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The Seven Deadly Sins

The Seven Deadly Sins
Your Price: $17.95 CDN
Author: Thornton Wilder
Publisher: Samuel French
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 134
Pub. Date: 2012
ISBN-10: 0573700044
ISBN-13: 9780573700040
Cast Size: 3 to 4 actors

About the Play:

The Seven Deadly Sins is a collection of one-act plays by Thornton Wilder. The play cycle in this volume is made up of seven one-act plays, each exploring one of the cardinal sins in Christian teachings. The Seven Deadly Sins depicts the complexity and consequences of human frailty.

The plays in The Seven Deadly Sins vary widely in content and tone, ranging from realism to postmodernism and feature such characters as classical Greek gods, St. Francis of Assisi, and even a duo of con artists.

The Drunken Sisters (represents Gluttony): Apollo challenges The Three Fates to a life-and-death battle of wits, but despite their taste for liquor, the sisters win the wager. Recommended for scene study. (Cast: 3 female, 1 male)

Bernice (represents Pride): A convicted financial felon returns from prison and finds counsel in the guise of a murderer-turned-housekeeper. Set in Chicago in 1911. George Walbeck, a thoroughly hated man who cheated hundreds of people out of their money, suddenly returns home from Joliet prison when his sentence is reduced after serving eight years. He is greeted by two people: his lawyer Mr Mallison, who informs him that Walbeck's wife has fled to California, taking his daughter with her, and a new maid, Bernice, the self-proclaimed "best cook in Chicago," recently hired by Mallison to keep the home going. Bernice, it turns out, served time for murder, and the advice she gives Walbeck on how to deal with his future allows Wilder to explore the nature of pride. Decisions have to be made quickly when Walbeck learns that his daughter is still in Chicago and coming by to see him at any moment. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

The Wreck on the 5:25 (represents Sloth): Herb Hawkins, a little guy accountant, breaks the habits of a lifetime by phoning his wife and telling her he'll take a later train back home from the city. This news sets his wife and daughter on edge, a condition heightened when a neighbor informs them that an unidentified man is hiding in the shadows of their front lawn, staring in at them. Who could it be? The police arrive to arrest the supposed prowler, only to find Herb, quietly observing his family through the windows of his own home. It seems that earlier that day, he received word of a surprise inheritance, left to him by a kind, lonely elderly woman. This sudden gift of a large sum of money prompts Herb to question the meaning and purpose of his own hum-drum family life. He returns to his place in the family with touches of humor, irony and despair. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

A Ringing of Doorbells (represents Envy) A ringing of doorbells. A mother-daughter team of con-artists target a wheelchair-bound widow who, wise to their game, concocts a cunning scheme of her own. (Cast: 4 female)

In Shakespeare and the Bible (represents Wrath) A former madam confronts her former client and soon-to-be nephew-in-law, knowing the match may be threatened by his dangerous temper. (Cast: 3 female, 1 male)

Someone From Assisi (represents Lust) A friar with a lurid past seeks forgiveness from his former lover. (Cast: 3 female, 1 male)

Cement Hands (represents Avarice) A lively scheme to expose the greedy behaviour of her fiancée holds a young woman's future – and afternoon tea – in the balance.(Cast: 1 female, 3 male)

What people say:

"Twinkly yet gently unsettling. Wilder's sage, perpetually intrigued view is wry and cockeyed." — The Washington Post

"Men may brood disruptively in Wilder's universe but there are also always women whose profound, commonsensical spirit of acceptance keeps the human race on its track." — The New York Times

About the Playwright:

Thornton Wilder (1897 to 1975) was an acclaimed American novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue to be read and produced around the world. He also enjoyed enormous success with many other forms of the written and spoken word, among them teaching, acting, the opera, and cinema. A three time Pulitzer Prize winner and the only winner for both fiction and drama, his many honours include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Book Committee's Medal for Literature.

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