What’s hot at Broadway Licensing Group? Check out the top trending titles of the week from Broadway Licensing, Dramatists Play Service, and Playscripts
Drinking Habits by Tom Smith
THE STORY: Accusations, mistaken identities, and romances run wild in this traditional, laugh-out-loud farce. Two nuns at the Sisters of Perpetual Sewing have been secretly making wine to keep the convent’s doors open, but Paul and Sally, reporters and former fiancees, are hot on their trail. They go undercover as a nun and priest, but their presence, combined with the addition of a new nun, spurs paranoia throughout the convent that spies have been sent from Rome to shut them down. Wine and secrets are inevitably spilled as everyone tries to preserve the convent and reconnect with lost loves.
Saturday Night Fever (High School Edition) By Nick Cohn, Adapted by: Robert Stigwood, Bill Oaks, Sean Cercone, David Abbinanti
THE STORY: In this beloved ’70s throwback, Tony Manero, a nineteen-year-old Brooklynite paint store clerk, spends his weekends at a local disco, where he moonlights as the king of the dance floor. When he and mesmerizing dancer Stephanie enter a dance competition, the pair’s professional partnership blossoms into a deep friendship, and challenges both to reflect on what’s important in life amidst rising social tensions and disillusionment. Featuring the timeless hits of the Bee Gees and classic disco tracks, this reimagined version of Saturday Night Fever transports you back to the era of disco balls, platform boots, and white suits. Burn, baby, burn!
The Lost Boy by Ronald Gabriel Paolillo
THE STORY: Despite finding success and fame as a writer, James M. Barrie is dissatisfied with his work and his life. He returns to his hometown in Scotland to visit his mother, who still blames him for the long-ago death of his older brother in a skating pond. Haunted by the tragic accident and his mother’s harsh words, James slowly begins to confront his family’s tragic past with the help of an unexpected friendship and his own gift for storytelling. This fictionalized account of the birth of Peter Pan will warm the hearts of audiences everywhere who remember the magic and mystery of The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, adapted for the stage by Simon Levy
THE STORY: Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, passionately pursues the elusive Daisy Buchanan. Nick Carraway, a young newcomer to Long Island, is drawn into their world of obsession, greed and danger. The breathtaking glamour and decadent excess of the Jazz Age come to the stage in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, and in Simon Levy’s adaptation, approved by the Fitzgerald Estate.
Lysistrata adapted by Ellen McLaughlin
THE STORY: This fresh, fast-paced comedy, inspired by the Aristophanes play, follows Lysistrata, an Athenian housewife, who calls for the women of Greece to help end the Peloponnesian War. She proposes a radical plan: all Greek women must refuse to engage in love making until the men see reason, lay down their arms and come home to lay down with their wives in peace. The women agree to make the sacrifice and all hell breaks loose as men wander the country in an agony of unsatisfied lust. Will Lysistrata and her crew accomplish what the politicians could not?
Brainstorm by Ned Glasier, Emily Lim, and Company Three
THE STORY: Inside every adolescent brain, 86 billion neurons connect and collide to produce the most frustrating, chaotic, and exhilarating changes that happen to human bodies. BRAINSTORM is a theatrical investigation into how teenagers’ brains work, and why they’re designed by evolution to be the way they are. Created in collaboration with neuroscientists Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Dr. Kate Mills, the play is a blueprint for a company of teenagers to create and perform by drawing directly on their personal experiences.
Desdemona, A Play About a Handkerchief by Paula Vogel
THE STORY: Having slept with Othello’s entire encampment, Desdemona revels in her bawdy tales of conquest. Her foils and rapt listeners are the other integral and reimagined women of this Shakespeare tragedy: Emilia, Desdemona’s servant and the wife of Iago, and Bianca, now a majestic whore of Cyprus. The reluctantly loyal Emilia pesters Desdemona about a military promotion for her husband. Her motive, however, is that he leave her a wealthy widow, preferably sooner than later. Bianca, now a street-wise yet painfully naive prostitute, visits Desdemona, thinking she is a very good friend and fellow hooker (at least one night a week). Bianca thinks the worst when she discovers that Desdemona knows intimate details of the life of her lover, Cassio. Though Desdemona has never been intimate with Cassio, her life is soon in danger when her husband, Othello, also suspects her of infidelity.
Sense and Sensibility by Kate Hamill
THE STORY: A playful new adaptation of Jane Austen’s beloved novel follows the fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Dashwood sisters—sensible Elinor and hypersensitive Marianne—after their father’s sudden death leaves them financially destitute and socially vulnerable. Set in gossipy late 18th-century England, with a fresh female voice, the play is full of humor, emotional depth, and bold theatricality. Sense and Sensibility examines our reactions, both reasonable and ridiculous, to societal pressures. When reputation is everything, how do you follow your heart?
Southern Hospitality by Jones Hope Wooten
THE STORY: In this rapid-fire, hilarious romp, the Futrelle Sisters—Frankie, Twink, Honey Raye and Rhonda Lynn—are in trouble again. This time, their beloved hometown, Fayro, Texas, is in danger of disappearing and it’s up to the sisters to save it from extinction. But their plans to do so quickly go haywire.
Mud, River, Stone by Lynn Nottage
THE STORY: An African-American couple on vacation in Africa get stranded in a rundown colonial hotel during the rainy season. With other guests, including a Nigerian aid worker and a Belgian adventurer, they face absurd challenges when the hotel’s bellhop takes them hostage, demanding grain for his village and a wool blanket for his mother. As an international mediator intervenes, the couple’s relationship is tested by the volatile politics of Africa and the hunger for survival.
