This play was WINNER of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize. This production was WINNER of the Tony Award for Best Actress for Jessica Tandy, WINNER of the Drama Desk Award for Best Actress for Jessica Tandy, and WINNER of the L. A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for Hume Cronyn and Best Actress for Jessica Tandy. These veteran actors are mesmerizing as they play two elderly residents in an old-age home who must come to terms with each other and themselves as they face the ends of their lives.
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When Valerie rents a remote cottage in a small town near Sligo, she hopes to find a place where she can rest and get a grip on her life and respite from the horrors that have enveloped her in Dublin. Introduced to the Guinness-drinking regulars at the local bar by Finbar, who has rented her the cottage, she and they soon explore some of the big mysteries of life. Irish playwright Conor McPherson uses Valerie’s arrival at the bar as the pivot around which all the action turns in this 1997 play. Simple in presentation, this is a thoughtful story which plumbs the realities of Irish country life while it explores the big questions of humankind.
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In 1942, when the American army builds an air base near the small town of Strandvik, Iceland, less than a hundred kilometers from the Arctic Circle, the whole local culture comes under siege. Isolated, even from other Icelanders, the community consists predominantly of fishermen whose wives assume a variety of low-paying jobs to make ends meet, and there is little opportunity for young people to explore alternatives to this life. When the Americans invite only the women of the community to a Big Band Bash, the women dress to look like American movie stars and expect an evening on a par with a Hollywood event. The men, however, are left out and understandably resentful.
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Horace Rumpole, an English barrister known for his acerbic wit, his iconoclastic religious views, his straight talk, and his deference to his wife, “she who must be obeyed,” is called upon to defend Rev. Mordred Skinner, a vicar accused of stealing six shirts from the haberdashery department of a local store. As one might expect, the meetings between Rumpole and his client are filled with wry humor, as Rumpole, seriously committed to defending his client while aware of the ironies of the case, shows his willingness to use every trick of the trade on behalf of his client. The acting on this audiotape is outstanding, with Leo McKern personifying Rumpole, giving him just the right balance of dry wit and muted cynicism.
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While Louise Maske is waiting for the king to pass by in Dusseldorf, 1910, the fastener on her underpants releases, and they fall about her ankles in public. In a matter of seconds, she has grabbed them and hidden them, and she expects that few, if any, people have noticed. Her husband Theo, however, a government clerk, is furious and fears that he may be fired from his job for her gaffe. Adapting Carl Sternheim’s sociopolitical farce from 1910 into a wildly burlesque romp appealing to a modern audience, actor/writer Steve Martin drops Sternheim’s dated political satire and stresses instead the absurdity of instant fame and the unexpected opportunities it presents to people such as Louise Maske. The result might be termed an “anti-bedroom” farce.
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