Matchbox Theatre: Thirty Short Entertainments

by Michael Frayn

Overview

Matchbox Theatre

presents a sketch show in miniature: thirty short entertainments by Michael Frayn, author of Skios and Noises Off, 'the funniest farce ever written' (New York Times).

Thirty snatches of people talking. To each other, to the world at large, to themselves, to no one. Heard, unheard. Overheard, half-heard. On telephones, into microphones. In a crypt, an airport, an orchestra pit.

These tiny plays are offered here for performance in the smallest theatre in the world: the theatre of your own imagination. The scripts are provided. Everything else - casting, set design, ice cream sales - is up to you . . .

'Michael Frayn is the most philosophical comic writer - and the most comic philosophical writer - of our time.' Michael Arditti, Daily Mail

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941147504
Publisher:	Valancourt Books
Publication date:	02/24/2015
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	320,205
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.41(d)

Editorial Reviews

The book's tone ranges from Samuel Beckett to Peter Sellers to Monty Python…All of the pieces are either monologues or sketches of not more than two or three characters, and while one could easily sit down and peruse the book as a reader, Frayn's publisher is right to say, "These tiny plays are offered here for performance in the smallest theater in the world: the theater of your own imagination." It is great fun to cast yourself as any or all of the characters, open your mouth, and let the silliness fly.

The New York Times Book Review - Michael Ian Black

2014-12-07
Tony Award-winning playwright and novelist Frayn (Skios, 2012, etc.) busts out a delectably droll collection of theatrical diversions. As the mind behind the farce Noises Off, Frayn certainly understands this territory, although more cynical and less Anglophile readers may find these 30 comic pieces too ethereal for their tastes, the literary equivalent of a minidessert. The collection is posited as the work of Matchbox Theatre, where patrons are instructed, "Please feel free to obstruct the aisles. Leave luggage unattended! Talk among yourselves! Eat! Drink! Sleep! Snore! Storm out in the middle, if you feel like it, letting your seats thump up and crashing the panic bolts before you go!" The set pieces themselves largely feel like scissored moments from other works, and indeed, some of the farces, notably "Finishing Touches" and "Pig in the Middle," have been staged but never published before. The opener, "Sleepers," is a classic bickering-spouses setup in the tomb of an English lord and his wife, ensconced in one of London's many crypts ("You slept through the Second World War…"). Another absurdist sketch, "Cold Calling," details the travails of the man whose job is calling to tell you that you've won the Nobel Prize. "Clear" is a linguistic puzzle about just what it means to make one's self "Perfectly clear." Another features Schnthph Schmfgth, a member of the "Society for People with Names and Numbers No One Can Ever Catch on the Telephone, Unless It's Something Wrong With Your Answering Machine." There's even a self-congratulatory "Interval": "So, we're in a book. —For the moment. Or a theatre, of course. Or neither. Or both. It's that kind of thing." This is followed by a "Memorial" allowing participants to remember what the aforementioned interval was like. For lovers of classic farce, Monty Python and the wildly diverse British sense of humor.

Kirkus Reviews