About the Play:

Romantic Comedy has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.

Romantic Comedy is a full-length comedy by Bernard Slade. A self-centred and witty playwright meets the love of his life – on the day of his wedding to someone else! Although the marriage proceeds, the next decade is a riot of laughter as he struggles to reconcile his relationships with the two women in his life. Romantic Comedy is a frothy romantic comedy set around the lives of two writers of romantic comedies.

Romantic Comedy is the story of arrogant, self-absorbed and sharp tongued Jason Carmichael, a successful co-author of Broadway romantic comedies, who is facing two momentous events: he is about to marry socialite Allison St. James, and he has been abandoned by his longtime writing partner who has just announced that he's moving to Hollywood to write screenplays. Enter aspiring playwright P. J. Craddock, a longtime Carmichael fan who has submitted a script for his consideration. Surprise! P. J. turns out to be Phoebe, an attractive young woman who has been teaching English in Vermont. Quicker than a flash, Jason acquires a talented and adoring collaborator in the shy Phoebe. The two soon become successful writing partners, whose timing – it turns out – is perfect on stage, but amusingly out of whack in their love life. Jason and Phoebe produce hit after hit for 10 years, until inevitably, Jason's world falls apart. His wife divorces him and goes into politics. And Phoebe, with whom he is in love but doesn't realize it, marries a breezy journalist and moves to Paris. Totally lost without Phoebe at his side, Jason goes into a professional, financial and physical decline. Even his brassy agent and a sultry actress can't snap him out of it. Jason's world is dark, indeed until a newly chic Phoebe unexpectedly returns, solo and successful and the story roars to its conclusion.

Romantic Comedy premiered in 1979 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and ran a year on Broadway in New York City. 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.

Cast: 4 female, 2 male

What people say:

"A darling of a play...zesty entertainment of cool wit and warm sentiment." — New York Post

"An utterly disarming, lighthearted confection about love, friendship and theatrical trauma." — Women's Wear Daily

About the Playwright:

Bernard Slade Newbound (1930-2019), known professionally as Bernard Slade, was a Canadian playwright and long-time Hollywood TV-sitcom writer. He began his career as an actor performing in over 200 plays on stage, radio and television in regional theatres around Toronto and on camera for the CBC. He moved to Hollywood in the mid-1960s, and was soon writing episodes of such classics-to-be as Bewitched. Credited as creator, writer, story editor and producer of eight series, including The Flying Nun and The Partridge Family, he was considered one of the true heavyweights in Hollywood. By the mid-1970s, he turned his comedic genius to the stage writing more than a dozen plays, including three Broadway hit shows like his phenomenally successful Same Time Next Year, Tribute and Romantic Comedy, which were all turned into Hollywood features.