Notes
- ↑ Banham (1998, 460).
 | This article on a play from the 1990s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
The Fourth Wall is a 1992 play by the American playwright A. R. Gurney. [1]
It was originally produced in the United States in regional theatre. During the course of the play, a quartet of characters deal with housewife Peggy's obsession with a blank wall in her house, slowly being drawn into a series of theatre clichés as the furniture and action on the stage become more and more directed to the supposed fourth wall.
Peggy has redecorated the living room and her husband, Roger, cannot stand it. Peggy's usual exquisite taste was overcome by a mysterious lapse which caused her to redo the room as if it were a stage set. Everything faces one wall, the "fourth wall", which she has left bare and which is really the audience. Unable to cope any further, and needing someone to talk to, Roger asks their old, dear friend, Julia, to fly up from New York. Julia agrees that something strange is going on, especially since everyone who enters the room begins to behave as if they were acting in a play, or even a musical when occasionally someone feels the urge to sing a Cole Porter song. Julia, affected by the room, suggests Roger call "976-NUTS" and have Peggy put away, which would allow the two of them to have the affair they have never before thought about. Roger can't do that and explains that he's got one hope left: Floyd, a local theatre professor. Roger asks Floyd to come over in hopes that he can "doctor" Peggy's play and bring it to a close, thus allowing him and Peggy to resume their happily married life. But that doesn't work either as Floyd sees what's going on and is in complete agreement with Peggy. Peggy, following in St. Joan's footsteps at Floyd's urging, decides she must do what she must do and sets out to break the fourth wall in order to connect with her feelings. Roger rushes after her, leaving Julia and Floyd with a final Cole Porter tune.
| | This article on a play from the 1990s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Mary Margaret "Peggy" Cass was an American actress, comedian, game show panelist, and announcer.
Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, revised considerably by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London. Billy Crocker is a stowaway in love with heiress Hope Harcourt, who is engaged to Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. Nightclub singer Reno Sweeney and Public Enemy Number 13, "Moonface" Martin, aid Billy in his quest to win Hope. The musical introduced such songs as "Anything Goes", "You're the Top", and "I Get a Kick Out of You".
An Ideal Husband is a four-act play by Oscar Wilde that revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. It was first produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London in 1895 and ran for 124 performances. It has been revived in many theatre productions and adapted for the cinema, radio and television.
Alcestis is an Athenian tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides. It was first produced at the City Dionysia festival in 438 BC. Euripides presented it as the final part of a tetralogy of unconnected plays in the competition of tragedies, for which he won second prize; this arrangement was exceptional, as the fourth part was normally a satyr play. Its ambiguous, tragicomic tone—which may be "cheerfully romantic" or "bitterly ironic"—has earned it the label of a "problem play." Alcestis is, possibly excepting the Rhesus, the oldest surviving work by Euripides, although at the time of its first performance he had been producing plays for 17 years.
The Duchess of Malfi is a Jacobean revenge tragedy written by English dramatist John Webster in 1612–1613. It was first performed privately at the Blackfriars Theatre, then later to a larger audience at The Globe, in 1613–1614.
Being Julia is a 2004 comedy-drama film directed by István Szabó and starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons. The screenplay by Ronald Harwood is based on the novel Theatre (1937) by W. Somerset Maugham. The original film score was composed by Mychael Danna.
Peggy Hopkins Joyce was an American actress, artist's model, and dancer. In addition to her performing career, Joyce was known for her flamboyant life, with numerous engagements, four marriages to wealthy men, subsequent divorces, a series of affairs, a collection of diamonds and furs, and a generally lavish lifestyle.
The Man Upstairs is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on 23 January 1914 by Methuen & Co., London. Most of the stories had previously appeared in magazines, generally Strand Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan or Collier's Weekly in the United States. Although the book was not published in the US, many of the stories were eventually made available to US readers in The Uncollected Wodehouse (1976) and The Swoop! and Other Stories (1979).
Irène Bordoni was a Franco-American actress and singer.
Margery Mason was an English actress and director. She was the artistic director of the Repertory Theatre in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland in the 1960s.
The Broken Jug is a comedy written by the German playwright Heinrich von Kleist. Kleist first conceived the idea for the play in 1801 after looking at a copper engraving in Heinrich Zschokke's house entitled "Le juge, ou la cruche cassée". In 1803, challenged over his ability to write comedy, Kleist dictated the first three scenes of the play, though it was not completed until 1806. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe first staged the play in Weimar, where it premiered on 2 March 1808.
Cock-a-Doodle Dandy is a 1949 play by Irish dramatist Seán O'Casey. Regarded by O'Casey as his best play, this is a darkly comic fantasy in which a magic cockerel appears in the parish of Nyadnanave and forces the characters to make choices about the way they live their lives. It is a parable of mid-century Irish rural life, symbolising the struggle between repression and liberty. Initially it was regarded as anti-Catholic and was banned from professional public performance in the UK by the Lord Chamberlain. It was also suppressed in Ireland and the USA.
Haunting Julia is a 1994 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is about Julia Lukin, a nineteen-year-old brilliant musician who committed suicide twelve years earlier, who haunts the three men closest to her, through both the supernatural and in their memories. In 2008, it was presented as the first play of Things That Go Bump.
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics —the earliest work of dramatic theory.
Ophelia is a character in William Shakespeare's drama Hamlet (1599–1601). She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes and potential wife of Prince Hamlet, who, due to Hamlet's actions, ends up in a state of madness that ultimately leads to her drowning.
Black Girl is an American family drama film with a screenplay by J.E. Franklin, based on her 1969 play, and directed by Ossie Davis. The film explores issues and experiences of black womanhood in the 1970s, including how black women were depicted and common stereotypes of the period. According to Melvin Donalson in Black Directors in Hollywood, "Black Girl is a film that explores the intricate and sometimes painful connections between mothers and daughters."
"The Phantom" is the thirteenth episode and season finale of the fifth season of the American television drama series Mad Men and the 65th episode of the series overall. It is co-written by Jonathan Igla and Matthew Weiner and directed by Weiner. It originally aired on the AMC channel in the United States on June 10, 2012.
Caste is a comedy drama by T. W. Robertson, first seen in 1867. The play was the third of several successes by Robertson produced in London's West End by Squire Bancroft and his wife Marie Wilton. As its name suggests, Caste concerns distinctions of class and rank. The son of a French nobleman marries a ballet dancer and then goes to war. When word arrives that he has been killed in action, his mother tries to wrest the child from his penniless widow.
"Ladies Room" is the second episode of the first season of the American television drama series Mad Men. It was written by series creator Matthew Weiner and directed by Alan Taylor. Weiner has stated that the interval between writing the pilot and the second episode lasted seven years. The episode originally aired on the AMC channel in the United States on July 26, 2007.
"Three Sundays" is the fourth episode of the second season of the American television drama series Mad Men. It was written by Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton and directed by Tim Hunter. The episode originally aired on AMC in the United States on August 17, 2008.