George F. Walker

Includes "Beautiful City," "Love and Anger" and "Tough."

The East End Plays

Toronto Free Theatre

George F. Walker Script Collection

Filthy Rich

Part two

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

It is 1859, and under the leadership of progressive Czar Alexander II, Russia is rushing pell-mell from the 11th century to the 19th. Serfdom has been abolished, and something approaching parliamentary democracy has been installed. Arkady, a fresh college graduate, proceeds with his friend Bazarov, a charismatic nihilist, to the estate of his father, a down-at-the-heels gentleman farmer. It appears as though dad and the housekeeper have just had a child, and dad is deeply in love - although their difference in class makes marriage impossible to contemplate. Arkady, enraptured with the new thought he learned at college, is eager to impact the New Russia, though he has no idea how. Bazarov, who has burnished his fashionable cynicism to a near-blinding sheen, has resolved to say or think nothing which is not 'useful.' It is surprising, still, how talkative he is. As we learn only at the end of the first Act, Arkady's uncle Pavel, a Europeanized dandy, has begun to stalk Bazarov's mistress, Anna - because he was in love with Anna's late mother.

Based on Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

Nothing Sacred

The Power Plays

A Play

Escape from Happiness takes place in the kitchen of an old, slightly rundown house in a not-so-classy section of a large city. It's home to Nora, a good-natured, slow-moving, fairly batty middle-aged woman; her daughter Gail, who is tough, sensible, and a little high-strung; Gail's husband Junior, an affable but rather dim fellow. Also living here is Tom, who is dying of some unspecified disease; Tom is, according to Nora, a stranger who looks exactly like (and coincidentally has the same name as) her husband, who deserted the family ten years ago after trying to burn down the house.

Escape from Happiness

Six plays that take place in the same hotel room, including "Problem Child," "Risk Everything," "The End of Civilization" and others.

George F. Walker

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