This is another very old play. It was published in 1905 by Baker's Plays. It is an acting edition and was originally priced at 15 cents. It is called Carroty Nell by Thatcher Howland Guild and it is "A Farce in Two Acts". Like the last play it is also barely 24 pages long. It is, however, much more interesting and amusing. 

The play is about a group of plucky mischievous orphans led by the red-headed, hence "carroty" Nell. They are often visited at their orphanage by various pious, sanctimonious, do-gooders and Nell has had enough. She decides to show them their hypocrisy and  devises a plan that involves sending away the Matron and housekeeper and then assuming the role of matron herself. she is joined by the other orphans and two other a young girl named Beth, whose mother is looking to adopt an young girl with red hair, and Beth's German maid Hebe. Nell's plan works very well and soon Mrs. Croker, two society girls and Helpful Gleaners, a pair of women who sing to raise the orphans spirits are all forced into a variety of crazy antics. 


The play is a lot of fun. It would be very fun to perform and despite its brevity of text would work out to be fairly long as it was played as the time to have all the characters engage in their antics would pad out the play. Nell is a funny character with a lot of good malapropisms and asides. Hebe is also pretty cool because as an adult she readily joins in the mayhem and in some sense this legitimizes the shenanigans. There is also  nice plot twist in that the Matron and housekeeper each receive real notes which draw them away that are basically the same as the fake ones Nell write to achieve that end. Also there is a clear and satisfying happy ending.


This play has a very big cast for its size and would be good for a student show. I also like that all the characters are female. 

This is a very short play from 1934 called Consolation by Charles George. It's a very old, nicely yellow Dramatist Services acting edition. It really isn't even a play, more of a skit, what we might term nowadays a sketch, It calls itself A Farce in One Act in a subtitle.it is barely 24 pages long and has 5 characters.

The protagonist is Mrs. Anderson who has checked into a hospital to help her from having a nervous breakdown. She is visited by the head nurse, Mrs. Castle, a maid Delia, a private nurse Miss Mable, and her friend Mrs. Frisby. None of these people are any consolation to her as she tries to relax. Instead of finding relief, she is driven out of the hospital wrapped in her bed clothes. 

It's very boring, not very funny and entirely predictable. Only two things make it notable to me. Tthe first is the racism that was endemic to the period it was written. Delia is the maid and although it isn't extreme, she speaks in the vernacular of a black person from 1934. Also she is the only character who lacks a title, no 'Miss" or "Mrs." just Delia.


The other, which is more personal, is that the author's name reminds me of my intensive at Shakespeare & Co. when Tina Packer called me Charles by mistake and then insisted on calling me George Charles for the rest of the month.


Anyway this is more of a "Keep my hand in my blog" kind of play. I picked from my collection hoping to quickly get through it and post something right away but it was so dull the 24 pages felt like 200 and it actually took me a while to get through. 

Wow. This play kicked serious ass. And it had an uphill battle with me. The play is called A Cry of Players, by William Gibson. I've never heard of this play written in 1968, and the unbelievably positive blurbs on the inner fold of the jacket were a bit too much too believe. I mean, these were serious raves,; the kind you almost never ever see in reviews. A taste: " two of the most ardent and heart breaking love scenes I've ever witnessed in the theatre", "shines with the radiance of a topaz in a dark mine". I was doubtful. I started to read it and it turns out to be a fictional dramatization of the formative years of William Shakespeare's life. My first thought, "Ugh." I read Act 1 Scene 1 and half of Scene 2 before the plot and my own very real depression pulled me out of the driver to keep this blog up. Thus the play helped contribute the lull in my blogging. 

I took it up again reluctantly. But, I told myself, if I am to blog about plays it must be the tedious and annoying as well as the great. So I started again, hoping to quickly plow through this longish, wordy, three act play that had already turned me off once. Thank heaven for discipline and second chances. 

The play is astonishingly good and deserves all the praise heaped on it in those reviews (well the topaz line may be much for anything other that a topaz).  I mean, wow. The young Will Shakespeare character speaks with a wonderfully realized and believable eloquence, at once earthy and ethereal, simple and complex that one can easily believe belongs to a young Shakespeare. Plus there is a wonderful part for a mature (30's - 40's) woman in Anne (presumably Hathaway), Shakespeare's wife. There is at least one ardent and heart breaking love scene. I couldn't tell exactly which scene was supposed to be the other one. 

The plot is roughly that young Shakespeare, Will in the text, is a young ne'er do well, in town with older wife who he both loves and fears his love for, tries to come to terms with the restlessness within him which was kindled by seeing the traveling players who come to town. Like Playing for Time, this play has a built in historical resolution, in that one knows Shakespeare will become a, if not the definitive, playwright and leave his wife for London. The play is so effective and Anne's characterization so powerful that it almost has you hoping for Will to remain simple Will and not go off to London to become Shakespeare. 

The play is well structured with a good dose of comedy in the beginning before the more weighty and philosophical elements make their way to the front of the story. Beside Will and Anne there is a wonderfully written Sir Thomas character the seeming bad guy but more complexly realized then that, and a nicely imagined young female character called Jenny. 

This is definitely a play I would love to see produced. I assume it isn't because it requires such a large cast, while most of the scenes feature just a few actors. It's always hard to get actors to play small parts. One last strange little aside: I was reading this play on the Pittsburgh Light Rail system, when a woman exiting noticed the play and told me it was good and that she'd been in it some years ago. 

Find this play. Read it. I thinks it's quite, quite good. 

Oy. I have not written for a long time and I have no really adequate excuse except that I got kinda depressed and let my ambition dwindle. 

But I did finish a play. 

Spider's Web by Agatha Christie. It's kind of comedy mystery. The plot is simple: a newly wed wife of a British government official finds herself trying to protect her new step daughter who has accidentally murdered someone. The play seems mostly played for laughs. Some of them are really quite funny. The play has three acts. It is cute but it feels a little bit of a let down when the truths are revealed. one expects more suspense and higher stakes from Ms. Christie. I think it would be fun to watch. but I wouldn't run right out to see it. It certainly didn't make my short list of plays I want to produce.

I'll get something read for tomorrow. 

All my best.