| My Redbreast | |
|---|---|
 Cover of My Redbreast, 2024 | |
| Written by | Miho Mosulishvili |
| Date premiered | July 12, 2013 |
| Place premiered | Municipal Theatre of Bolnisi (Georgia) |
| Original language | Georgian |
| Subject | Chito, Sopho, Shoka, Toko, Baxter O'Sullivan, Alice O'Sullivan |
| Genre | Tragicomedy |
| Setting | 21st-century Georgia |
My Redbreast (A Comedy Sadder Than Sad) [1] is a 2012 play by Georgian playwright Miho Mosulishvili.
Sopho returns from America, where she has been for the last twelve years, for her husband's death anniversary. She finds that her school friend, Shoka, is pregnant. Moreover, it turns out that her husband, Chito, has not died. He married Shoka, and his tombstone in their yard was just a means of extorting money from Sopho. The husband, friend, and even her son Toko cheated Sopho to take money from her and pay for the interest on the apartment, which they had put in the bank. They are alarmed by Sopho's unexpected arrival.
Sopho decides not to return to America, although Toko manages to bring old Baxter, whom his mother was taking care of in the States, to Georgia. He wants his mother to care for him in Georgia, not to lose money. Sopho refuses to look after Baxter and makes her family members care for him to punish the idlers Chito, Shoka, and Toko. Baxter intends to propose to Sopho, but since she supports the idlers, he concludes she is like them.
In the final scene, the characters are close to the Celestial Court. Their roles change: Sopho and Baxter care for Chito, Shoka, and Toko, who are confined to invalid chairs. Baxter names Sopho " My Redbreast" (the source of the play's title).
Nino Todua, Doctor of Philological Sciences evaluated this play as follows:
he play ends with Sopho and Baxter looking over to the horizon, viewing the Burduju country landscape with the look of “sad reprimand.” The tone of the play is tragic and comic at the same time. The writer recreates real pictures from the contemporary world. The problems brought up are burning issues, and the characters are identifiable and believable because we see them in our everyday lives almost every step of the way. The only solution to these problems, from the author’s point of view, is looking at reality through the eyes and acting respectively, which is an essential message for our society (the concept matches that of Ilia Chavchavadze’s “The Letters of a Passenger”: “movements and only movements” …) [5]
Anne Baxter was an American actress, star of Hollywood films, Broadway productions, and television series. She won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Emmy.
Shirley Booth was an American actress. One of 24 performers to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting, Booth was the recipient of an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards.
Maureen Paula O'Sullivan was an Irish actress who played Jane in the Tarzan series of films during the era of Johnny Weissmuller. She starred in dozens of feature films across a span of more than half a century and performed with such stars as Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo, Fredric March, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, the Marx Brothers and Woody Allen. In 2020, she was listed at number eight on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Abigail's Party is a play for stage and television, devised and directed in 1977 by Mike Leigh. It is a suburban situation comedy of manners, and a satire on the aspirations and tastes of the new middle class that emerged in Britain in the 1970s. The play developed in lengthy improvisations during which Mike Leigh explored the characters with the actors, but did not always reveal the incidents that would occur during the play. The production opened in April 1977 at the Hampstead Theatre, and returned after its initial run in the summer of 1977, for 104 performances in all. A recording was arranged at the BBC as a Play for Today, produced by Margaret Matheson for BBC Scotland and transmitted in November 1977.
Meredith Ann Baxter is an American actress and producer. She is known for her roles on the CBS sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie (1972–1973), ABC drama series Family (1976–1980) and the NBC sitcom Family Ties (1982–1989). A five-time Emmy Award nominee, one of her nominations was for playing the title role in the 1992 TV film A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story.
Alexandra Lendon Bastedo was a British actress, best known for her role as the beautiful secret agent Sharron Macready in the 1968 British espionage/science fiction adventure series The Champions. Bastedo was a vegetarian and animal welfare advocate, and wrote a number of books on both subjects.
The Purple Rose of Cairo is a 1985 American fantasy romantic comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen, and starring Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, and Danny Aiello. Inspired by the films Sherlock Jr. (1924) and Hellzapoppin' (1941) and Pirandello's play Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), it is the tale of a film character named Tom Baxter who leaves a fictional film of the same name and enters the real world.
Denise Dorothy Coffey was an English actress, comedian, director and playwright.
Sara García Hidalgo was a Mexican actress who made her biggest mark during the "Golden Age of Mexican cinema". During the 1940s and 1950s, she often played the part of a no-nonsense but lovable grandmother in numerous Mexican films. In later years, she played parts in Mexican telenovelas.
Vija Artmane was a Latvian theatre and cinema actress.
John Griffith Bowen was a British playwright and novelist.
Salmah binti Ismail, better known by her stage name Saloma, was a Singaporean-Malaysian singer, film actress, trendsetter and a fashion icon who became well known in the late 1950s.
Sopho "Sofia" Nizharadze is a Georgian singer, actress, and songwriter who represented Georgia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 with the song "Shine". Nizharadze was a judge on the TV shows Georgia's Got Talent', 'Only Georgian' and 'The X Factor Georgia.
Sighnaghi is an administrative-territorial unit in eastern Georgia, Kakheti region. The municipality borders the municipalities of Gurjaani and Sagarejo to the northwest and west, the municipality of Dedoplistskaro to the southeast and the municipality of Lagodekhi and the Republic of Azerbaijan to the north and northeast. The area is 1251.7 km2. Agricultural fields occupy 93,375 ha, and forest resources amount to 5,500 ha.
Mana-Zucca was an American actress, singer, pianist and composer.
Ekateriné Dadiani, Princess of Mingrelia of the House of Dadiani, was a prominent 19th-century Georgian aristocrat and the last ruling princess of the Principality of Mingrelia in Western Georgia. She was regent during the minority of her son between 1853 and 1857. She played an important role in resisting Ottoman influence in her principality and was at the center of Georgian high society, both inside the country and abroad.
Mikheil "Miho" Mosulishvili is a Georgian writer and playwright.
Christmas Goose With Quince is a 2012 play by Georgian playwright Miho Mosulishvili.
The Piano Teacher: A Healing Key is a play written by Canadian playwright Dorothy Dittrich. It is the winner of the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language drama. The play is available in paperback and was published by Talonbooks on September 6, 2022.
My Love Affair with Marriage is a 2022 semi-autobiographical adult animated musical comedy-drama film animated, written and directed by Signe Baumane, her second feature following Rocks in My Pockets (2014). The story follows a young woman, Zelma, on her 23-year quest for perfect love and lasting marriage, set against a backdrop of historic events in Eastern Europe. Pressured by Mythology Sirens to be the ideal woman and is unable to free herself from the biology of her own brain, Zelma finds love and loses it multiple times before discovering who she really is. Told from a female point of view, this is a coming-of-age story of love, gender, marriage, abuse, hopes, fantasies, and ultimately, finding a better place for women in society.