong to his late and oddly unlamented wife. And the brother...

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Sight Unseen and Other Plays

(1995)

Margulies's plays explore individuals' needs to be part of a group, usually a family, a religion, or both. Sometimes these are bitingly funny, as in the parodical Loman Family Picnic, about a young man who escapes his unhappy family life by imagining a musical of Death of a Salesman. Sometimes the plays are surreal, as in the Twilight Zonish What's Wrong With This Picture? about a dead wife and mother who is resurrected by her family's intense need--and then must convince them to let her rest in...

Oleanna

(1998)

In David Mamet's latest play, a male college instructor and his female student sit down to discuss her grades and in a terrifyingly short time become the participants in a modern reprise of the Inquisition. Innocuous remarks suddenly turn damning. Socratic dialogue gives way to heated assault. And the relationship between a somewhat fatuous teacher and his seemingly hapless pupil turns into a fiendishly accurate X ray of the mechanisms of power, censorship, and abuse.

Glengarry Glen Ross

(1994)

Winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, David Mamet’s scalding comedy is about small-time, cutthroat real estate salesmen trying to grind out a living by pushing plots of land on reluctant buyers in a never-ending scramble for their fair share of the American dream. Here is Mamet at his very best, writing with brutal power about the tough life of tough characters who cajole, connive, wheedle, and wheel and deal for a piece of the action—where closing a sale can mean a brand new Cadillac but losin...

The Marriage of Bette & Boo

(1998)

As the play begins Bette and Boo are being united in matrimony, surrounded by their beaming families. But as the further progress of their marriage is chronicled it becomes increasingly clear that things are not working out quite as hoped for. The birth of their son is followed by a succession of stillborns; Boo takes to drink; and their respective families are odd lots to say the least: His father is a sadistic tyrant, who refers to his wife as the dumbest woman in the world; while Bette's side...

Laughing Wild and Baby with the Bathwater: Two Plays

(1994)

“Laughing wild amid severest woe” perfectly describes the fiercely ironic comedy of Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild (which takes its title from this Thomas Gray quotation via Samuel Beckett) and the previously unpublished Baby with the Bathwater. In Laughing Wild, two comic monologues evolve into a man and a woman’s shared nightmare of modern life and the isolation it creates. From her turf battles at the supermarket to the desperate clichés of self-affirmation he learns at his “pe...

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Churchill Plays: 2

(1990)

This second collection of plays by Caryl Churchill includes "Objections to Sex and Violence", "Softcops", "Top Girls", "Fen" and "Serious Money".

Churchill: Plays One

(1985)

The plays in this volume represent the best of Churchill's writing up to and including her emergence onto the international theatre scene with Cloud Nine. The volume also contains a new introduction by the author as well as short prefaces to each play.

A Man for All Seasons

(1990)

The classic play about Sir Thomas More, the Lord chancellor who refused to compromise and was executed by Henry VIII.

The Norman Conquests A Trilogy of Plays

(1994)

This brilliant comic trilogy details the amorous exploits of Norman, assistant librarian, whose one aim is to make the women of his life happy—these women being, as it happens, three sisters, one of them his wife, who can’t wear contact lenses because “life with Norman is full of unexpected eye movements.” Each play stands uproariously on its own yet interlocks with the others to form an ingenious Chinese puzzle of successive relations.

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Lenya the Legend

(1998)

Born Karoline Blamauer in Vienna in 1898, Lenya spent an impoverished childhood there before launching her career in Zurich and then Berlin, where she met and married Weill. The toast of the Berlin arts scene, Weill and Lenya left Germany in 1933 following the election of Hitler as chancellor. Weill was Jewish and an advocate of freedom of expression--his play Der Silbersee ("The Silver Lake"), which contained a caricature of Hitler, had already been banned by the authorities. The couple went to...

Ingmar Bergman: A Life in the Theater

(1992)

A revised and expanded edition highlights the developments that have occurred in the interim since the first edition with reference to Bergman's triumphant return to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm after years of self-imposed exile.

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Reading Stephen Sondheim: A Collection of Critical Essays

(1999)

Stephen Sondheim is arguably the most important writer for the American musical stage today, the equivalent in his field of Miller, Albee, O'Neill, and Williams. Yet he has rarely been treated seriously within the academy. Reading Stephen Sondheim: A Collection of Critical Essays is an attempt to remedy that situation. Bringing together scholars and critics from a wide variety of literary and theoretical perspectives, this book undertakes to examine all of Sondheim's major productions and themes...

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Oh What a Circus

(1999)

With wit and candour, Tim Rice describes the gilded path that took him from cricket and comic-obsessed schoolboy to one of the world's best-known lyricists. Along the way he worked as a petrol pump attendant and articled clerk before becoming a management trainee at EMI. But it was his fateful meeting with Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1965 which was to be the turning-point in Tim's career. Immediate fortune didn't follow and it took the album of Jesus Christ Superstar to reach no.1 in the States befor...

Under the Rainbow: The Real Liza Minnelli

(1996)

The daughter of Judy Garland and movie director Vincente Minnelli, Liza Minnelli has endured excruciating trauma and failure and exhilarating passion and success - with the help of drugs, lovers, and a few close friends. Under the Rainbow is the touching story of a bewildered little girl searching for the childhood she never had and a love that has eluded her. There are two Lizas: the dynamic entertainer whose dramatic voice and stage presence embraced the romantic imagination of her audience; a...

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Act One: An Autobiography

(1989)

With this new edition, the classic best-selling autobiography by the late playwright Moss Hart returns to print in the thirtieth anniversary of its original publication. Issued in tandem with Kitty, the revealing autobiography of his wife, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Act One, is a landmark memoir that incluenced a generation of theatergoers, dramatists, and general book readers everywhere. The book eloquently chronicles Moss Hart's impoverished childhood in the Bronx and Brooklyn and his long, determin...

The Street Where I Live

(1980)

This is a highly personal biography of three great shows: My Fair Lady, Camelot, and Gigi. Warm, witty, loving, often hilarious, and poignant in its affection for a glorious era in the American theater, it is the story of what Mr. Lerner calls "the sundown of wit, eccentricity, and glamour." The author himself, try as he will to keep himself out of his pages, emerges not merely as a great talent, but as a man of laughter and love. His principals, however, are Moss Hart and Fritz Loewe, with a st...

Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway

(1995)

Lorenz Hart singlehandedly changed the craft of lyric writing. When Larry Hart first met Dick Rodgers in 1919, the commercial song lyric consisted of tired cliches and cloying Victorian sentimentality. Hart changed all that, always avoiding the obvious, aiming for the unexpected phrase that would twang the nerve or touch the heart. Endowed with both a buoyant wit and a tender, almost raw sincerity, Hart brought a poetic complexity to his art, capturing the everyday way people talk and weaving it...

Cole Porter: A Biography

(1979)

In 1933 Irving Berlin wrote to composer-lyricist Cole Porter, ”I am mad about Night and Day.” Millions of others throughout the world have been ”mad about” that Porter gem, as well as dozens of others, including, to name just a few, Begin the Beguine, From This Moment On, It’s De-Lovely, Just One of Those Things, Love for Sale, and My Heart Belongs to Daddy. Cole Porter (1891-1964) set new standards for popular song-writing, and his lyrics and melodies are as bright and sophisticated t...

As Thousands Cheer: The Life Of Irving Berlin

(1996)

A look at the life and prolific career of one of America's most successful songwriters.

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The Complete Phantom of the Opera

(1991)

Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Phantom of the Opera has been a smash hit worldwide. Now, here is the definitive account of this theatrical masterpiece, tracing the Phantom legend from its origins in historical fact through numerous artistic incarnations to the present day. The book includes the complete libretto and many specially commissioned color photographs of the production.

Cats: Vocal Selections

(1983)

This outstanding collection features ten top songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber's beloved musical: The Ad-dressing of Cats * Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town * Gus: The Theatre Cat * Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats * The Journey to the Heavyside Layer * Memory * Mr. Mistoffelees * Old Deuteronomy * The Old Gumbie Cat * Skimbleshanks: The Railway.

Fanfare: Unauthorized Biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber

(1990)

A biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber, this book looks at his bohemian upbringing, his relationships with his brother and Tim Rice and his application of classical training to the world of pop music. The author has also written "In For a Penny: the Unauthorized biography of Jeffrey Archer".

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Cats on a Chandelier: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Story

(1999)

From Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to Cats and the Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber aims to please. On top of being a composing genius, Lloyd Webber produces, and owns and runs his own company. Cats on a Chandelier is the complete story of this controversial man. Through personal conversation, Michael Coveney is able to bring us an intimate look into the life of a man who has perhaps changed musical theatre forever.

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Requiem: Vocal Score

(1985)

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem is a requiem mass written in memory of the composer's father, William Lloyd Webber, who died in 1982. Many thought it a surprising turn for such a populist composer as Lloyd Webber to produce a piece of "serious" music, being his first and to date only full-blown classical work. The music mixes Lloyd Webber's melodic and pop-oriented style with more complex, sophisticated and (at times) even austere forms. Lloyd Webber himself called the Requiem "the most personal o...

Andrew Lloyd Webber: A Biography

(1985)

A Biography of the great contemporary composer. Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre, and has been referred to as "the most commercially successful composer in history." Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992 followed by a peerage from ...

Andrew Lloyd Webber Anthology

(1988)

An exquisite collection of Andrew Lloyd Webber's work from eight different stage productions. Features 27 of his greatest songs, including: I Don't Know How to Love Him * Don't Cry for Me Argentina * Memory * Unexpected Song * Pie Jesu * Only You * The Phantom of the Opera * more.

The Musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber

(1995)

Andrew Lloyd Webber has become the most successful composer in the world's history, earning respect with musicals like Phantom of the Opera and Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. The author surveys the panorama of this giant of the musical theater, telling the story of his life and works by focusing on each of his musicals. 150 color and b&w photos.

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The Essential Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection

(1998)

This outstanding collection features 41 songs from his best loved productions: All I Ask of You * Any Dream Will Do * As If We Never Said Goodbye * Don't Cry for Me Argentina * I Don't Know How to Love Him * Memory * The Music of the Night * The Phantom of the Opera * Pie Jesu * Starlight Sequence * Superstar * Think of Me * Too Much in Love to Care * Unexpected Song * more.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works

(1989)

In Andrew Lloyd Webber Michael Walsh offers a detailed biography of the composer of Evita and Cats. He chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, Whistle Down the Wind, the film version of Evita, his third marriage, and the financial upheaval at The Really Useful Company, Lloyd Webber's production group. Walsh attempts to hack through the mass of Fleet Street sensationalism and get at what is really happening in the life of this talented, troubled man. The book off...

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Overture and Finale: Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Creation of Their Two Greatest Hits

(1999)

In this tale of the most phenomenal collaboration in Broadway history - that of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II - Overture and Finale revisits the creation of their two most beloved hits: Oklaboma!, their first show together, and The Sound of Music, their last. Full of eyewitness accounts based on interviews with people involved in the original productions, Overture and Finale makes the reader present at the creation of these Rodgers & Hammerstein hits. Among the illustrations there ar...

Overture and Finale: Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Creation of Their Two Greatest H Cover

RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN: The Illustrated Songbook

(1998)

Compiling the best Broadway hits of America's most beloved songwriting team, this beautifully illustrated gift edition brings alive the timeless music of "Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, The Sound of Music", and more. 60 illustrations, 30 in color.

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The Wordsmiths: Oscar Hammerstein II and Alan Jay Lerner

(1995)

Incomparable and unique in their ability to write both libretti and lyrics, Oscar Hammerstein and Alan Jay Lerner brought the musical theater to an artistic peak that remains unsurpassed. From Show Boat, Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music to Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot, they wrote book and lyrics for one glittering gem after another, capturing the verve of the Golden Age of the musical at its peak. Their works continue to hold a preeminent place on stages around the world. Drawing on a w...

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Rodgers & Hammerstein

(1999)

Now in paperback, this profusely illustrated volume celebrates the legendary collaboration of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Filled with original performance photographs, set and costume designs, backstage candids, and lively anecdotes, the book covers the team's complete works including Oklahoma!, State Fair, Carousel, South Pacific, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music. Ethan Mordden analyzes every one of the shows-detailing the plots, exploring the musical and lyrical ideas, an...

South Pacific Vocal Selections

(1981)

The New York Times described South Pacific, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and nine Tonys, as "magnificent ... lively, warm, fresh and beautiful." Our deluxe revised Vocal Selections features 15 beloved songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein, a biography, plot synopsis, history of the show, and photos! Includes: Bali Ha'i * Happy Talk * Honey Bun * I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair * Some Enchanted Evening * There Is Nothin' like a Dame * A Wonderful Guy * and more

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