Showing results for "Death" in Drama

Stacy Keach and Jane Kaczmarek star in this 1949 masterpiece by Arthur Miller, a searing portrait of the physical, emotional, and psychological costs of the American dream. Willy Loman (Keach) is the play's iconic traveling salesman, whose family is torn apart by his desperate obsession with greatness and social acceptance. As his two sons cast about aimlessly for their station in life, Willy begins to come unraveled when the reality of his life threatens his long-cherished illusions.

Suspense mounts when Paulina and her husband offer hospitality to a stranger. Paulina thinks she recognizes, in their guest, the man who tortured her in prison, and she subsequently takes him hostage to find out the truth. A stunningly blunt and compelling play, Death and the Maiden explores brilliantly the issues of torture, power, vulnerability, ethics, and trust. An award-winning play by Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, forced into exile in 1973.

This play forms part of a tetralogy which focuses on one of Wedekind's obsessive themes: the destructive interplay between primal sexual urges and social convention. Each play revolves around a powerful young female character, who has the power to control and captivate men, but who in turn is destroyed by the exercise of that power. In this play, the dominant female is Fräulein Elfriede von Malchus, an idealistic crusader who visits a brothel operated by the cynical impresario Casti-Piani in order to rescue a young woman who has fallen into his clutches.