Play Suggestions

[benderca]

As another year of Librivox DR draws to a close and a new one begins, let us take a moment to toast all those that bring us that masterful blend of paradoxes, sweet and bitter, ice and fire, love and hate, soft breezes and raging hurricanes, that is the LV thespian art.

Chris

Cheers!

[mightyfelix]

As another year of Librivox DR draws to a close and a new one begins, let us take a moment to toast all those that bring us that masterful blend of paradoxes, sweet and bitter, ice and fire, love and hate, soft breezes and raging hurricanes, that is the LV thespian art.

Chris

Hear, hear!

[alanmapstone]

As another year of Librivox DR draws to a close and a new one begins, let us take a moment to toast all those that bring us that masterful blend of paradoxes, sweet and bitter, ice and fire, love and hate, soft breezes and raging hurricanes, that is the LV thespian art.

Chris

Agreed lets particularly thank Todd and Sonia

[ToddHW]

Ah, you will make me blush. And so, I have just launched two new Pineros this morning. (See signature line.) Enjoy!

Thanks, Todd

[ToddHW]

Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels is finished, and I'm not going to do any more Jonson's for a while. They are just early enough that they are hard to understand while recording a single part, and only when all parts get put together can you really figure out what is going on.

I'm going to use Congreve to replace Steele. And I found a book of Gilberts - not Gilbert and Sullivans done without the Sullivan music as we already have underway, but Gilbert alone.

Thanks, Todd

[Elizabby]

Gilbert on his own is hilarious! Have you got the Lozenge play?

[ChuckW]

With the 1924 floodgates finally open, we should have access to a bunch of new plays to record for Librivox. I've started digging through HathiTrust to see what's out there and thought I should share some of the standouts:

THE YOUNG IDEA by Noel Coward

I know some folks have been champing at the bit to record a Noel Coward play... and now we finally have the chance!

This ‘comedy of youth in three acts’ is a light and sprightly early work in which two precocious siblings run circles around their elders and betters in order to engineer the reconciliation of their divorced parents. Sholto and Gerda are visiting their father’s country home in order to hunt, learn about English society and split up their father from his second wife. The entertainments of the English country gentry are a far cry from the sun-baked Italian villa they have grown up in with their…

THE SHOW OFF by Heywood Broun

A comic farce that garnered some controversy when it was inexplicably snubbed by the Pulitzer committee (despite being their first choice).

Amy Fisher's parents can't understand what their daughter sees in Aubrey Piper, a loudmouth and braggart who pretends to be more than the lowly clerk he is.

She marries Aubrey even though he can't seem to stop insulting others or interfering with their lives. He accidentally sets her inventor brother Joe's laboratory on fire and also wrecks a car, driving it without a license. He is kicked off a radio show for offending the sponsor and blows Joe's deal with a paint company by demanding the inventor be paid $100,000.

Things go from bad to worse as Amy and Aubrey move in with her parents.

MARY ROSE by J.M. Barrie

Not gonna lie: I really, really wanted to launch this play myself, but unfortunately don't have the time and bandwidth to do it right now. Of all the plays mentioned here, I hope this one gets adopted.

JM Barrie's haunting play about a sinister Scottish island and a girl who never grows up. A soldier sits staring into the fire in an empty, dark house while an unsettling and tragic history unfolds before him. Written in the aftermath of the First World War, Barrie's play about loss and the mystery of life is by turns comic, eerie and heartbreaking.

[ToddHW]

Gilbert on his own is hilarious! Have you got the Lozenge play?

I am using plays from the book https://archive.org/details/OriginalPlays/page/n5.

And not all are hilarious: the first Gilbert I will offer, Broken Hearts, is a real tearjerker.

Thanks, Todd

[mightyfelix]

I've just come across a Charles Dickens play that we don't have, although we do have the novelization of it read as a solo. It's called "No Thoroughfare." 6 female, 13 male parts. 5 acts and a prologue.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112112402240&view=2up&seq=82

[ToddHW]

Ummmm. You tempt me. I was looking at plays made from Dickens books - found two versions of Martin Chuzzlewit I'm trying to choose between.

Isn't Hathi Trust limited in accessibility? (I can't tell becuz I do have access but I think many do not.)

Thanks, Todd

[Elizabby]

It can be restricted but I can read this play.

[mightyfelix]

It's full view for me. I remember reading somewhere that full view texts on HathiTrust are accepted, and I've used other sources there before.

[ChuckW]

Hathi Trust is only available in certain regions, but I have university access and can download the full PDFs, for anyone who'd like to record anything there.

[ToddHW]

Okay. I have prep'd the Dickens (and Wilkie Collins) play. Gotta couple others to launch first, but it'll be out this month.

Thanks, Todd

[SonOfTheExiles]

This 1907 farce, "The Private Secretary" was a contemporary of "Charley's Aunt"; and it has a meek and put-upon clergyman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Secretary#/media/File:WSPenley-Spalding.jpg
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1303861.txt

Again referencing "Charley's Aunt", this 1875 play "Our Boys" held the longest-run record prior to it.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301921.txt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Boys

For something more melodramatic, here is a 1921 play "The Cat and the Canary".
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1303031.txt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_and_the_Canary_(play)

"They Knew What They Wanted" (1924)
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1302991.txt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Knew_What_They_Wanted_(play)


Cheers,
Chris