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All Over Town
All Over Town
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Author: Murray Schisgal Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 83 Pub. Date: 1975 Edition: Acting ISBN-10: 0822200171 ISBN-13: 9780822200178 Cast Size: 6 female, 12 male
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About
the Play:
All Over Town is a full-length comedy by Murray
Schisgal. This absurdist comedy concerns a psychiatrist going
crazy. Amidst his chaotic household he tries to restore sanity to
himself and his world by curing an oversexed ladies man who has
fathered nine welfare-supported children with five different mothers.
The cure will put you in stitches!
All Over Town is an hilarious modern farce about mistaken
identity that makes outrageous fun of present day society and its
assorted ills. Increasingly disenchanted by the myriad disasters in
the world around him, Dr. Lionel Morris, an eminent Manhattan
psychiatrist, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and toying with
turning to a life of Buddhist contemplation. However, egged on by his
intense daughter and her social worker fiancé, he is drawn into
dealing with a very special welfare department case: a young man
named Louie who has fathered nine children by five different women,
all out of wedlock and all now on public assistance. The
absent‐minded doctor's plan is to have Louie move into the family's
luxurious Fifth Avenue duplex while he analyzes him, but, as luck
would have it, a young black deliveryman, Lewis, strays by and is
mistaken for Louie – a most outrageous "trading places"
of characters with which the clever opportunist readily goes along.
When the real Louie shows up Lewis conceals him in a guest room and
gives him reams of the doctor's questionnaires to fill out, while he
pursues his own scheme of hustling the good doctor into putting up
the money for a tap-dancing school in Harlem. Adding to the general
confusion are, among others, the doctor's scatterbrained wife, who is
carrying on an affair with a military man friend of the family; a
lascivious Swedish maid who can't keep her hands off Lewis; a bogus
"French" cook and maid; a near-sighted burglar; and the
military man's opera-loving wife – all of whom make their
individual, and very funny contributions both to the increasing
merriment of the play and to the trenchant, underlying observations
which liven and illuminate it.
All Over Town premiered in 1974 at the Booth Theatre in New
York City with Dustin Hoffman making his debut as a director on
Broadway. The play ran the full season, was heralded as one of the
ten best plays of the year, and earned a Drama Desk nomination for
Outstanding New Play.
Cast: 6 female, 12 male
What people say:
"…a world of sane, zany
comedy to cheer us up when we need it most." — New
York Post
"…a zany, Feydeau‐style
farce ... All Over Town is the funniest (play)
Mr. Schisgal has given us since LUV." — New York
Times
"…a gloriously tuned
merry-go-round of laughter." — Village Voice
About the Playwright:
Murray Schisgal (1926-2020) was a Tony and Academy Award
nominated American playwright and screenwriter best known for
co-writing the screenplay for Tootsie. He attended Brooklyn
Law School from which he graduated in 1953. He practised law until
1956 and then taught English for three years. He had an extensive
career spanning writing plays, novels, anthologies, science fiction,
and play producing. He has a star on the Playwrights Sidewalk for
Off-Broadway Achievement in New York. He has also produced several
films and television programs.
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