Five One-Act Plays By Murray Schisgal Book

THE STORIES: MEMORIAL DAY shows us an unhappy couple bickering over the miseries of their marriage. They vie for the loyalties of the son they have consigned to the backyard well. When they haul him up, his is a final, uniting sadness - a straw dummy dressed in a soldier's uniform. (1 man, 1 woman.) THE OLD JEW sits alone in his shabby room, an old man pouring out his anguish to a group of imaginary neighbors. Then, removing his wig and makeup, reveals himself to be a young, embittered actor. (1 man.) THE BASEMENT is a serio-comedy study of a man who has estranged himself from his family and given up all hope for children, career or money to pursue the noble (and rather strange) scientific research that, in sad truth, has yielded only frustration and unhappiness. (2 men, 1 woman.) In FRAGMENTS we see three futile young men, lifelong friends (and enemies), who lash out at each other and alienate the young social worker who visits them in their cluttered room. (3 men, 1 woman.) WINDOWS introduces us to a not-so-young couple who, starting over again in a new neighborhood, rent an old house with too many windows - windows that peer disturbingly on the frantic and disjointed lives of those around them. (3 men, 2 women.)Five short plays about relationships that sometimes sparkle and sometimes sputter.