Full Length Plays
Miss Witherspoon
Miss Witherspoon was a hit in 2005 in its joint premiere at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton and Playwrights Horizons in New York. Starring Kristine Nielsen and directed by Emily Mann, the play tells the story of a woman who has “had enough” and has killed herself. She hoped there would be no after life, but if there was, she was expecting Saint Peter at the gates. To her surprise she in the “the Bardo,” where a sweet but firm Indian woman named Maryamma keeps trying to FORCE Miss Witherspoon to reincarnate, which she refuses to do. Eventually she’s forced to go back to earth, all though her lives keep being short.
It is a comedy, but a thoughtful one. The other actors in the play were Mahira Kakkar as Maryamma, Colleen Werthmann as the mother, Jeremy Shamos as the father and later as Gandalf, and Linda Gravatt was the Woman in a Hat. The play was named one of the Ten Best Plays of 2005 by Time Magazine and Newsday, and was a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize.
“This is Durang at the top of his metaphysical, apocalyptic, high- and pop-culture game...”
– Linda Winer, Newsday
“An endearingly meditative farce… it’s a pleasure to note that [Durang] hasn’t lost his screwball.”
– Richard Corliss, Time.
Durang’s 2005 play Miss Witherspoon is published with his light-hearted parody Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge in a paperback volume published by Grove Press.
With a short introduction written by Durang, the book is available now. Amazon Books or Grove/Atlantic
(Cover Design by Wendy Lai, Photograph by Peter Cook, Artwork courtesy of McCarter Theatre.)
The performance rights to both plays are handled by Dramatists Play Services.
