Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty.

        We accept PayPal, Visa & Mastercard
        through our secure checkout.

 

Mastercard                              

 

The Kramer

The Kramer
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Author: Mark Medoff
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 69
Pub. Date: 1976
ISBN-10: 082220620X
ISBN-13: 9780822206200
Cast Size: 3 female, 4 male

About the Play:

The Kramer is a full-length drama by Mark Medoff. A macabre portrait of a malevolent young man named Bart Kramer who bullies his way into a job at a Washington temp agency and systematically destroys the life of a good-hearted co-worker. The Kramer explores the destructive effects of blind ambition and selfish power.

The Kramer is about power, ambition, and modern lifestyles. It is set in Washington, and chronicles, often in surrealistic terms, the lightning rise of a cool Machiavelli named Bart Kramer through the ranks of the Washington Institute of Secretarial Sciences. Self-assured and unyielding, Kramer becomes obsessed with improving the lives of his rumpled male secretary, Art, and Judy, one of his more repressed and unsuccessful students. The awesome power of his driving ego is so great that resistance to his will is futile. Coldly and dispassionately Kramer intentionally breaks up Art's and Judy's marriages, then sets about destroying Art's life when Art rebels against his overbearing ways. In the end Kramer is a master power player, but the cruel reality of the damage he has done to others remains to be pondered – as does the haunting, provocative question of "why?" The Kramer is a bitterly revealing account of playwright Mark Medoff's experience in the Washington bureaucracy.

The Kramer premiered in 1973 at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and later that year enjoyed great success during the Mark Taper Forum's "New Theatre for Now" series in Los Angeles. The play has been successfully staged at several professional theatres.

Cast: 3 female, 4 male

What people say:

"The Kramer presents an authentic look at many of today's problems, especially those that plague middle-class working men. ...Kramer is a shrewd man who sees nothing being more important than his advance to higher and greater positions of authority. He will stop at nothing to make himself look good." — American Eagle

"The Kramer is a study of menace, manipulation and violence just under the skin. ...Medoff implies that Kramer's ways (his ultimate goal is a berth at the State Department) are those of Washington or any city drunk on power. ...This is a provocative marriage of an off-beat play and a troupe that has set out to forge a distinctive ensemble style. Isn't that what we are looking for in our 'alternative' theaters?" — Washington Post

About the Playwright:

Mark Medoff (1940-2019) was an American playwright, screenwriter, film and theatre director, actor, and professor. The author of twenty-six plays and eleven movies, his play Children of a Lesser God received both the Tony Award and the Olivier Award, as well as Outer Critics and Drama Desk awards. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the film script of Children of a Lesser God and a Cable ACE award for his HBO premiere movie Apology. He received Obie, Outer Critics and Drama Desk awards for When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?. He was Dramatist in Residence and Professor Emeritus of Theatre Arts at New Mexico State University, where he served on the English and Theatre Arts faculties for twenty-seven years.

Related Products

When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?
Mark Medoff
The Wager
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
The Wager
Mark Medoff
Tommy J & Sally
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Tommy J & Sally
Mark Medoff
The Heart Outright
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
The Heart Outright
Mark Medoff
Children of a Lesser God
Your Price: $19.95 CDN
Children of a Lesser God
Mark Medoff