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A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE STAGE AND RADIO PLAYS
One Act Plays
The Liebestod – Three characters. Fifteen minutes. A business executive tries to make out with his young secretary. A play about sexual harassment, it portrays both parties sympathetically.
Turned Tables – Four characters. Twelve minutes. A salesman on a visit to a South American country to sell his wares is subjected to a severe interrogation during which he comes to realize his own emptiness.
A Topnotch Man – Two characters. Twenty minutes. A retired college professor seeks a loan from a former student who has become a successful businessman. Revelations of their past surface, leading to a damaging confrontation.
Dinner with Daddy – Three characters. Fifteen minutes. Upon discovering that her father had been unfaithful to her mother, an 18 year old daughter, disillusioned, confronts her father.
Lenny - A one act play. Six characters. Forty minutes. Set in the 1950s, a homosexual young man marries a young woman in an attempt to appear heterosexual, ending in tragedy.
Heartstorm – Four characters. Twelve minutes. A businessman, thinking he is having a heart attack, takes himself to the emergency ward of a hospital. He is diagnosed as having an anxiety attack due to the pressure imposed on him by the imminent failure of his business.
Full Length Plays
A Son’s Father, A Father’s Son –Eight characters. Ninety minutes. A story about the tragic consequences wrought by war on innocent participants. A celebrity father and his son find common ground in their respective shocking experiences in World War II and the war in Vietnam.
Ambition –Eight characters. Ninety minutes. A tale of racial and religious prejudice in business, and the seeking of power. A liberal minded business executive discovers his own prejudice.
Doctor Banner’s Garden – Five characters. Ninety minutes. A retired elderly professor and her cohort are rejuvenated when three young college students enter their lives. The students, marveling at what these women have accomplished in their revealed pasts, come to seek their counsel. It is set in 1947 Chicago.
Family Agendas – Six characters. One hour. A serio-comedy. A Jewish son marries a Catholic girl against his mother’s wishes. His father does not keep his promise to turn the family business over to him. These age-old conflicts are resolved in this play.
The Raging Flame – Fifteen characters. Ninety minutes. The story of a businessman’s experiences running a business, his conflicts and relationships, his failures and successes.
CEO – Twelve characters. Seventy minutes. The story of a CEO’s dealings with partners, employees and scheming outsiders seeking to acquire his company.
The Ultimate Success – Ten characters. Ninety minutes. A serio-comedy. A businessman is caught inflating the profits of his company bringing disgrace on himself and dishonor on his family. He fakes a suicide and runs off with his mistress to evade punishment.
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LONGER SYNOPSES OF THE PLAYS
Synopsis of FAMILY AGENDAS
Steven arrives at his Jewish parent's home after they asked him to leave his job in Chicago to take over his father's business. The father claims to have had a heart attack and must take it easy. Steven's younger brother Robert also joins him in the business. Soon Steven is outraged to discover that his father didn't have a heart attack after all and that his pretending to have one was a ruse to breakup his relationship with Caroline, his Catholic girlfriend in Chicago.
Meanwhile the father, who has given controlling shares of company stock to his sons, refuses to step aside or invest additional necessary funds in the business. Steven seeks to oust his father from the business, against his brother's wishes, and persuades Caroline to marry him, much to the consternation of his mother. Finally, through the good offices of Robert's wife Deborah, Caroline and the mother reach an understanding. As a result of Steven's expert management the business begins to boom. Seeing this, the father recognizes the need to let the next generation take over, and he and Steven make up.
Synopsis of AMBITION
Jack White, a liberal Jewish executive, in line for the presidency of Bossman's closely held corporation, is grooming his black manager, Dan Black, to step into his vice president's position. However, the conservative Bossman objects to this on the grounds that it wouldn't be good for the business and fires Dan behind Jack's back. Jack threatens to quit over this, but Bossman reveals that he has Parkinson's disease and needs him to take over. Dan, outraged at being fired, blames Jack and refuses to believe Jack's denial that he was responsible.
Jack's marriage is unhappy, and he is carrying on an affair with Bossman's private secretary, Sally. When Bossman's wife, who admires Jack's wife, discovers this, she comes to distrust Jack and persuades Bossman to sell the company, especially in view of his illness. A deal is made with George Buyer, head of a large corporation.
Buyer offers to keep Jack on as second in command of the acquired company. When Jack learns that his new boss will be none other than Dan Black, his former subordinate, he refuses, discovering his own prejudice. Sally holds up a mirror to Jack, showing him his hypocrisy, which leads to Jack's deeper understanding of himself and his willingness to work as Dan's subordinate after all. Dan is understanding and accepts Jack, but is realistic about the distance that remains between blacks and whites.
Synopsis of THE ULTIMATE SUCCESS
Ben Ransom is caught inflating the sales figures and profits of his closely held company, resulting in the bank taking over the reins. Ben is disgraced and brings dishonor on his family, especially his son who is an executive with the company, and his daughter, a stock broker who has been recommending the company's stock to her customers. He tries to start over, but his reputation is so sullied that no one will back him. Feeling hopeless, he concocts a scheme. In league with his mistress, Ben fakes his death by disappearing during an ocean swim, thereby leaving a tidy insurance benefit to his wife who believes he has committed suicide.
Ben and his artist mistress, Lily, take off for a South Pacific Island and assume new identities. There she plans to paint while Ben would be her agent. But their disguise is foiled by a determined insurance investigator who, based on a telltale piece of evidence, suspects that Ben is alive. He pursues the couple, just missing them at several locations, until he hunts them down in the island. Unhappy and bored with their life on the island, the couple realize they can't escape forever and agree to return home with their pursuer regardless of the punishment that they expect to face. But then the investigator reports another crime, and it's not by Ben.
Synopsis of A SON'S FATHER, A FATHER'S SON:
A Tale of Two Wars
It’s 1970, during the Vietnam War. Sid Randall's son, Ken, just graduating high school, volunteers for the service. Ken’s cousin Bobby, the same age as Ken, chooses to escape the draft by going to Canada. Sid, a highly respected man in the community, voted Man of the Year, and a mayoral candidate, plans to groom Ken to eventually succeed him as CEO of his closely held large corporation. Ken also plans to marry his girlfriend Sheree before leaving, but Ken's mother, Edith, talks her into waiting until Ken returns. Sid’s brother-in-law and business partner, Jay, wishes for his son Bobby to become CEO. Edith wants Ken to follow his own wishes, to become an astronomer.
When Ken returns from the war three years later he reveals that his platoon participated in the rape and murder of women in a Vietnamese village and is being prosecuted. Although claiming innocence, he is given a brief prison sentence and a dishonorable discharge. On returning home, he finds himself ostracized, and his reputation so damaged that he must leave the country. Meanwhile Sid is asked to withdraw his candidacy for mayor due to the publicity about Ken.
Despite Ken’s denials of guilt, Sid finds it difficult to believe his son. All his dreams for Ken to take over the business are destroyed. Cousin Bobby, who has returned from Canada under an amnesty, remains the only choice, but in Sid’s eyes he doesn’t have the stuff. Bobby's father Jay challenges Sid, demanding that Bobby be considered for the top job.
Upon Edith’s pleading, Sid agrees to have it out with Ken hoping to assuage his doubts about Ken's guilt. Sid then reveals to Ken that his suspicions derive from having had a similar experience: he had participated in the rape and murder of Filipino women while serving during World War II. He knows the dark side of his otherwise beneficent nature. As a result Ken and Sid make peace, but Ken insists on traveling the world to “find himself,” and ends up in Africa.
Ken returns stricken with a mysterious tropical malady. Remorseful, deathly ill, Ken then reveals to his father that he hadn't told the whole story about what happened in Vietnam. Threatened when he tried to stop two buddies from murdering women and children, he shot the men, killing them, but in the confusion no one witnessed the shooting. The father, shocked, but understanding that his son meant to save innocent people, resolves to keep Ken's confession a secret. War, he says, makes killers of good people, bringing out violence and the dark side in the best of us.
Synopsis of DOCTOR BANNER'S GARDEN
It is 1947. Dr. Banner, a Nobel prize winning scientist, and her companion/assistant, Justine, hire Pete, a newly enrolled student at the University of Chicago and a World War II veteran, to tend their neglected garden. The doctor is declining physically, and is depressed. Both women have cut off all contact with the outside world. But, as the garden is restored, the women are heartened by its revival. They also find themselves warming to their fresh, vigorous, dedicated young hiree.
Pete introduces the women to his brilliant college friend Lenny who has a large record collection, and his girlfriend Vicki who is a dedicated piano student. Lenny confides to Justine his parental and homosexual problems. During a record concert in the doctor's home, Vicki is persuaded to play on the concert grand that had been gathering dust in the living room, revealing her enormous talent. The concert goes on all night until all fall asleep and do not awake until morning.
Soon there is a falling out between Dr. Banner and Pete over his relationship with Vicki. Other problems are explored: Lenny's drinking habit and Vicki's parents' anti-semitism concerning which Justine wisely counsels her young friends.
Months later Pete knocks on the women's door and learns that the doctor who is failing, perhaps fatally, cannot see him. The garden is in disarray. Justine and Dr. Banner agree to end their useless lives in a suicide pact. Pete and Lenny break into the house and discover both women dead. At their graves, Pete, who plans to become a journalist, and feeling guilty over his last hostile words with the doctor, promises to keep their memory alive through his writing.
Synopsis of A RAGING FLAME
The play shows the audience in real-time how things happen in business. It covers the life of a company from its inception to its demise. Driving from moment to moment, propelling the protagonist forward, the story puts the reader in the CEO’s skin. Business problems pile on as quickly as solutions are found. Personal crises occur, and many remain unresolved.
The play provides a unique window on the life of the CEO, and its impact on those – his wife, his mistress, and his employees who depend on his support and leadership. It tells of the double-dealings, the betrayals and petty dishonesties, as well as the acts of generosity, trust and loyalty that occur in his relationships. Revealing his deepest conflicts, fears and doubts, brutally self-aware, the protagonist is driven to succeed.
The play is also an emotionally honest account of the price a CEO pays for success. The play ends with the CEO's failure but his spirit survives, his raging flame still intact.
Synopsis of A TOPNOTCH MAN
Cal, Phil’s former college teacher, calls on Phil to borrow some money in order to help out a friend, a drug addict, in need of detoxification. The history of Cal’s and Phil’s past relationship is revealed: Cal, unbeknownst to Phil, had loved him sexually when he was his student, but Cal had never indicated this until now for he knew Phil was straight. Phil soon discovers that Cal actually needs the funds to feed his own habit and threatens to throw Cal out. But Cal reminds Phil that he owes him a favor; it was through Cal’s connections that Phil gained acceptance to Harvard more than 20 years before. Foiled, and disgusted, Phil bitterly gives Cal the money he requested and asks him to leave. Cal leaves and sits in the office lobby weeping. When the receptionist advises Phil of this, Phil renegs and realizes that Cal is to be pitied and needs help. He calls Cal back in.
Synopsis of THE LIEBESTOD
Bronstein, CEO of his company, asks Loretta, an attractive recent young employee and his secretary, to takes some notes in his office just before closing time. Trying to put her at ease, he inquires of Loretta’s personal life and learns that she has recently separated and is about to divorce her husband who has beaten her. His own marriage, as revealed during a phone call, is unhappy. He asks her to go out with him, but she hesitates because she feels they have nothing in common. He attempts to prove that they do, but it becomes more and more evident that they are worlds apart. She sees that his interest in her is more than just business. Used to getting his way, Bronstein explains that he is really easy to be with, not so threatening as Loretta thinks. After finding that they both enjoy art and music, that they do have things in common, he offers to take care of her, provide her an elegant place in which to live and eventually threatens that her refusal would jeopardize her job. His uncontrollable passion aroused, he comes on aggressively, frightening her. He has put on a record of the Liebstod, the love death, to display his love for music. Still in pain from her wrecked marriage, having no desire to become involved with anyone, she flees for her freedom. Realizing his error, sunk in lonliness, miserable over his loss of youth, his proven current undesirability, he takes comfort in knowing that at least his business needs him.
Synopsis of TURNED TABLES
Bill, a computer salesman, has just arrived in Rio to call on a customer when he is met by two men whom he mistakes for the customer’s emissaries. They take him to a brightly-lit cell with grey walls and interrogate him mercilessly (one is a mime who reveals his thoughts by actions only) asking him for ‘the right answer.’ Not knowing the ‘right answer,’ he seeks to discover it by querying the interrogators who say that only they are permitted to ask questions, not Bill. In frustration, he turns on them, beats them to the floor, and discovers that the interrogators are shams, that they have ‘sawdust souls.’ At this he awakens from what has been a dream; and his wife, with whom he hasn’t made love for months, tries to comfort him. He realizes that all the characters in this drama are himself, that he is the one with the ‘sawdust soul.’
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Complete scripts of the above plays are available on request. If interested please contact the playwright at books@stonespoint.com.
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