Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Drama & Plays

Secular humanism has triumphed. Everything the late Victorians and Edwardians believed would bring human happiness has been achieved: Technology has made it so no one needs to work for a living, the social sciences ensure a smooth-running social order, and, in the name of tolerance, religious beliefs have been uprooted and eliminated except for a single holdout - a largely discredited and rapidly shrinking Catholic Church. Yet people are unhappy.

As a boy, Dick Falkner ran away from abject poverty and an abusive alcoholic father. Sixteen years later, he finds himself hungry of body and empty of spirit in a Midwestern town. Although he finds no help in this so-called Christian town, he is eventually taken in by George Udell, a local publisher and kindhearted man. Through hard work and Christian morals, this man, who becomes known as "that printer of Udell’s", rises above his past to a new, inspiring life with God.

The one thing that could be expected to disturb the peace of life at Blandings is the incursion of imposters. Blandings has imposters like other houses have mice. On this occasion there are two of them--both intent on a dangerous enterprise.

Originally published in 1778, Evelina is Frances Burney's first and most beloved novel. It was a landmark in the development of the novel of manners and went on to influence such enduringly popular authors as Jane Austen. By turns hilarious and grim, witty and lyrical, the story follows young Evelina as she leaves the seclusion of her country home and enters into late eighteenth-century London society - both its pleasures and its dangers. Life in eighteenth-century England is vividly rendered as Evelina is educated in the ways of the world and, eventually, love.

Lord Dawlish is a well-liked and generous man. But he is poor, the poorest of his rank in the British Isles. His fiancée will not marry a man of modest means, so Dawlish decides to make his fortune any way possible. Romance, golf, the theater, and mad monkeys are all part of this merry mix-up that has more witty remarks and sharp retorts in one minute than most people could dream up in a lifetime.

With Saint Joan, George Bernard Shaw reached the height of his fame as a dramatist. Fascinated by the story of Joan of Arc but unhappy with "the whitewash which disfigures her beyond recognition," he presents a realistic Joan at war not just with British invaders but with realpolitik. This is a masterpiece of the theater of ideas, presented in the most eloquent, vital, human, and moving terms.

In The Oresteia, Aeschylus dramatizes the myth of the curse on the royal house of Argos. The action begins when King Agamemnon returns victorious from the Trojan War, only to be treacherously slain by his own wife. It ends with the trial of their son, Orestes, who slew his mother to avenge her treachery - a trial with the goddess Athena as judge, the god Apollo as defense attorney, and, as prosecutors, relentless avenging demons called The Furies.

The brilliant conclusion to the Palliser novels, this touching story follows the elderly Duke of Omnium, the former prime minister of England, as he struggles to overcome his grief at the loss of his beloved wife, Lady Glencora. To complicate matters, he must also deal with the willfulness of his three adult children as he tries to guide and support them - his plans for them are quite different from their own. While his two sons, sent down from university in disgrace, rack up gambling debts, the duke’s only daughter yearns to marry the poor son of a country squire.

In The Tempest, long considered one of Shakespeare’s most lyrical plays, Prospero, a sorcerer, and his daughter, Miranda, have been stranded on an enchanted island for 12 years. When a shipwreck—caused by the eponymous tempest—brings enemies to the island, the stage is set for comedy, romance, and reconciliation.

In Shakespeare’s most intimate tragedy, director Bill Rauch explores racism, religious bias, xenophobia, and the more disturbing aspects of relationships in the context of our society’s ongoing struggle with polarizing differences. Consumed by their bigotry, those who praised the Moorish general Othello’s military successes now reject his marriage to Desdemona. The newlyweds are determined to overcome all obstacles, but Othello’s assignment in an exotic new location draws them into the web of his lieutenant Iago, whose resentment and demons know no bounds.

King Lear is ready to turn his realm over to his three daughters. His plan is simple: Give the biggest piece to the daughter who loves him most. But honeyed words and hubris blind Lear to the true motives of those around him, plunging king and kingdom into a hell of treachery, madness, and unspeakable acts - with consequences that reveal the worst and best in human nature.

Evan MacIan is a tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed Scottish Highlander and a devout Roman Catholic. James Turnbull is a short, red-haired, gray-eyed Lowlander and a devout but naïve atheist. The two meet when MacIan smashes the window of the street office where Turnbull publishes an atheist journal. This act of rage occurs when MacIan sees posted on the shop's window a sheet that blasphemes the Virgin Mary, presumably implying she was an adulteress who gave birth to an illegitimate Jesus.

The Man of Property, the first novel in Galsworthy's epic social satire The Forsyte Saga, introduces us to Soames Forsyte, a solicitor and prominent man of his important family. Accustomed to getting whatever he wants, he sets his sights with absolute determination on the beautiful Irene in spite of her pennilessness and her indifference to him.

Twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding knows Green Town, Illinois, is as vast and deep as the whole world that lies beyond. It is a pair of new tennis shoes, the first harvest of dandelions for Grandfather's renowned intoxicant, the distant clang of the trolley bell on a hazy afternoon. But as young Douglas is about to discover, summer can be more than the repetition of established rituals that hold time at bay.

Prepare yourself for the shocking, the strange, and the terrifying in Ambrose Bierce’s 1893 story collection Can Such Things Be? One of the greatest masters of horror brings you 25 tales of the supernatural and the unexplained. Whether in stories of ghosts sending desperate warnings to their human counterparts, psychics attempting to bridge unknown dimensions, howling werewolves, or a robot who takes on a life of his own, Bierce plumbs the depths of fear and fascination.

Living in El Paso, just a mile from the Rio Grande, Octavio is a skinny brown kid on the border, riding his bike out into the desert, growing up among those who live there and those passing through on their way north. Rituals of childhood and rites of passage are remembered as singular, dramatic events, moments of trauma and transformation with life-changing reverberations.

Published together for the first time are three of Ayn Rand's compelling stage plays. The courtroom drama Night of January 16th, a 1935 Broadway success famous for leaving the verdict to the audience, is presented here in its definitive, final revised text - a superb dramatization of Rand's vision of human strengths and weaknesses.

His beloved wife having died in childbirth, Phineas Finn finds Irish society and his job as a poorhouse inspector dull and unsatisfying, particularly after the excitement of his former career as a Member of Parliament. Back in England, the Whigs are determined to overturn the Tory majority in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Since Finn had once been considered the most promising of the younger set, he is encouraged to run for office again. Bribery, romance, and murder are peppered throughout this Trollope novel.

At fourteen, the unworldly, idealistic Jack Easy leaves the luxury of his father's estate in England and sails into a world of action and adventure aboard the sloop of war HMS Harpy. At first, Jack finds it hard to stomach the discipline of naval life and, with his mischievous sense of humor, is always getting himself into scrapes. But soon he is bravely taming a band of mutinous seamen, outwitting a wily and murderous Sicilian nobleman, and breathing the smell of gunpowder and raw steel as the Harpy chases Spanish ships on the Mediterranean.

In this fully dramatized adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Michael Dick (Ebenezer Scrooge) and cast take you on an incredible journey into the supernatural as a miserly man comes to realize the true spirit of Christmas. Featuring virtuoso performances from the entire cast, riveting sound effects, and original music, Voices in the Wind Audio Theatre's production of A Christmas Carol is an adventure in sound and imagination.