Hippies and Bolsheviks and Other Plays

Amiel Gladstone

Summary

Hippies and Bolsheviks and Other Plays collects three works by Amiel Gladstone, introducing a wide range of fascinating characters and a formidable new voice in Canadian drama.
In The Wedding Pool, three single friends in unsatisfactory jobs decide to place a bet on who will marry first. The friends waitress and wannabe dancer Sylvia, rock critic Miles and inventory manager Dave open a joint account to which they each contribute $50 a month, the final sum to be collected by the first to tie the knot. But when Miles starts dating the bank teller who opens their account, the friends realize much more is at stake and are forced to consider their individual fears and failings.
In Lena’s Car, a woman whose marriage has stalled reflects on how it got to that point, harkening back to her youth, when she was just a Young Girl in a Small Town Looking for Trouble. Picking over the memories of her adolescence, she attempts to figure out why she ended up in a disintegrating relationship and just when her life became like everyone else's.
Hippies and Bolsheviks set in 1970s British Columbia, a hotbed of hippie idealism, is a comedy based on the big ideas of the long-haired revolution. Star stumbles home from a Led Zeppelin concert with a draft dodger. A bizarre love triangle develops the next morning as Allan (Green Tree), a defector from the same commune Star fled, shows up on her doorstep. As The Establishment gains more ground, three dropouts struggle to hold on to their ideals.

Available since: 04/14/2003.

Poetry & Theatre

Other books that might interest you

Noughts & Crosses (NHB Modern...

Malorie Blackman

Sephy and Callum sit together on a beach. They are in love. It is forbidden.
Sephy is a Cross and Callum is a Nought. Between Noughts and Crosses there are racial and social divides. A segregated society teeters on a volatile knife-edge. As violence breaks out, Sephy and Callum draw closer, but this is a romance that will lead them into terrible danger.
This gripping Romeo and Juliet story by acclaimed writer Malorie Blackman is a captivating drama of love, revolution and what it means to grow up in a divided world.
Sabrina Mahfouz's stage adaptation first toured the UK in 2019 and won the Excellence in Touring category at the UK Theatre Awards. It was commissioned and presented by Pilot Theatre in co-production with Derby Theatre, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Mercury Theatre Colchester and York Theatre Royal.
'Malorie Blackman's bestseller leaps off the stage in a fine new adaptation' Observer
'A searing insight into the injustices of the world… Mahfouz's adaptation highlights some deep truths and sharp parallels with the here and now' The Stage

Show book

How Beautiful People Are

Ayaz Pirani

In How Beautiful People Are, his third collection, Ayaz Pirani continues to write his people’s pothi: a trans-national, inter-generational poetry of post-colonial love and loss animated by the syncretizing figure of Kabir and drawn from the extraordinary diwan of ginan and granth literature. Walking alongside the tiger of Ali and an assortment of beloved infidels, Ayaz uncovers just How Beautiful People Are. After all, what will darkness do, his poems ask, when a true guru makes light?

Show book

The New York Idea

Langdon Mitchell

I find it very hard to classify "The New York Idea" under any of the established rubrics. It is rather too extravagant to rank as a comedy; it is much too serious in its purport, too searching in its character-delineation and too thoughtful in its wit, to be treated as a mere farce. Its title—not, perhaps, a very happy one—is explained in this saying of one of the characters: "Marry for whim and leave the rest to the divorce court—that's the New York idea of marriage." Like all the plays, from Sardou's "Divorçons" onward, which deal with a too facile system of divorce, this one shows a discontented woman, who has broken up her home for a caprice, suffering agonies of jealousy when her ex-husband proposes to make use of the freedom she has given him, and returning to him at last with the admission that their divorce was at least "premature." In this central conception there is nothing particularly original. It is the wealth of humourous invention displayed in the details both of character and situation that renders the play remarkable. (Summary from Project Gutenberg)CastPhilip Phillimore: Mark F. SmithGrace Phillimore: Diana MajlingerMrs. Phillimore: Margaret EspaillatMiss Heneage: rashadaMatthew Phillimore: Roger MelinWilliam Sudley: om123Mrs. Vida Phillimore: Elizabeth KlettSir Wilfrid Cates-Darby: Equilibrium33John Karslake: mbMrs. Cynthia Karslake: Arielle LipshawBrooks: Equilibrium33Tim Fiddler: Equilibrium33Nogam: moonpilesThomas: David MuncasterBenson: Lucy PerryNarrator: Margaret EspaillatAudio edited by: Arielle Lipshaw

Show book

The Poetry of Robert Browning

Robert Browning

With classics such as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Pied Piper Of Hamelin’ Robert Browning’s status as one of the great Victorian Poets will always be secure in popular culture.  For the more literary he is considered a master of dramatic verse and dramatic monologues.  It is interesting to note that his career bloomed late.   Indeed it was only after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1861 and his return to England from their life in Italy that his work came into wider acceptance and critical acclaim.  In the last years of his life he recorded part of a poem on a wax cylinder which was played after his death. It was said to be the first time anyone’s voice had been heard from beyond the grave!

Show book

Dear Memphis - poems

Rachel Edelman

‘What do I know about exile?’ asks the speaker in DEAR MEMPHIS, embedded in the colliding migrations and intimate economies of the American South. Offering a direct address to the city where the poet grew up, this collection explores questions of generation amidst the displacement and belonging of a Jewish family in Memphis, Tennessee. These poems sing with their attention to the particular body and what it cannot carry, what it cannot put down. Through letters, city documents, visual art, and dialogue, Dear Memphis excavates ancestry, inheritance, and the ecological possibility of imagining a future.

Show book

The Lord of the Isles

Sir Walter Scott

In stunning narrative poetry, the story begins during the time when Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick has been hunted out of Scotland into exile by the English and their allies. Bruce returns over sea from the Island of Rachrin: but is forced to land close to hostile forces at Artonish Castle on the seacoast of Argylshire. Seeking refuge from tempestuous seas, Bruce begs shelter from Ronald, Lord of the Isles: inadvertently on the day of his marriage feast to the beautiful Edith of Lorn.Bruce's very presence is enough to interrupt the nuptials and to break up the festivities: the guests quickly polarise into two armed and equally matched factions: one ready to raise Bruce to the Scottish crown, the other ready to slay him for desecration and murder. The combatants are dispersed with no bloodshed only by the combined offices of Lord Ronald himself, aided by a visiting Abbot: whereupon Bruce quickly removes himself to first the Island of Sky, and then Ayrshire: raising the an army willing to rout the English and re-establish Scottish independence.Bruce begins to win a steady stream of victories as his armies march inevitably towards Bannockburn. There, Bruce confronts Scotland's formidable enemy - led by the son of the Hammer of the Scots: the English outnumbering the Scots by more than two to one.- Can Bruce - the so-called fugitive, traitor, and turn-coat - succeed against the massed might of England?- Will the beautiful Edith choose to side with her blood-relations - who fight for England; or with Lord Ronald, her betrothed - who marches to battle behind Scotland's Bruce?(Introduction by Godsend)

Show book