Elaine May

Death Defying Acts Elaine May

Short Plays / Comedy / 2m, 3f / 3 ints. This long-running Off Broadway hit features the work of three gifted playwrights. David Mamet's AN INTERVIEW is an oblique, mystifying interrogation. A sleazy lawyer is forced to answer difficult questions and to admit the truth about his life and career. The why and where of the interrogation provide a surprise ending to this brilliant twenty minute comedy. In HOTLINE by Elaine May, a neurotic woman with enough urban angst to fill a neighborhood calls a suicide crisis hotline late one night. The counselor who gets the call is overwhelmed - it is his first night on the job. This dark and desperate, wildly funny forty minute piece ends Act 1. A well to do psychiatrist has just discovered that her best friend is having an affair with her husband in Woody Allen's wildly comic second act, CENTRAL PARK WEST. She has invited the friend over for a confrontation after getting thoroughly soused. Meanwhile, the husband is about to run off with a college student. CENTRAL PARK WEST provides an hour of constant hilarity. "A wealth of laughter."-N. Y. Newsday "Lighter than air, an elegant diversion."-N. Y. Times