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Toys in the Attic

Toys in the Attic
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Author: Lillian Hellman
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 87
Pub. Date: 1998
Edition: Acting
ISBN-10: ‎ 0822211637
ISBN-13: 9780822211631
Cast Size: 4 female, 4 male, 3 extras

About the Play:

Toys in the Attic has long been a favourite of acting teachers for female/female scenes.

Toys in the Attic is a full-length drama by Lillian Hellman. A deeply revealing, intimate drama about a dysfunctional family, through the possessive, peculiar love-hate relationship between two unmarried sisters, Carrie and Anna, and their younger brother Julian. Toys in the Attic probes into the intrigue and deceit which lie beneath the outwardly calm surface of a southern town.

Toys in the Attic is centered around two spinster sisters, Carrie and Anna Berniers, living together in New Orleans. They dream of touring Europe one day – but their plans are continually thwarted by the need to bail their ne'er-do-well younger brother Julian out of a series of misfortunes. They are surprised then, and even oddly distressed, when Julian suddenly turns up with his childlike bride Lily and a large sum of money, enough to pay off the mortgage on the family homestead and to send his sisters on their grand tour. Growing up comfortable but still relatively poor, the family starts to become unsettled by the unexpected burst of wealth and a plethora of sordid secrets that are unearthed. The brother's good fortune stems from a plot devised by the spiteful wife of a local millionaire, and when the brother's wife discovers this, and jealously tells all, the scheme is shattered and the brother savagely beaten. In the end the sisters regain the dependence of their brother – but at a price far greater than they would have willingly chosen to pay.

Toys in the Attic premiered in 1960 at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway, enjoying an absolute sold out run for more than a year and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and been performed in regional and college theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 4 male, 3 extras

What people say:

"Brilliant. Lillian Hellman's most hellishly hypnotic drama…a shock you can't shed." — New York World-Telegram & Sun

"Head and shoulders above the level of the season." — New York Times

About the Playwright:

Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) is considered one of the most acclaimed American dramatists of the first half of the twentieth century. In an era that largely favoured lighthearted romantic plays and drawing-room comedies, her works explored the human capacity for malice, the allure of power and money, and the dichotomy between individual interests and social conscience. She was also the first woman to be admitted into the previously all-male club of American "dramatic literature", primarily on the basis of two enormously successful plays from the 1930s: The Children's Hour and The Little Foxes.