Drama

Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are at once insupportably vast and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity—and a play that compresses epic extremems of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of an American living room. more...

Price: $13.00

I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history," Arthur Miller wrote in an introduction to The Crucible, his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminate the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence. Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing "Political opposition...is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence." more...

Price: $13.00

With such iconic films as the Oscar-winning Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill: Volumes 1 & 2, and Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino has become the most famous and revered writer/director of his generation. Now he's back with his most ambitious movie yet: the World War II epic Inglourious Basterds. Starring Brad Pitt and filmed on location in Germany and France, it has the largest cast of characters of any Tarantino film to date.The action tale follows the parallel story of a guerilla-like squad of American soldiers called "The Basterds" and the French Jewish teenage girl Shosanna who find themselves behind enemy Nazi lines during the German occupation. When the Inglourious Basterds encounter Shosanna at a propaganda screening at the movie house she runs, they conspire to launch an unexpected plot to end the war. Pitt plays Lieutenant Aldo Raine--the leader of the Basterds. Raine is an illiterate hillbilly from the mountains of Tennessee who puts together a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers to hunt down the Nazis.Filled with Tarantino's trademark electric dialogue and thrilling action sequences, Inglourious Basterds is destined to become one of the most talked about films of 2009 and a landmark in cinematic history. more...

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As You Like It is truly one of Shakespeare's greatest romantic comedies. The heroine, Rosalind has grown up in the court of her usurping uncle Duke Frederick, her father, the rightful duke, having been exiled by his younger brother. Rosalind falls in love with Orlando, but Orlando is forced to flee when he is persecuted by his older brother Oliver. Soon Rosalind is also banished from the court by her uncle. Switching genders she assumes the identity of Ganymede and with her... more...

Price: $3.95

A newly revised edition of an American classic, Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize—winning Buried Child is as fierce and unforgettable as it was when it was first produced more than twenty-five years ago. A scene of madness greets Vince and his girlfriend as they arrive at the squalid farmhouse of Vince’s hard-drinking grandparents, who seem to have no idea who he is. more...

Price: $14.00