#plays polls

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Plays

Final

The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde) VS Angels in America (Tony Kushner)

The Importance of Being Earnest

Angels in America

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Voting ended onJan 23, 2025

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Plays

Round 1

A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen) VS Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand)

A Doll's House

Cyrano de Bergerac

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Voting ended onDec 11, 2024

A Doll's House :

Cyrano de Bergerac :

Oh my how do I explain ? I guess I could say this play has panache

Well you have an English translation here to start with - as far as I've seen it's okay-

It's a -by the looks of it, heavily- fictionalised version of the life of the real Cyrano

Cyrano's a great duelist and a good poet but he's very self-conscious about his nose (even if ladies reportedly don't mind).

For starters, Cyrano isn't older than Roxane and Christian – he's supposed to be about 21 at the start of the play and not middle aged as in many adaptations. He's in love with his cousin Roxane, who's in love with Christian, another man in Cyrano's company. Roxane is an intellectual and Christian isn't good with words, so he seduces her with the help of Cyrano, who writes his letters to Roxane – and prompts Christian discreetly when he talks to her

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Plays

Semifinals

Angels in America (Tony Kushner) VS Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand)

Angels in America

Cyrano de Bergerac

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Voting ended onJan 15, 2025

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Plays

Round 1

The Bacchae (Euripides) VS Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

The Bacchae

Pygmalion

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Voting ended onDec 11, 2024

The Bacchae :

It's one of Euripides' latest plays (he died before it premiered) and pemiered in 405 BC ! Dionysos female followers get to tear a guy to pieces manually, you get a great catharsis when you're mad at someone, those rich fuckers in their elitist college get to experience murder and everyone's good !

Pygmalion :

This is very specifically for the play (especially the 1916 print edition with the post script essay) and not the musical adaptation of My Fair Lady which changes the ending.

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Plays

Round 1

The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde) VS No Exit (Jean-Paul Sartre)

The Importance of Being Earnest

No Exit

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Voting ended onDec 11, 2024

The Importance of Being Earnest :

Less known than his novel, Wilde's plays tend to be good nonetheless. This one is fun and witty. Text here

No Exit :

Very French of Sartre, tbh. Three strangers are figuring out they're locked into the afterlife together forever. They don't like it.

Poll runner's note : If I see one of you misusing the "hell is other people" quote again I'll bite you. It doesn't mean that other people are hellish (that would be a rather narrow view for a philosopher), it means that we create our personal hells because of what we interpret as other people's impressions of us. We act accordingly to social norms, to what we think society thinks of us and not as we desire. We oppress ourselves, we feel stuff like shame because we are self-conscious and we project what we think on others

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Plays

Cyrano de Bergerac (Edmond Rostand) VS Arcadia (Tom Stoppard)

Cyrano de Bergerac

Arcadia

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Voting ended onDec 22, 2024

Cyrano de Bergerac :

Cyrano's a young nobleman with self image issues because of his nose, a gift for duels and poetry

Cyrano's in love with his cousin Roxane, who's in love with Christian, another man in Cyrano's company. Roxane is an intellectual and Christian isn't good with words, so he seduces her with the help of Cyrano, who writes his letters to Roxane. The three of them find themselves entangled in quite a lot of drama. Comedy and misery ensues. One of the best dramatic love triangles you can find.

Arcadia :

I literally cannot put this play into words. entropy as a literal force. 2 time periods sharing a stage and intertwining until they literally complete each other's conversations and chaos claims it all.

THOMASINA: Oh, Septimus! -- can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides -- thousands of poems -- Aristotle's own library!....How can we sleep for grief?

SEPTIMUS: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Plays

Round 1

True West (Sam Shepard) VS Dom Juan (Molière)

True West

Dom Juan

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Voting ended onDec 11, 2024

True West :

A messed up play about a pair of brothers. The younger brother is a screenwriter and is house sitting for their mother somewhere in the California desert suburbs. The unscrupulous thieving brother shows up at their mother's house and all hell breaks loose.

There are productions on youtube but I haven't watched them. Here's a video montage from Roundabout Theatre's 2019 production.

Dom Juan :

My favorite play by Molière

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Plays

Round 1

Œdipus Rex (Sophocles) VS Angels in America (Tony Kushner)

Œdipus Rex

Angels in America

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Voting ended onDec 11, 2024

More underneath

Œdipus Rex (Sophocles, W.B. Yeats translation specifically) :

I never got why the story of oedipus was so horrifying until I read and saw this.

link to the full play!

Tiresias. This day shall you know your birth; and it will ruin you.

.

Chorus. A man becomes a tyrant out of insolence,

He climbs and climbs, until all people call him great,

He seems upon the summit, and God flings him thence;

Yet an ambitious man may lift up a whole State,

And in his death be blessed, in his life for­tunate.

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Second Messenger. He cries for someone to unbar the gates and to show to all the men of Thebes his father’s murderer, his mother’s—the unholy word must not be spoken. It is his purpose to cast himself out of the land ​that he may not bring all this house under his curse. But he has not the strength to do it. He must be supported and led away. The curtain is parting; you are going to look upon a sight which even those who shudder must pity.

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Oedipus. My children, there is much advice that I would give you were you but old enough to under­stand, but all I can do now is bid you pray that you may live wherever you are let live, and that your life be happier than your father’s... Banish me from this country. I know that nothing can destroy me, for I wait some incredible fate; yet cast me upon Cythaeron, chosen by my father and my mother for my tomb.

Creon. Only the gods can say yes or no to that.

Oedipus. No, for I am hateful to the gods.

Creon. If that be so you will get your wish the quicker. They will banish that which they hate.

.

Chrous. Make way for Oedipus. All people said

‘That is a fortunate man’;

And now what storms are beating on his head?

Call no man fortunate that is not dead.

The dead are free from pain.

Angels in America :

Here’s a trailer for the Andrew Garfield version:

A really excellent part of the play:

And also one of the most iconic bits of this production: