Bøger udgivet af Moreclacke Publishing

Three new plays by two-time Emmy Award winning playwright Sherman Yellen, with a Foreword by Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick ("Fiddler on the Roof"). DECEMBER FOOLS Gloria Temple, the widow of a renowned musical theatre composer, must induce her estranged daughter Marcie to carry on her work running an arts foundation. But when Marcie stumbles upon a hidden cache of her mother's unmailed letters, the means by which Gloria vents her anger, Marcie may be unable to resist the urge for payback for her unhappy childhood. This witty drama features five roles for women from mid-40s to 70s, plus one versatile actor. "The play has some delicious comic scenes." New York Times BUDAPEST In this contemporary version of Camille set in New York City in 1964, two young screenwriters become involved in the life of Minna, a beautiful survivor of Nazi and Soviet cruelty, whose influence will change them all. This dark comedy offers roles for three actresses in their 40s to 50s, two young men, plus a versatile character actor. GIN LANE Beth Hamilton Grauer has a loving husband, two young children, and a mansion on Gin Lane in Southampton inherited from her industrialist father. But when her husband forges a loan document using her house as collateral, she must make some life-altering decisions. This contemporary drama features two women and two men in their early to mid-40s and one man around 60. From the Foreword by Sheldon Harnick: Having collaborated with Sherman Yellen twice (on the musicals "The Rothschilds" and "Rex"), I thought I knew what to expect when I read this tripartite play collection: interesting, larger than life characters, intelligent, sophisticated dialogue spiced with wit and marked by an enviable command of language, expert stagecraft, and a sure-handed exploitation of the dramatic situations he had created. Nor was I disappointed; all of those elements are there aplenty. What I didn't expect was the element of surprise, adroitly employed for dramatic effect. Both "The Rothschilds" and "Rex" are historical tales of real people in real situations. We had to assume that our audiences (at least those that were acquainted with the history involved) would expect these characters to travel on foreordained paths to predetermined destinations. Anything else would be falsifying history. Not so the three plays comprising "December Fools and Other Plays." The characters in these plays, springing from Sherman's free-wheeling imagination, are free to act in unpredictable ways-and they do! In "December Fools" and "Gin Lane," Sherman treats us to the gratification of unexpectedly upbeat endings, whereas, in "Budapest," the major surprise (there are several) is a poignant, deliberately recognizable variation of one of the key scenes in "Camille." And here I have to confess that Sherman had so thoroughly involved me in this drama, I had to assure myself that after the final curtain fell the telephone would ring, a desired conversation would ensue, and our heroine would be happy once again! A word about the characters in these plays: they are complex, three-dimensional souls, part saint, part sinner. True, they tend to live in worlds most of us don't inhabit, with incomes we can only envy. This being so, one might think that their problems would be alien to us. Instead, Sherman's innate sense of compassion and his ability to people his plays with real human beings guarantee that their problems will register as intensified versions of our own. Consequently, we grieve with their sorrows and share their triumphs. So here is my recommendation. Open a bottle of your favorite wine, settle down in your most comfortable chair and prepare to spend several enjoyable hours in the company of colorful, well-spoken people working their way through highly dramatic situations. You'll find, as I have, that time spent with Sherman Yellen is time well spent.

When the Atlanta-born Paul Ford first fell in love with the American musical theatre at the age of five, after seeing the movie version of Rodgers & Hammerstein''s South Pacific, he never imagined that his future skills as a "piano thumper" would lead him to a career on Broadway playing rehearsals or in the "pit" for such classic Stephen Sondheim musicals as Sunday in the Park with George, Follies in Concert, Into the Woods, Assassins (both off-Broadway and the Broadway revival), Passion, the 2005 production of Pacific Overtures, Wiseguys, Stephen Sondheim at Carnegie Hall, and numerous concerts, birthday tributes, and television spectaculars. In two of his Tony award acceptance speeches, Sondheim publicly declared Paul Ford the "indefatigable master of the musical theatre" and "the world''s most tireless rehearsal pianist and a walking memory bank of every song that has ever been written for any musical on any continent."For more than 25 years, Paul Ford was also Mandy Patinkin''s exclusive accompanist and musical collaborator on a series of recordings and live concerts that took the duo from Broadway to London to Australia and beyond. Patinkin offers a heartfelt tribute to his former associate in the book''s Foreword.Now retired, the candid (and admittedly opinionated) author looks back on the performances and personalities that defined the American musical theatre in the waning years of the Twentieth Century. Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Donna Murphy, Elaine Stritch, Victor Garber, Bob Fosse, Gwen Verdon, Stockard Channing, Donna McKechnie, Lauren Bacall, Chita Rivera, Liza Minnelli, Martin Charnin, Liv Ullman, Teresa Stratas, Charles Strouse, Harve Presnell, Nancy Walker, James Lapine, Madonna, Mario Cantone, Warren Beatty, Julie Harris, Michael Cerveris, Debra Monk, Leonard Bernstein and, of course, Stephen Sondheim, are just a few of the legendary Broadway and Hollywood performers and creators who are lovingly (and sometimes not so lovingly) recalled in Paul Ford''s honest and vivid account of his life and work both on and off-Broadway. He also provides a portrait of his conflicted childhood in Atlanta, Georgia as a "sissy piano player," followed by a self-destructive period of alcoholism. Miraculously, a haunting encounter in a Hell''s Kitchen saloon in May of 1995 with the leading lady of one of his favorite childhood movies, gave Ford the incentive to clean up his life.