Plays: v. 3 - Softcover

Obaldia, Rene De

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714535591 ISBN 13: 9780714535593

Publisher: Calder Publications Ltd, 1983

Synopsis

This volume contains three plays by a dramatic writer who has successfully bridged the gap between the `absurdist' and intellectual theatre of Ionesco, Beckett and Adamov and the quality end of boulevard drama. In other words, many of his plays have been highly commercial and enjoyed ling runs in large theatres in France and other parts of Europe. In Britain and the US he is best known through university performances, although there have been a number of provincial productions and the Pitlochry Festival has on two occasions staged important Obaldia plays. Two of the three plays in this volume are short and designed to be given together: `Two Women for One Ghost' is a macabre farce, depicting the meeting of two women, the wife and the mistress of the protagonist, who dies in a car accident while they talk, and appears on stage as a ghost, unhappily to hear their conversation; and `The Baby-sitter', where a girl from the Salvation Army, calling on a couple impatient to go out to dinner, is persuaded to baby-sit. `The Jellyfishes' Banquet' is an amusing take-off on psychoanalysis. All three plays show how cleverly Obaldia can combine farce and tragedy and create unusual situations out of everyday events. The translations are by Donald Watson, who has also translated nearly all the plays of Eugène Ionesco and novels and plays by many leading contemporary and classical French and German writers.

Edition details

• Publisher: Calder Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 1983
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0714535591
• ISBN 13: 9780714535593
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80