Listmania II -- the plays
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1polutropos
All languages. All times. Lasting forever. List of ten. As many by any playwright as you think is deserved.
2polutropos
Just to get the ball rolling and be provocative (Hi Macumbeira), here is a discussion-starter.
Oresteia by Aeschylus
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Medea by Euripides
Trojan Women by Euripides
King Lear
Hamlet
Othello
Macbeth
Pygmalion by GBS
Waiting for Godot by Beckett
Oresteia by Aeschylus
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Medea by Euripides
Trojan Women by Euripides
King Lear
Hamlet
Othello
Macbeth
Pygmalion by GBS
Waiting for Godot by Beckett
3theaelizabet
A fine list. I might substitute Antigone for Pygmalion. And I'd try to find a place for Ibsen, but that would be hard to do. I'll think on it.
5PimPhilipse
Faust I + II
6MeditationesMartini
Marlowe! I am developing a preference for Tamburlaine; it seems to me Central Asia is a underrepresented region in world culture.
Also, I just heard tell of a Greek play in which it turns out it was a fake Helen in Troy and she was on vacation in Egypt all along. Thus, we can still love her as a hottie and not curse her as faithless and the cause of the war. Silly as that is, it still sounds like a good read. Anyone know?
Also, I just heard tell of a Greek play in which it turns out it was a fake Helen in Troy and she was on vacation in Egypt all along. Thus, we can still love her as a hottie and not curse her as faithless and the cause of the war. Silly as that is, it still sounds like a good read. Anyone know?
7LolaWalser
The Greeks and Shakespeare.
10LolaWalser
The man said "ten". Sorry. This bus is full.
11polutropos
Thanks to the most able bus conductor. (That's a play by Wesker, is it not?)
Now that we have had a great many dramatists' names thrown at us, we need a compilation and the arguments for and against the canon we are compiling.
If we take the list in #2 as our starting point, can we delete and add into it and work towards a consensus?
Now that we have had a great many dramatists' names thrown at us, we need a compilation and the arguments for and against the canon we are compiling.
If we take the list in #2 as our starting point, can we delete and add into it and work towards a consensus?
12Porius
WS needs no defending, of course. I would like to plug for a fine memoir by Dominic Dromgoole called WILL & ME. A theatre director whose father was a theatre director.
When young he had over for dinner the likes of among others Peter O'Toole. I can't think of too many better SHAKESPEARE books unless they have Anthony Burgess or Phillip Burton on the front cover.
I know this doesn't help much with our task, I'm doing the best that I can.
The play is King Lear, There's Brooks great LEAR with the incomparable Paul Scofield; Olivier's last LEAR, he was old and infirm but dug down down down there and found a way to keep them satisfied in their seats, one more time. There's the fine film THE DRESSER with a stunning performance by Albert Finney, with able help from Eileen Atkins and John Hurt. Hem, old silly and jejune Hem read KL twice every year, now that doesn't for one second make the old faker interesting though I would give my eye teeth to have been a fly on the wall when he was eyeing up Martha Gellhorn's frippery. Who wouldn't.
Here's a passage from Dromgoole's memoir:
There's a perverse flintiness in the British and the Irish spirit, a refusal to be moved from one's path, no matter what the trauma or mess is strewn in one's way. It was expressed most recently by the staunchly unimpressed manner in which the many cultures of London returned to work after various thugs had made such a terrible jigsaw of human flesh and human happiness on tubes and buses. Much of it is drawn from Shakespeare, who sucked much of it himself out of the marrow of Seneca,, the Roman playwright who was the first great mouthpiece of stoicism. It is the exercising of a muscle which my father flexed in a war-torn London as a child, in a martial Israel as a man and with a plate of chillies with his grown son.
The elder Dromgoole had a touch and go episode with some powerful chillies in an Indian resteraunt a little earlier in the book. He refused the ministrations of the waiters who watched the episode with a look of horror on's faces.
When young he had over for dinner the likes of among others Peter O'Toole. I can't think of too many better SHAKESPEARE books unless they have Anthony Burgess or Phillip Burton on the front cover.
I know this doesn't help much with our task, I'm doing the best that I can.
The play is King Lear, There's Brooks great LEAR with the incomparable Paul Scofield; Olivier's last LEAR, he was old and infirm but dug down down down there and found a way to keep them satisfied in their seats, one more time. There's the fine film THE DRESSER with a stunning performance by Albert Finney, with able help from Eileen Atkins and John Hurt. Hem, old silly and jejune Hem read KL twice every year, now that doesn't for one second make the old faker interesting though I would give my eye teeth to have been a fly on the wall when he was eyeing up Martha Gellhorn's frippery. Who wouldn't.
Here's a passage from Dromgoole's memoir:
There's a perverse flintiness in the British and the Irish spirit, a refusal to be moved from one's path, no matter what the trauma or mess is strewn in one's way. It was expressed most recently by the staunchly unimpressed manner in which the many cultures of London returned to work after various thugs had made such a terrible jigsaw of human flesh and human happiness on tubes and buses. Much of it is drawn from Shakespeare, who sucked much of it himself out of the marrow of Seneca,, the Roman playwright who was the first great mouthpiece of stoicism. It is the exercising of a muscle which my father flexed in a war-torn London as a child, in a martial Israel as a man and with a plate of chillies with his grown son.
The elder Dromgoole had a touch and go episode with some powerful chillies in an Indian resteraunt a little earlier in the book. He refused the ministrations of the waiters who watched the episode with a look of horror on's faces.
14A_musing
The Recognition of Sakuntala
Anyone for No Theatre or Chinese Opera?
How about Tennessee Williams? Ibsen? Goethe? Lope de Vega?
Are movie scripts eligible?
Anyone for No Theatre or Chinese Opera?
How about Tennessee Williams? Ibsen? Goethe? Lope de Vega?
Are movie scripts eligible?
15absurdeist
Movie scripts are not illegible!
Tell me you've got some Mamet on you mind!
Or how about the script for Taxi Driver? - Paul Schafer? yes?
Vintage Woody Allen would seem to be an automatic as well.
Whoever wrote the script for Brazil is also a genius in my book (not the Updike novel btw - dratted erroneous touchstones!).
Tell me you've got some Mamet on you mind!
Or how about the script for Taxi Driver? - Paul Schafer? yes?
Vintage Woody Allen would seem to be an automatic as well.
Whoever wrote the script for Brazil is also a genius in my book (not the Updike novel btw - dratted erroneous touchstones!).
16A_musing
My short list of film scripts to consider, without thinking too hard, is Hiroshima mon Amour by Duras, Night of the Hunter by Agee and To Have and Have Not by Faulkner. Maybe throw in Providence (by I don't know who), too. I'm tempted to suggest in the Princess Bride or Love and Death, but I'm not sure the comic genre makes such a serious list as this one. And Mamet. Hmmm. You've likely got something there.
The film To Have and Have Not I think resolves the Hemingway question being debated on the other thread. Faulkner's script really fixes up Hemingway's book, showing what a truly great writer can do with the material. It's not that I think Hemingway is utterly irredeemable, and there are ways in which he was an important antidote to some of the excesses of his modernist friends, in many ways a Picassin reductionist in a world of Daliesque writers, but he's more of a good solid trade writer than a towering genius.
But we probably can't have more than one film on a list of ten - after all, film's been around about a century, not long at all. So give me Night of the Hunter as a film addition to the list.
The film To Have and Have Not I think resolves the Hemingway question being debated on the other thread. Faulkner's script really fixes up Hemingway's book, showing what a truly great writer can do with the material. It's not that I think Hemingway is utterly irredeemable, and there are ways in which he was an important antidote to some of the excesses of his modernist friends, in many ways a Picassin reductionist in a world of Daliesque writers, but he's more of a good solid trade writer than a towering genius.
But we probably can't have more than one film on a list of ten - after all, film's been around about a century, not long at all. So give me Night of the Hunter as a film addition to the list.
17geneg
Night of the Hunter is a great movie.
"I'm not sure the comic genre makes such a serious list as this one." Why not? Much comedy is just as serious as any other genre. Would you not consider A Midsummer Night's Dream or Lysistrata as accomplished and as insightful as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf or Death of a Salesman or the Crucible? I think comedy gets short shrift in discussions of serious lists, meaning weighty, that's what you meant here, A_musing, isn't it? Serious as weighty?
I'm not familiar enough with drama to make a top ten list, but hey, I'll try.
The Oresteia. Three for one.
Antigone
Lysistrata
King Lear
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Three Penney Opera
The Misanthrope
Le Cid
H.M.S.Pinafore Not technically a play, but hey, I saw it live on stage.
Death of a Salesman
Somewhere in this list should be Our Town. I wanted to include Medea, but my list is already top heavy with Greeks. Just for fun, I like The Music Man.
Top tens are impossible.
"I'm not sure the comic genre makes such a serious list as this one." Why not? Much comedy is just as serious as any other genre. Would you not consider A Midsummer Night's Dream or Lysistrata as accomplished and as insightful as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf or Death of a Salesman or the Crucible? I think comedy gets short shrift in discussions of serious lists, meaning weighty, that's what you meant here, A_musing, isn't it? Serious as weighty?
I'm not familiar enough with drama to make a top ten list, but hey, I'll try.
The Oresteia. Three for one.
Antigone
Lysistrata
King Lear
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Three Penney Opera
The Misanthrope
Le Cid
H.M.S.Pinafore Not technically a play, but hey, I saw it live on stage.
Death of a Salesman
Somewhere in this list should be Our Town. I wanted to include Medea, but my list is already top heavy with Greeks. Just for fun, I like The Music Man.
Top tens are impossible.
18theaelizabet
#13 and #17, solla and geneg. Regardless of whether it would make a "top ten" list, Our Town is underrated. There's a really smart production running right now off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theater. If anyone is in the area, it's well worth catching.
19janeajones
The Bacchae by Euripides
Sakuntala by Kalidasa
King Lear and The Tempest by Shakespeare
Doctor Faustus by Marlowe
Tartuffe by Moliere
Uncle Vanya by Chekhov
Hedda Gabler by Ibsen
Mother Courage by Brecht
The Century Cycle (aka The Pittsburgh Cycle) by August Wilson
for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
film:
Dreams by Akira Kurosawa -- which is a 20th c. version of a Day's Performance of Noh plays.
Sakuntala by Kalidasa
King Lear and The Tempest by Shakespeare
Doctor Faustus by Marlowe
Tartuffe by Moliere
Uncle Vanya by Chekhov
Hedda Gabler by Ibsen
Mother Courage by Brecht
The Century Cycle (aka The Pittsburgh Cycle) by August Wilson
for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
film:
Dreams by Akira Kurosawa -- which is a 20th c. version of a Day's Performance of Noh plays.
20rolandperkins
Othello, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and King Lear of WS
The Bacchae and Alcestis of Euripides
ALL of Aeschylus (7 tragedies)
ALL of Sophocles 7 "
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Summer & Smoke Of Tennessee Williams
The Iceman Cometh of OʻNeill
American Buffalo and
Glengarry Glenross of Mamet
(although the latter isnʻt quite up to the former).
. . . a play by Sumner Locke Elliott of which I donʻt remember the title, but it did impress me. Itʻs devastating last line (said by the White hero to 2 Blacks) was, "You donʻt understand!-- Iʻm ON YOUR SIDE! But you canʻt come in here!" (Australian author, but an AMerican small town setting).
Jonsonʻs The Alchemist
Aristophanesʻs The Frogs The Clouds, and
Thesmophoriazusae
The Bacchae and Alcestis of Euripides
ALL of Aeschylus (7 tragedies)
ALL of Sophocles 7 "
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Summer & Smoke Of Tennessee Williams
The Iceman Cometh of OʻNeill
American Buffalo and
Glengarry Glenross of Mamet
(although the latter isnʻt quite up to the former).
. . . a play by Sumner Locke Elliott of which I donʻt remember the title, but it did impress me. Itʻs devastating last line (said by the White hero to 2 Blacks) was, "You donʻt understand!-- Iʻm ON YOUR SIDE! But you canʻt come in here!" (Australian author, but an AMerican small town setting).
Jonsonʻs The Alchemist
Aristophanesʻs The Frogs The Clouds, and
Thesmophoriazusae
21anna_in_pdx
I recently saw Fences and thought it was terrific. My son read it for school.
I second the votes for Lysistrata because it's so funny although it's so old.
I saw a very good version of A Raisin in the Sun as a kid and it made a big impression on me. It might be kinda dated now though.
I second the votes for Lysistrata because it's so funny although it's so old.
I saw a very good version of A Raisin in the Sun as a kid and it made a big impression on me. It might be kinda dated now though.
22rolandperkins
To Booksfalapart (#6):
Yes, there is a Greek play in which "a fake Helen is on vacation in Egypt all along": Helen by Euripides. E. might not agree with "vacation", or even understand the meaning of it, as job-holding was not a big part of the Atheniansʻ economy, and hence what we know as vacations were not.
But it is a great -- and a puzzlilng-- play. Critics have depicted Euripides as everything from a pacifist to a warmonger. Well he did leave Athens which was in a Pan-Greek war for much of his lifetime -- only to seek refuge in Macedonia, a very militaristic kingdom. But we do know from his surviving plays --more of them than of Sophocles and Aeschylus combined that he wouldnʻt avoid the conventional view of a legendary (to the Greeks a historical) war. So his version of the Helen story --derived probably from folklore, not from the main stream of Mythology-- is surprising.
Yes, there is a Greek play in which "a fake Helen is on vacation in Egypt all along": Helen by Euripides. E. might not agree with "vacation", or even understand the meaning of it, as job-holding was not a big part of the Atheniansʻ economy, and hence what we know as vacations were not.
But it is a great -- and a puzzlilng-- play. Critics have depicted Euripides as everything from a pacifist to a warmonger. Well he did leave Athens which was in a Pan-Greek war for much of his lifetime -- only to seek refuge in Macedonia, a very militaristic kingdom. But we do know from his surviving plays --more of them than of Sophocles and Aeschylus combined that he wouldnʻt avoid the conventional view of a legendary (to the Greeks a historical) war. So his version of the Helen story --derived probably from folklore, not from the main stream of Mythology-- is surprising.
