1983-1984 Season
1983-1984 Season
Design for Living
by Noël Coward
Directed by Ken Ruta
Oct. 1 — 23, 1983
The Huntington Theatre
Design for Living is a wickedly witty dark romantic comedy by Noël Coward. Initially banned in the UK, this provocative play portrays three amoral, glib and stylish characters and their hopelessly inescapable, if also unconventional, emotional entanglement. From 1930’s bohemian Paris to the dizzying heights of Manhattan society, a tempestuous love triangle unravels between a vivacious interior designer, Gilda, playwright Leo and artist Otto — three people unashamedly and passionately in love with each other. They are trapped in what Coward called ‘a three-sided erotic hodge podge.’ With Coward’s trademark piquant style, this lively, funny but also atypical play looks at dazzling, egotistical creatures and their self-destructive dependence on each other. Exploring themes of bisexuality, celebrity, success and self-obsession, Design for Living is a stylish and scandalous comedy.
Uncommon Women and Others
by Wendy Wasserstein
Directed by Larry Carpenter
Nov. 26 — Dec. 18, 1983
The Huntington Theatre
Comprised of a collage of interrelated scenes, the action begins with a reunion, six years after graduation, of five close friends and classmates at Mount Holyoke College. They compare notes on their activities since leaving school and then, in a series of flashbacks, we see them in their college days and learn of the events, some funny, some touching, some bitingly cynical, that helped to shape them. Each of the group is a distinct individual, and it is their varying reaction to the staid, sheltered and often anachronistic university environment (with its undercurrent of sometimes darker personal desires and conclusions) gives the play its special meaning for today’s young women as they go forth into the changing and often disquieting world that awaits them after graduation.
Cyrano de Bergerac
by Edmond Rostand
Translated by Brian Hooker
Directed by Jacques Cartier
Dec. 31, 1983 — Jan. 22, 1984
The Huntington Theatre
Edmond Rostand’s immortal play in which chivalry and wit, bravery and love are forever captured in the timeless spirit of romance. Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet (nobleman serving as a soldier) in the French Army during Louis XIII’s reign, is a brash, strong-willed man of many talents. In addition to being a remarkable duelist, he is a gifted, joyful poet and is also shown to be a musician. However, he has an extremely large nose, which is the reason for his own self-doubt. This doubt prevents him from expressing his love for his distant cousin, the beautiful and intellectual heiress Roxane, as he believes that his ugliness denies him the “dream of being loved by even an ugly woman.”
Plenty
by Sir David Hare
Directed by Edward Gilbert
Feb. 25 — March 18, 1984
The Huntington Theatre
Susan Traherne, a former secret agent, is a woman conflicted by the contrast between her past, exciting triumphs — she had worked behind enemy lines as a Special Operations Executive courier in Nazi-occupied France during World War II — and the mundane nature of her present life, as the increasingly depressed wife of a diplomat whose career she has destroyed. Viewing society as morally bankrupt, Susan has become self-absorbed, bored, and destructive — the slow deterioration in her mental health mirrors the crises in the ruling class of post-war Britain.
Susan Traherne’s story is told in a non-linear chronology, alternating between her wartime and post-wartime lives, illustrating how youthful dreams rarely are realised and how a person’s personal life can affect the outside world in this Tony Award nominated play by Sir David Hare.
On the Razzle
by Tom Stoppard
Adapted from Johann Nestroy
Directed by Thomas Gruenewald
May 19 — June 10, 1984
The Huntington Theatre
This hit play is a free adaptation of the 19th century farce by Johann Nestroy that provided the plot for Thornton Wilder’s The Merchant of Yonkers, which led to The Matchmaker, which led to Hello, Dolly. The story is basically one long chase, chiefly after two naughty grocer’s assistants who, when their master goes off on a binge with a new mistress, escape to Vienna on a spree.