Hows The World Treating You? Book

THE STORY: The first act is set in a demobilization center, where a young lieutenant has just arrived minus troops and trousers, having lost both on the train en route. No one seems to notice, least of all the blimp-like colonel, who is more concerned with ogling a sexy female corporal; seeing to it that the bar in the officers club is adequately stocked with peanuts; and in dragooning the military band into playing at his frumpy wife's tea party. He cheerfully gives the lieutenant his own pants, standing smartly at attention in his shorts as the troops march by in review - and off to limbo in the wings. In Act Two, it is ten years later, and the scene is a coming-out party for a sixteen-year-old, and a noticeably pregnant (except to her parents) upper-class girl. The culprit is her history teacher (formerly the young lieutenant) who has spurned suggestions of remaining in the army and dreams of becoming a headmaster one day. He wants to make an honest woman of the girl, but has difficulty in getting through to her rich but obtuse father and mother - he being concerned only with obtaining a tuition refund once the bad news is out, and she having worn her evening dress backward so that people might see it better when she is dancing. Act Three, again ten years later, brings us to a far-out suicide sanctuary, where the now not-quite-so-young man, having failed as soldier, teacher, husband and washing machine salesman, has taken refuge. He has tried to drown himself (although he swims very well), and has put his problems in the do-gooding hands of the platitudinous sanctuary operator and his ebullient wife - who has an invisible dog named Maureen. Their help may not make good sense, but it results in lively action and somehow points a telling moral amid the merry and continually amusing high jinks which are the delightful heart of the play.A madcap, zany farce which was successfully produced in both London and New York. Actually a series of three interrelated short plays which presents, in different situations and at various times of life, the same group of bizarre and misguided people. ‚¬¦crazy hilarity‚¬¦an evening of fresh, original and merrily farcical entertainment. - NY Post. ‚¬¦desolatingly funny. - Time Magazine. A trio of batty British farces. - NY Daily News.