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END OF THE ROPE - A Play in 4 Acts

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When you rope up you put your life into the hands of your climbing partner. But what if you've just ruined his?

Craig, Whit and Milt are friends, have been for a long time. They've grown up together, but the friendship forged as young boys is getting tested as they grow into men - men with different perspectives and priorities.

Their love of climbing has kept them together. On the rock faces of the mountains they are as they once were - a team, a unit, loyal and committed. The ambiguous world of careers and relationships is left below - or is it?

Since he can remember, Craig's loved Jennifer. He can't wait for them to get married, he's even bought a house.

When she breaks it off saying she's not ready, he's hurt and confused, but if Jennifer needs more time he can wait. He's been waiting all his life for her so what's a few more months?

Then she starts dating Whit.

Whit doesn't do relationships, but that doesn't seem to matter to the many women who compete for his attention. He doesn't understand what Jennifer represents to Craig, can't even begin to imagine it, but just the same he'd never hit on a friend's woman.
But, hey, it's a free country, right, and Jennifer's warm and willing, and after all it's been about, what, two months since she dumped Craig. He needs to get over it.

Milt sees the potential for trouble, but he has his own problems. His new wife, Samantha, thinks her husband's band of brothers are a bad influence. She wants him to grow up and give up these juvenile escapades.

It's a constant battle for Milt to maintain some independence and now the tension between his friends makes him wonder if it's worth it.

This is not the way to start a challenging climb - filled with anxiety, anger and resentment. On a sheer granite wall distractions kill you. You need singularity of purpose, a clear mind and a focus that's finite.

Now Whit's goading Craig to try a new route, Craig's worried that the weather's breaking down, and Milt's frantic because his cellphone's broken and he can't report in to Samantha.

Everyone's just about at the end of their rope, but only figuratively - for now.

"Twenty pages of truth."
"...couldn't review it as I usually do, immediately ... The play was still resonating in my mind. I was still discovering nuances to plot and characters, savouring relationships. The End of the Rope is a powerful piece of writing."
"Readers with a paper copy... profit from all the attention invested in stage instructions. It makes the play come alive in our minds."
- FIVE STARS, C. Widmann, Goodreads review

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HARRY’S TRUTH – A Play in One Act

Are there cosmic truths?

June 18-22 Download your copy now at

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Are there cosmic truths? Harry thinks there are and he's discovered one which will make life easier, simpler and more fulfilling. He wants to share this epiphany with those he loves but not only do they not want to share in his enlightenment, they feel threatened by what he has to tell them.Much is at stake – careers, lifestyles, power – if Harry pursues his truth.

For Deidre, his wife - all her life she has worked to overcome the stigma of being the daughter of the neighbourhood drunk. She has struggled for social status, “respectability” and to have “nice things”. Now she has attained it and more is within her grasp. She can’t allow Harry to jeopardize it.

For Philip, his partner - his aggressive manner, lack of sophistication, short stature, balding pate, pudgy midriff and loud ties have made him a subject of derision among his colleagues, but landing this multi-million dollar client will change all that. Soon Harry’s condescension and the humiliation of his marriage will be overshadowed by the respect and power corporate success will bring. The “truth” is he only needs Harry to keep it together until the deal closes. After that, he can goddam well wander off into the wilderness if that’s what he wants.

For Joan, Phil's wife - the bitterness of her affair with Harry twenty years ago in college has shaped and defined her life, But not Harry’s. No, he just up and left her in search for “the truth” and she had to survive as best she could on her own. Now he’s about to do it again – turn her world upside down with the same selfish, irresponsible behavior. Maybe she can’t stop this middle-age flight of fancy but she isn’t going to let him influence her teenage daughter with all his nonsense about “following your heart”.

For Alexus, Joan’s daughter - her parent’s marriage is empty of love but filled with material possessions. How could “Uncle Harry’s” truth make anything worse? Her mom’s pushing her to go to college but that’s just more “preparing for life”. Uncle Harry’s truth sounds far more appealing. Better to fill your life with experiences than just more “stuff”.

"A quick and good read, and a play five actors can produce...One can read Harry's Truth as it were a short story."

"New money, fashionable clothes, a lot of work for Harry and Philip, the two business partners who started off selling doves to Chinese restaurants and slowly made it big. Now they're past forty and Harry has had enough. Enough, that's the keyword here: He wants to downsize the firm and his expenses because he knows that more money can't make him happier anymore. "...the interactions between the five of them let us have a glance at everybody's past. A lot gets revealed in every scene. I like the detailed stage instructions and the symbolism in the last scene. One can read Harry's Truth as it were a short story. I'd really like to see this play on stage someday..."

FIVE STARS, C. Widmann, Goodreads review

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Foster goes off to the new year of college with a focus in mind - Hockey.  Then his brother adds a twist.  He asks him to keep an eye on his best friend who will be attending the same institution of learning.  The same best friend who is close to his brother, whom he has avoided since he felt the pull of attraction.

Zach is not a people person.  He is however, a Foster person.  He has always wanted Foster. He gets single minded in his studies and can be a bit different.  Foster never makes him feel that way. 

This couple had me rooting for them from the very first chapter.  I enjoyed this read.  I found the characters very real and fascinating.  There was humor and heat, and a real connection.  I could not put this book down.  I give this a 5/5 Kitty's Paws UP!

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The Persians and Other Plays is a collection of plays and commentary about plays by Aeschylus (525/4 - 456 BCE). 

The book contains the following:

The Persians

Seven Against Thebes

The Suppliants

Prometheus Bound

Each play comes with a thorough introduction of the play itself as well as details of what we (think we) know about the history of the play's performances and how they may have influenced other Classical plays and playwrights, references in which inevitably have been used to date the plays themselves. 

This is followed by more commentary and notes on the plays and on related plays that may have existed.  

For example, it appears from the commentary that it has long been unclear in what order Aeschylus wrote the plays:

The production of 472 is the only one by Aeschylus that is known to have consisted of four plays whose stories were, on the face of it, unrelated - indeed, they were not even placed in proper chronological order. The first play was Phineus, about an episode in the saga of the Argonauts. This was followed by The Persians; then, jumping back to the heroic age, by Glaucus of Potniae, about a man who subjected his horses to an unnatural training regime and was devoured by them after crashing in a chariot race; and then by a satyr play about Prometheus ("Prometheus the Fire-Bearer" or "Fire-Kindler"). Repeated efforts have been made to find method behind the apparent madness of this arrangement, so far with little success.

As entertaining as it is to imagine someone making a simple mistake when noting down the running order of the plays in Ancient times, this must be quite frustrating to Classicists.

It took me way longer to read this collection than I thought but I don't regret a single minute of it. 

While some of the concepts discussed and displayed in the plays were not instantly recognisable to a 20th- and 21th-century reader, the context an explanatory notes provided by Alan H. Sommerstein was so excellent that each of the plays not only made sense but actually made it a joy to discover how Aeschylus' may have raised smiles in some and incensed others of his audiences. 

And some ideas and points of view in his plays - especially the description of the Persian's defeat (in The Persians), the exposition that women may refuse marriage (in The Suppliants), and some of the rather humanist views of Prometheus (in Prometheus Bound) - we quite different from what I had expected. Or rather, different from what I have come to expect from the Ancient Greek world when coming to Ancient Greek drama after reading the Greek myths (in whichever version: Apollodorus, Ovid, or any of the modern retellings). But even coming to Aeschylus with some familiarity of other playwrights such a Sophocles, I found Aeschylus surprisingly empathetic, satirical, and ... oddly modern.

CHORUS: You didn't, I suppose, go even further than that? 

PROMETHEUS: I did: I stopped mortals foreseeing their death.

CHORUS: What remedy did you find for that affliction?

PROMETHEUS: I planted blind hopes within them.

CHORUS: That was a great benefit you gave to mortals.

PROMETHEUS: And what is more, I gave them fire.

It is easy to think of Prometheus only as the rebel who went against Zeus' wishes and brought fire to mankind, but there is more to him. I loved how Aeschylus focuses not on the fire-bringing alone but also on his shared humanity, and on the prophecy that Prometheus knew of that would lead to the decline of Zeus' power, the proverbial Götterdämmerung of the Ancient Greek gods.

PROMETHEUS:

It's very easy for someone who is standing safely out of trouble to advise and rebuke the one who is in trouble.

I knew that, all along. I did the wrong thing intentionally, intentionally, I won't deny it: by helping mortals, I brought trouble on myself. But I certainly never thought I would have a punishment anything like this, left to wither on these elevated rocks, my lot cast on this deserted, neighbourless crag. Now stop lamenting my present woes: descend to the ground and hear of my future fortunes, so that you will know it all to the end. Do as I ask, do as I ask. Share the suffering of one who is in trouble now: misery, you know, wanders everywhere, and alights on different persons at different times.