This is play from Africa. It is an intimate, dramatic story about human worth, identity, and dignity as well as a hard look the realties of the South African political scene. Although it reflects the conditions under which black South Africans live, there are moments of great fun between the two principal characters. Human nature fights disaster with laughter, and this play is a joyous hymn to human nature. The play was first performed at London’s Royal Court Theatre and last season on Broadway.

A play which poignantly evokes the national mood just prior to World War II – a period of thwarted aspirations, bewildered disenchantment, with character who remain through it all naïve and wholesome. Set in a San Francisco waterfront bar in 1939, there’s a helter-skelter- mixture of colorful players, who are at times humorous, sentimental, philosophical, and melodramatic. It is a play that has stood the test of time, as well as having been a success from its beginning – it won both the Pulitzer and Drama Critics’ Circle Awards in 1940. You must see it to believe it, to get the delight of it, to be enchanted by it. This is the first of our two Bicentennial classical this season.

The great American classic by America’s most renowned playwright, DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS is the epic story about the raging conflict between an aging New England farmer and his rebellious son over the father’s pretty new wife, her love for the son and over the question of the son’s inheritance. Because of its roots in Nineteenth Century early American history, ACT felt it a naturally representative play to help commemorate the Bicentennial. DESIRE is a powerful story of solitude – physical solitude, solitude of the land, of men's dreams, of love, lust and life. It is a profoundly dramatic play, and not one you are likely to forget easily.

RELATIVELY SPEAKING is basically a modern-day farce, with mistaken identity being the pivot around which all the shenanigans turn. It’s the theatre’s equivalent of a chain reaction and there’s no stopping it. The characters wend their way through conversations with the propriety of Queen Victoria and the concentration of Houdini, only to come up with the most erroneous conclusions about one another. The play starts with a genial young couple who have been living together for a month in her London flat, and the young man has even broached marriage. But there’s one matter she must dispose of first and she’s off to the country to visit her parents for the day. That’s what she says. Assumptions are multiplied ten-fold, and that’s the whole funny business.

A sprightly musical of six tales, over 600 years old, made sparkling new. Eight young citizens flee to the country to escape Florence and the plague of 1348. To overcome their fear, they amuse each other with tender, bawdy storied, music and jokes – involving salacious monks, ingenuous wives, wanton nuns and enterprising young men. The songs by Richard Peasless have a rock beat with an ecclesiastical vibrancy. An innocent, warm, fun look at love 600 years ago – and today. An evening of surprises and delights.