Anthony Rose

Dark Comedy - Full Length / Once a renowned Broadway playwright, but now a disenchanted screenwriter, Anthony Rose has taken to traveling around the country visiting regional theatre groups who are producing his famous comedy success, The Parent Lesson. His aim is to rewrite the play on the spot to reflect his changed perspectives, and to reflect the events in his life which, he believes, have given the lie to the motives which guided him when he first wrote the play some twenty-five years earlier. Then he was a neglected, angry son; now he is a neglected husband and father who has left his wife and feels that his son cares only for his money. So far some nine theatres, upset by his disruptive tactics, have shown him the door but finally, in Kansas City, he finds a receptive director—and sets about working his "magic." Ignoring the objections of the actors, Rose adds new scenes, changes relationships between the characters and even transforms the very natures of the figures in the play. Consistently funny as they struggle to deal with these wild aberrations, the cast members begin to pull back as an underlying tone of arrogance and viciousness becomes more overt until, at last, Rose, having alienated the director, seduced the ingenue and insulted the top-billed actor, ends up taking over the lead role himself. He has, he believes, finally succeeded in finding the "truth" so long obscured in his play but, as an ironic coda (which takes place three years later) makes clear, the means have fallen far short of justifying the ends. ( 4 men, 1 5 total)