The Playwrights Database
WILLIAM HANLEY (1931 - 2010)
Nationality: USAemail: n/a Website: n/a
Literary Agent: William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, LLC
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below is a list of William Hanley's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Conversations In The Dark Flesh And Blood Mrs Dally Has A Lover No Answer Slow Dance On The Killing Ground Today Is Independance Day Whisper Into My Good EarConversations In The Dark
Synopsis:
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Notes:
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1st Produced:
Philadelphia 1963
Organisations:
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1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
-
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageFlesh And Blood
Synopsis:
as described by the Washington, D.C. Evening Star: "Here was the family of an aging steelworker, living in a New York tenement about to be torn down, getting ready to mark the departure of his brother and the arrival of a new year. . .The steelworker, a happy-go-lucky type all his life, was not quick to anger. He was troubled by his brother's departure after all these years; the family was falling apart. He questioned himself, too, and his part in the death of a young steelworker. Were old memories good enough? He had lost one son in a war, another had lost both hands in battle and the shock had curtailed his mind. Was he good enough any more for the job he loved? The brother was leaving to die, but unwilling to leave without taking something with him that was his. So after a few drinks he revealed, to the youngest daughter (Kim Darby) that he was really her father and that it had happened when he and her mother thought her husband dead in a shipwreck. . .The girl, shocked by the revelation, runs out into the night and it is her all-night absence which author Hanley employs to develop his mosaic of the accommodations that people make in order to survive as a unit."
Notes:
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1st Produced:
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Organisations:
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1st Published:
Dramatists Play Service, NY, 1968 -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageMrs Dally Has A Lover
Synopsis:
New York Newsday says: "It has something of the quality of a Dorothy Parker sketch with its keen observations and deft portrait of a woman in love, knowing that this love cannot last. Mrs. Dally is well into her thirties, married to a man she despises and carrying on an affair with the teenaged son of a family living in the same tenement building. Despite its theme and its' kitchen sink' locale, there is nothing sordid about Mr. Hanley's play. It has humor and an equal share of pathos. The boy is affectionate but inarticulate; the woman has larger dimensions in her efforts to sow romance and harvest beauty in barren soil. Her simple recital of the death of her only child, her reading of one of Donne's love poems, her performance on a trombone which she once played professionally, mix Drama and comedy with skill and sensitivity. To me there was no false note in the touching one-acter."
Notes:
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1st Produced:
New York 1962
Organisations:
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1st Published:
in "Mrs Dally Has a Lover and Other Plays", Dial Press, New York, 1963 -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
Drama One act
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageNo Answer
Synopsis:
Man constructs suicide device - which fails.
Notes:
in Collision Course
1st Produced:
New York 1968
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Random House, New York, 1968 -
Music:
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Genre:
Mime Mime
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageSlow Dance On The Killing Ground
Synopsis:
The New York Times writes: "as the curtain rises a poor, dusty shop with its dirty window obscuring the dark hostile night, with its mean little counter, and with its juke box glaring vulgarly from the side, the storekeeper is taking inventory. The door is flung open, letting in a lithe young Negro, weirdly gotten up in a soft, high-crowned hat over his kinky little mop, sunglasses, a cape, short slacks and sneakers. Mr. Hanley calls this act Pas de Deux. In this dance for two, the characters make hesitant approaches, circle, feint, threaten each other with gun and ice pick but scarcely make contact. The young man is obviously a hunted man. Through the circumlocutions of his odd mixture of jive talk and fancy literary allusions, there pants a sense of terror. The storekeeper is a non-Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, is close-mouthed, suspicious, anxious to avoid self-involvement. . .In the second act the Pas de Deux becomes Pas de Trois. The third dancer is Rosie, an eighteen-year old from Riverdale, has wandered into the shop after losing her way while looking for the address of an abortionist. Rosie has no illusions about her homeliness or about the encounter that has led to her troubles. . .The laconic German and the flowery young man react to her with a sensitivity and concern that seem to diminish the furies within them. But not for long. Finally the German is driven to revealing the truth about himself as the young man, at last, in the third act, faces his inexorable fate out there on the killing ground."
Notes:
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1st Produced:
New York 1964
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Random House, New York, 1964 -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageToday Is Independance Day
Synopsis:
It is the morning of a sultry July 4th. Evalyn, rouses her husband, Sam. Sam's arm is in a cast, having been broken fighting off an attempt to hijack his taxi. But Sam doesn't want to talk about this for he is unsure of his wife's motives. Their ensuing conversation is filled with barbs and subtle rebukes. But it is evident that Evalyn has reached a point of critical re-evaluation, and, amidst their attempts to hurt each other, she tells Sam that she loves him. He reacts as though too much had already been done to destroy the very thing which Evalyn is trying to hold on to. The conversation turns to other matters, but it is soon brought up short by Evalyn's admission that she is undergoing psychiatric treatment. The confession is a measure of her desperate unhappiness and the thing which makes Sam resolve to leave her. But as he is preparing to go a messenger arrives with flowers for Evalyn's birthday-which Sam had not forgotten despite all. Somehow this small act of concern brings a sense of release to both of them, as though their crisis, while not resolved, had been ameliorated by a new awareness that what they have together is all there will be for both of them and they must make the best of it.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Berlin 1963
Organisations:
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1st Published:
in "Mrs Dally Has a Lover and Other Plays", Dial Press, New York, 1963 -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Drama One act
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageWhisper Into My Good Ear
Synopsis:
according to Howard Taubman, "is a study of two old pensioners who find surcease from their fleabag of a hotel and their loneliness in meeting near the edge of a park lake. This time they have met to carry out an agreement to commit suicide together. Charlie is almost blind and full of truculence, the kind of man who resents the tree behind his back because it has been around 100 years and will outlast him. Max is gentle, introverted and, it develops, homosexual. Nothing happens between them, but the two talk-amiably, impatiently, bitterly-and reveal themselves and the sources of their despair." In the end the suicide pact is abandoned, at least for the present, for both men become aware that it is often enough just to be alive and to search each day for the values that even the most wretched can perceive.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Cast TheatreNew York 1962
Organisations:
The Whisper Company
1st Published:
in "Mrs Dally Has a Lover and Other Plays", Dial Press, New York, 1963 -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
Drama One act
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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