| DRAMA
 Albee, Edward Three Tall Women (1994)
Albee's drama of an old woman coming to grips with
her life and approaching death earned him his third Pulitzer.
 Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot (1952)
A classic of modern theatre and perennial favorite of
colleges and high schools.
 Bernstein, Leonard West Side Story (1957)
A modern retelling of the story of the plight of
young star-crossed lovers.
 Christie, Agatha Mousetrap (1954)
 Coward, Noel Blithe Spirit (1941)
In this favorite Coward comedy, a casual evening
among witty friends is transformed by a seance during which the host's deceased
wife returns to wreak havoc on his new marriage.
 Fugard, Athol Master Harold and the Boys
(1982)
A provocative
journey into the psychosis of racism, set in South Africa.
 Hansberry, Lorraine Raisin in the Sun
(1959)
The powerful story of an African American family.  Hellman, Lillian Little Foxes (1939)Picture a
charming home in the South. Into this peaceful scene put the prosperous,
despotic Hubbard family - Ben, possessive and scheming; Oscar, cruel and
arrogant; Ben's dupe, Leo, weak and unprincipled; Regina wickedly clever - each
trying to outwit the other. In contrast, meet lonely intimidated Birdie, whom
Oscar wed for her father's cotton fields; wistful Alexandra, Regina's daughter,
and Horace, ailing husband of Regina, between whom a breach has existed for
years. Ibsen, Henrik A Doll's House (1879)
Nora Helmer, wife to Torvald
and mother of three children, appears to enjoy living the life of a pampered,
indulged child. But as her economic dependence becomes brutally clear, Nora's
acceptance of the status quo undergoes a profound change. To the horror of the
bewildered Torvald, himself caught in the tight web of a conservative society
which demands that he exert strict control, Nora comes to see that the only
possible true course of action is to leave the family home.
 Ionesco, Eugene Rhinoceros
(1959)In Rhinoceros, as in his early plays, Ionesco startles audiences
with a world that invariably erupts in explosive laughter and nightmare anxiety.
A rhinoceros suddely apears in a small town, tramping through its peaceful
streets. Soon there are two, then three, until the "movement" is universal: a
transformation of average citizens into beasts, as they learn to "move with the
times." Finally, only one man remains. "I'm the last man left, and I'm staying
that way until the end. I'm not capitulating!"  Kushner, Tony Angels in America (1992/3)
The most anticipated new
American play of the decade, this brilliant work is an emotional, poetic,
political epic in two parts: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. Spanning the
years of the Reagan administration, it weaves the lives of fictional and
historical characters into a feverish web of social, political, and sexual
revelations.
 Larson, Jonathan Rent
(1996) Miller, Arthur Death of a Salesman
(1949)
Willy Loman, the protagonist of
Death of a Salesman, has spent his life following the American way,
living out his belief in salesmanship as a way to reinvent himself. But somehow
the riches and respect he covets have eluded him. At age 63, he searches for the
moment his life took a wrong turn, the moment of betrayal that undermined his
relationship with his wife and destroyed his relationship with Biff, the son in
whom he invested his faith. Willy lives in a fragile world of elaborate excuses
and daydreams, conflating past and present in a desperate attempt to make sense
of himself and of a world that once promised so
much.  O'Neill, Eugene Long Days Journey into Night
(1956)
Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night is regarded
as his finest work.
 Sartre, Jean Paul No Exit (1944)
 Shakespeare, William King Lear (1605)
King Lear banishes his favorite
daughter when she speaks out against him. Little does he know that the two other
daughters who praise him are actually plotting against him.
 Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion
(1913)Pygmalion both delighted and scandalized its first audiences in 1914. A
brilliantly witty reworking of the classical tale of the sculptor who falls in
love with his perfect female statue, it is also a barbed attack on the British
class system and a statement of Shaw's feminist views. In Shaw's hands, the
phoneticist Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform
Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite
society. The one thing he overlooks is that his 'creation' has a mind of her
own. Stoppard, Tom Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are Dead (1966)Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the
fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eye view of
the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in
Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel
and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where
echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix,
and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end.Uhry,  Alfred Driving Miss Daisy (1988) Vogel, Paula How I Learned to Drive (1998)
The 1950s pop music
accompanying Li'l Bit's excursion down memory lane cannot drown out the ghosts
of her past. Sweet recollections of driving with her beloved uncle intermingle
with lessons about the darker sides of life. Balmy evenings are fraught with
danger; seductions happen anywhere. Li'l Bit navigates a narrow path between the
demands of family and her own sense of right and wrong.
 Wilde, Oscar The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895)
The Importance of Being Earnest shows a full measure of Oscar Wilde's legendary
wit, and embodies more than any of his other plays, his decency and
warmth.
 Wilder, Thornton Our Town
(1938)
Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer
Prize-winning drama of life in the town of Grover's Corners, an allegorical
representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most
renowned and most frequently performed play.
 Williams, Tennessee Glass Menagerie
(1945)
This famous Williams play provokes insight and sympathy while revealing a
genteel southern lady's remembered world.
 Wilson, August Fences: a Play (1986)The protagonist
of FENCES, Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be - to
survive. For Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud
and black was to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But now
the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s... a spirit
that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he
can...a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he
never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and
less...
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