cover photo by Julia Fulton
this collection contains three full-length plays:
A DARING BRIDE
THE LADIES OF FISHER COVE
SAINTE SIMONE
"Allan Havis is one of the most
gifted of our younger playwrights. His chief strength seems to me to be the way he
shortens the distance between the private and the political. Quiet, intelligent, lyrical,
his plays are that rarest of presences in the American theater: dramas that leave you with
something to think about."
Richard Gilman
A DARING BRIDE:
A DARING BRIDE celebrates an incongruous sexual relationship between an Austrian diplomat and a sophisticated escort courting U N clientele in New York. Wry echoes of Kurt Waldheim and the current Oval Office scandals reverberate loudly from the opening scenes.
1 M, 2 F
THE LADIES OF FISHER COVE:
"With LADIES, acclaimed playwright Allan Havis has
given us a post-AIDS WITCHES OF EASTWICK what with three attractive, psychically bonded
sisters all seduced by the same half-man, half-devil. This time, though, there's little
room for whimsy. These women and every other female in the small Maine town have been
quarantined because all the men have died of a horrible plague. In fact, the strange,
deformed, smooth-talking visitor is the first male to survive more than a few hours of
contact with these women. Havis' moody drama always keeps us guessing, its poetic moments
surprisingly potent and its intentions never so obscure as to lost the audience."
On Stage
"Allan Havis has fashioned a rollicking myth that
might function as a rebuke for an errant feminism or as a wish fulfillment fantasy for a
third sex. Whatever its purpose, it was great fun, marked by mystery [and] wit."
J Rudolf Abate, Stages
originally produced by Christopher Roberts/Cheshire Company at the Ohio Theater, New York
1 M, 4 F
SAINTE SIMONE:
Spinning a textured, twin narrative on the theme of possession, SAINTE SIMONE tracks a young New York woman of our era along side the cascading coincidences of Simone Weil from Europe's 1930s. Both women attract the disquieting advances of a virile, undead Hitler and the errant love from a Harlem man who has strayed from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.
4 M, 3 F
PLAYS BY ALLAN HAVIS, VOLUME TWO
I S B N 0-88145-139-8: $16.95