New Releases by George F. Walker

Orphans for the Czar ruefully exposes the duplicity, revenge, and self-interest at the core of a culture about to go up in flames. Suggested by Gorsky''s novel The Life of a Useless Man and set shortly before Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg, the play focuses on a hapless double agent as he tries to stay on the right side of both the revolutionaries and the czarists. The orphaned fool Vasley leaves his impoverished village to work in his uncle''s bookstore in the city, and becomes engrossed by the women, the intelligentsia, the spies, and all their conflicting ideologies. A comedy of pathos about the fragility of people in unstable times, Orphans for the Czar is also a plea for the possibility of decency.

People Live Here is a collection of three exciting new plays by George F. Walker, Canada''s king of black comedy and a winner of two Governor General''s Literary Awards for Drama. The Chance, Her Inside Life, and Kill the Poor complete the the author''s Parkdale Palace trilogy of plays that deal with issues of social justice and ally heart, humour, and a contemporary reflection on human inequalities.

Canada''s master playwright applies his trademark black humour and incredibly crisp dialogue to the family and multiculturalism. We the Family follows the ripple effects within two culturally and racially divergent families when their children wed. We the Family ''s list of characters reads like an ethnic joke, which, indeed, it is, at least in part: the son of the main characters, David and Lizzie Kaplan, a Jewish-Irish Catholic mixed marriage, marries the daughter of Jenny Lee, a Chinese Canadian widow. There''s also a Russian mistress, a Palestinian lover, and a glamorous, possibly fraudulent Italian psychologist, while offstage Pakistani terrorists kidnap the also-offstage honeymooning couple, then sell them to Sicilian gangsters who sell them to Russian gangsters, one of whom turns out to be the father of the Russian mistress (another family). By the end of the play, Walker has deconstructed the dysfunctional Kaplan and Lee families and family love as well. Through the play''s pervading treachery, with family members and lovers betraying each other in horrifying ways, he satirizes the hypocrisy of expounding family values while behaving in viciously selfish and self-centred ways. These hyphenated Canadians certainly aren''t "nice," and no amount of "sweet-and-sour matzah balls" (which the Kaplan matriarch serves at the multicultural wedding reception) can hide the nasty taste.

Canada’s top playwright sears the page with three new darkly comic plays that denounce political culture, individualism, and the accompanying moral depravity. The title play, Dead Metaphor, examines the collision of a politician’s personal and professional lives, complicated by a son’s return from Afghanistan. In The Ravine, a mayoral candidate learns that his ex-wife is living in a gully nearby and wants to put a hit on him. The Burden of Self-Awareness has money at the centre of a dramatic conflict of values. Each of the three plays is populated by characters trying to navigate the increasingly blurred lines of what’s right and wrong - trying to always stay informed, alert, and ready to act for the common good. Or just to get even.

George F. Walker has been one of Canada''s most prolific and popular playwrights since his career in theatre began in the early 1970s. Since that time, he has written more than twenty plays and has created screenplays for several award-winning Canadian television series, including Due South, The Newsroom, This Is Wonderland, and The Line, as well as for the film Niagara Motel (based on three plays from his Suburban Motel series). Part Kafka, part Lewis Carroll, Walker''s distinctive, gritty, fast-paced comedies satirize the selfishness, greed, and aggression of contemporary urban culture. Awards and honours include appointment as a Member of the Order of Canada (2005); National Theatre School Gascon-Thomas Award (2002); two Governor General''s Literary Awards for Drama (for Criminals in Love and Nothing Sacred); five Dora Mavor Moore Awards; and eight Chalmers Canadian Play Awards. Patrick McDonald is artistic director of Green Thumb Theatre, where he has directed more than seventy-five productions and overseen the commissioning and development of more than fifty new plays for children, teens, and young adults.

Slink through 1920s NYC with master criminals and corrupt bankers. Cast of 13 men and 5 women.

An allegory of our post-9/11 lives, but also a paean to the will that carries us through our darkest hours.

Includes "Beautiful City," "Love and Anger" and "Tough."

Contains Walker''s own selection of his early plays: Beyond Mozambique, Zastrozzi, Theatre of the Film Noir and Nothing Sacred.

"[A] group of plays, all set in the same slightly rundown motel room, each play made to stand on its own."--Table of contents page.

Escape from Happiness takes place in the kitchen of an old, slightly rundown house in a not-so-classy section of a large city. It''s home to Nora, a good-natured, slow-moving, fairly batty middle-aged woman; her daughter Gail, who is tough, sensible, and a little high-strung; Gail''s husband Junior, an affable but rather dim fellow. Also living here is Tom, who is dying of some unspecified disease; Tom is, according to Nora, a stranger who looks exactly like (and coincidentally has the same name as) her husband, who deserted the family ten years ago after trying to burn down the house.