About the Play:
Beyond Therapy has long been a favourite of acting
teachers for Male Monologues, Female/Male Scenes, and Three-Person Scenes.
Beyond Therapy is a full-length comedy by Christopher
Durang. Psychoanalysis may be beneficial – but is it the
patients or the therapists who need it most? A bisexual lawyer falls
for a female writer for People magazine, and they both
complain about their situation to their outrageously incompetent
therapists. Beyond Therapy is a comical ride which keeps your audience guessing as to
whether it's the therapists or the patients that need the most help.
Beyond Therapy is an outrageous adult comedy that peeks
through the keyhole at psychiatry and sex. Two horrifyingly human
therapists pursue their own needs at the expense of the two
Manhattanites who are seeking stable romantic relationships. Bruce and
Prudence are deeply into therapy. Prudence's macho therapist is
urging her to be more assertive while Bruce's wacky female therapist
wants him to meet women by placing a personal ad for singles in the newspaper. She does not fully
comprehend that Bruce has a male lover who is not pleased by Bruce's
desire to date a woman: Prudence. Bruce doesn't know how to handle
poor nervous Prudence and Prudence doesn't know what to make of her
unpredictable new boyfriend. They do learn to live beyond therapy in
one of
Christopher Durang's most popular and frequently
performed plays.
Beyond Therapy is also one of his sunnier comedies.
Beyond
Therapy premiered in 1981 Off-Broadway at the Phoenix Theatre in
New York. It was a hit, moved successfully to Broadway in 1982 at the
Brooks Atkinson Theatre, The play has become a
favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is
regularly performed in regional, college, and community
theatre productions, despite its language and the confronting issue of
bisexuality.
Cast: 2 female, 4 male
What people say:
"The jokes [about
psychiatrists] have never stopped, but rarely have they been as funny
as they are in Christopher Durang's newest comedy, which opened on
Broadway last week. Screwball and scatty, with as much owed to the
Marx Brothers as to the Viennese brethern, Beyond Therapy
offers the best therapy of all: guaranteed laughter. Durang's
plot, which has more bounces than a pinball game, goes from the
unexpected to the unpredicted… providing two hours of hilarious
surprises." — Time
"Filled with off beat laugh
lines, wry observations on the contemporary urban psyche and
situations that range from farcical to absurd." — Women's
Wear Daily
"Christopher Durang
has the wit, the high, rebellious spirits, and the rage of the
born satirist. He is also one of the funniest and most original
playwrights at work. His Beyond Therapy could be considered his
'Alice in Wonderland' ... in a world run by psychiatrists …
this whirligig of a show…trips merrily along." — New
Yorker
"[Christopher
Durang] is a serious young writer who can't help thinking
comically. Beyond Therapy… [is] zany in a
particularly intelligent way…wickedly funny, terribly slanted, and
essentially true." — Los Angeles Times
About the Playwright:
Christopher Durang (1949-2024) was an award-winning
American playwright and actor. One of the most popular playwrights of
the 20th century, his plays have been produced on and off-Broadway,
in regional theatres around the US and abroad. He received a B.A. in
English from Harvard College and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Yale
School of Drama. He was the co-chair of the Playwriting Program at the
Juilliard School in Manhattan from its inception in 1994 to 2016.
