John Kingsley Orton, known by the pen name of Joe Orton, was an English playwright, author, and diarist.
Oliver! is a stage musical, with book, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. The musical is based upon the 1838 novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter. He was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.
Damn Yankees is a 1955 musical comedy with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., during a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League Baseball. It is based on Wallop's 1954 novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.
Blithe Spirit is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost.
Design for Living is a comedy play written by Noël Coward in 1932. It concerns a trio of artistic characters, Gilda, Otto and Leo, and their complicated three-way relationship. Originally written to star Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Coward, it was premiered on Broadway, partly because its risqué subject matter was thought unacceptable to the official censor in London. It was not until 1939 that a London production was presented.
Maxwell Caulfield is a British-American actor. He has appeared in Grease 2 (1982), Electric Dreams (1984), The Boys Next Door (1985), The Supernaturals (1986), Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), Waxwork 2 (1992), Gettysburg (1993), Empire Records (1995), The Real Blonde (1997), The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997), and in A Prince for Christmas (2015). In 2015, Caulfield toured Australia with his wife Juliet Mills and sister-in-law Hayley Mills in the comedy Legends! by Pulitzer Prize winner James Kirkwood. He voiced James Bond in the video game James Bond 007: Nightfire (2002).
Loot is a two-act play by the English playwright Joe Orton. The play is a dark farce that satirises the Roman Catholic Church, social attitudes to death, and the integrity of the police force.
Bryan Pringle was an English character actor who appeared for several decades in television, film and theatre productions.
Lee Montague is an English actor noted for his roles in film and television, usually playing tough guys.
The Visitors is a 1961 one-act play by British playwright Joe Orton. The BBC and the Royal Court Theatre had considered the work but ultimately rejected it, despite both having insisted that the writing was "excellent." Orton's career took off in 1964 with the staging of his Entertaining Mr. Sloane, and The Visitors remained forgotten until its UK publication in 1998 by Nick Hern Books; a US edition from Grove Press followed in 1999.
Barbara Bryne was a British-American actress of film, theatre and television. Onstage she appeared in comedy, dramatic and musical production of Broadway and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
David Esbjornson is a director and producer who has worked throughout the United States in regional theatres and on Broadway, and has established strong and productive relationships with some of the profession's top playwrights, actors, and companies. Esbjornson was the artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre in Seattle, Washington, but left that position in summer 2008.
Alan Norton Fletcher Webb was an English actor. He was principally known as a stage performer, but made several film and television appearances. He seldom played leading roles, but was frequently cast in important character parts. He created roles in plays by A. A. Milne, Noël Coward, T. S. Eliot and other contemporary playwrights.
Entertaining Mr Sloane is a 1970 British black comedy film directed by Douglas Hickox. The screenplay by Clive Exton is based on the 1964 play of the same title by Joe Orton. This was the second adaptation of the play, the first having been developed for British television and broadcast by ITV on 15 July 1968.
Ted Craig FRSA is an Australian-born theatre director lately the artistic director of the Warehouse Theatre, South London, England.
Plain Clothes Theatre Productions is a Bristol-based theatre company producing contemporary plays from around the globe. Formed in 2003 by artistic director Sam Berger, the company has produced work in London, Bristol, Cheltenham, Toronto and Vancouver. Their work has included plays by Joe Orton, Laura Wade and David Mamet, and their style is based around the teachings of American acting coach Sanford Meisner.
They Knew What They Wanted is a 1924 play written by Sidney Howard. The play premiered on Broadway in 1924 and had three Broadway revivals as well as a London production.
Madge Winifred Ryan was an Australian actress, known for her stage and film roles in the United Kingdom, including London stage productions of Entertaining Mr Sloane (1964), Philadelphia, Here I Come (1967), and Medea (1993). She also starred in the Broadway production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1958).
Sir Michael Victor Codron is a British theatre producer, known for his productions of the early work of Harold Pinter, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Simon Gray and Tom Stoppard. He has been honoured with a Laurence Olivier Award for Lifetime Achievement, and is a stakeholder and director of the Aldwych Theatre in the West End, London.
