What’s hot at Broadway Licensing Global? Check out the top trending titles of the week from Broadway Licensing, Dramatists Play Service, and Playscripts.
Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous by Pearl Cleage
A lifetime ago, actress Anna Campbell and manager Betty Samson ignited a major theatrical controversy with a performance of monologues from August Wilson’s Fences that came to be known forever as Naked Wilson. After decades of self-imposed exile in Amsterdam to escape the critics, they receive an invitation to perform the show at a women’s theatre festival promising to be “angry, raucous, and shamelessly gorgeous.” Uncertain of what kind of reception she will get, and unmoved by Betty’s reassurances, Anna’s insecurity grows when she meets Pete Watson, the ambitious young performer who has been chosen to replace Anna in the role but whose theatrical experience is so far limited to the adult entertainment industry. Searching for common ground, Anna and Pete must confront their ideas about themselves and each other as they reconcile two vastly different worldviews.
Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some!) by Michael Carleton, James FitzGerald, John K. Alvarez
Instead of performing Charles Dickens’ beloved holiday classic for the umpteenth time, three actors decide to perform every Christmas story ever told — plus Christmas traditions from around the world, seasonal icons from ancient times to topical pop-culture, and every carol ever sung. A madcap romp through the holiday season!
The Princess Capers by Taryn Temple
When happily ever after isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, what’s a princess to do? Bored of their fairy-tale lives, Cindy, Snow, Beauty, Briar Rose, and Florine embark on an adventure to save the kingdom from rap-obsessed supervillain Delusia, whose dancing minions are stealing the youth of all the children in the land. With the help of exercise guru Rumpel Stiltskin and the Big No-Longer-Bad Wolf, they may stand a chance, but only if the Narrators can remember how the story goes. Will they discover the shadowy figure behind D-diddy’s evil scheme before it’s too late? Find out in this funny and fast-paced fractured fairy tale.
The Great Christmas Cookie Bake-off! By Rick Hip-Flores
THE GREAT CHRISTMAS COOKIE BAKE-OFF! combines the time-honored tradition of Christmas cookies with the ever-popular phenomenon of reality baking competitions. In this musical, eight young cookie chefs have been selected from all over the country to battle it out for first prize at the Cookie Coliseum. Just as no two cookies are the same, each contestant reveals their unique personality through song. Suspense mounts as the chefs are eliminated one by one, by three distinguished celebrity judges. Over the course of the competition, feelings of intense rivalry give way to virtues of charity, family, and forgiveness, as the chefs learn what really makes for a winning Christmas recipe.
The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On by Roger Bean
It’s 1969, and The Marvelous Wonderettes are back at Springfield High (Go Chipmunks!) to throw a retirement party for their favorite homeroom teacher. As the girls sing their way through the greatest girl-group hits of the ’60s and bid Ms. McPherson a fond farewell, one of the Wonderettes reveals she’ll also be saying goodbye to search for success and happiness on her own. Act II finds the girls back together as the class of 1958 celebrates their 20-year reunion. The classic pop and rock hits of the ’70s provide the perfect soundtrack for these old friends to catch up on the places life has led them, all performed with their own marvelous spin!
The Hot L Baltimore by Lanford Wilson
The scene is the lobby of a rundown hotel so seedy that it has lost the “e” from its marquee. As the action unfolds, the residents, ranging from young to old, from the defiant to the resigned, meet and talk and interact with each other during the course of one day. The drama is of passing events in their lives, of everyday encounters and of the human comedy, with conversations often overlapping into a contrapuntal musical flow. In the resulting mosaic each character emerges clearly and perceptively defined, and the sum total of what they are—or wish they were—becomes a poignant, powerful call to America to recover lost values and to restore itself in its own and the world’s eyes.
Women in Jeopardy! by Wendy MacLeod
Thelma and Louise meets The First Wives Club in this fun and flirtatious comedy. Divorcées Mary and Jo are suspicious of their friend Liz’s new dentist boyfriend. He’s not just a weirdo; he may be a serial killer! After all, his hygienist just disappeared. Trading their wine glasses for spy glasses, imaginations run wild as the ladies try to discover the truth and save their friend in a hilarious off-road adventure.
The How and the Why by Sarah Treem
Evolution and emotion collide in Sarah Treem’s thought-provoking and sharp play about science, family, and survival of the fittest. On the eve of a prestigious conference, an up-and-coming evolutionary biologist wrestles for the truth with an established leader in the field. This intimate and keenly perceptive play explores the difficult choices faced by women of every generation.
A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller
As told by the New York Daily News, “… is a tragedy in the classic form and I think it is a modern classic…the central character is a long-shoreman who, though his mind is limited and he cannot find words for his thoughts, is an admirable man…When two of his wife’s Italian cousins—submarines they are, in the waterfront argot—are smuggled into this country, he makes room for them in his home. Gratefully they move in among his wife, his children and the teen-age niece whom he has brought up and whom he has come to love, he thinks, as a daughter. And now the stage is set for tragedy. One of the illegal immigrants has a family in Italy for whom he is working; the other young, extraordinarily handsome, and exceedingly blonde, is single. He wants to become an American, and he falls in love with his benefactor’s niece. If he marries the girl he will no longer have to hide from immigration officials. A monstrous change creeps up on the kind and loving uncle. He is violently opposed to this romance and is not intelligent enough to realize that this opposition is not motivated, as he thinks, by a dislike of the boy and a suspicion that he is too pretty to be a man, but by his own too intense love for his niece. Not even the wise and kindly neighborhood lawyer can persuade him to let the girl go. This is an intensely absorbing drama, sure of itself every step of the way. It makes no false moves, wastes no time and has the beauty that comes from directness and simplicity.”
The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon (one-act) by Don Zolidis
Two narrators attempt to recreate all 209 of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm in a wild, fast-paced extravaganza. To make it more difficult, they attempt to combine them into one gigantic fable using Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and other more obscure stories like Lean Lisa and The Devil’s Grandmother.
