JULIA BY JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH

The Plays

ATLANTA

A group of 20-something process the consequences of the death of a peer, the enchanting and complicated Atlanta.

BOMBSHELLS

A one woman play featuring six monologues of ordinary women in extraordinary emotional states. A schoolgirl, a bride, an older widow, a has-been cabaret artist, a sad suburban cacti expert and a harried mother. Comic, musical.

LOVE CHILD

A two hander about the reconciliation between a middle aged feminist and the now 25 year old daughter she relinquished to adoption. The daughter, Billie, asks Anna how she could spend her life dedicated to the cause of women, when she gave up the one woman she created.

HONOUR

The familiar theme of what happens when a respected and honourable middle aged man leaves his wife for a younger woman but told in an unfamiliar way. The wife, Honor, has forfeited her ambitions to raise their daughter Sophie and help her husband shine in his publicly acclaimed life. At the point when her work is done and she should reap the rewards of her sacrifice, she’s abandoned. All four points of view, the wife, husband, daughter and lover are represented.

FURY

The story ignites when a schoolteacher arrives at the home of a celebrated left leaning neuroscientist and her novelist husband to tell them that their teenage son has been arrested for desecrating a mosque. Love, terrorism, guilt by association and the secrets in marriage are played out in an intense and furious drama.

AMERICAN SONG

A one man monologue during which Joe, a middle-aged man, flawed but conscientious, funny and charismatic tells the audience his story. As he, builds a dry stone wall, Joe reflects on the ordinary milestones of a life and the catastrophe that enveloped his family when his child was involved in an explosive act of violence. A play about gun culture in America and more profoundly, a play about every parent’s terror at how they are forever vulnerable to the humans they produce.

NIGHTFALL

A mother and a father wait for the longed for reunion with the daughter who ran away as a teenager and has not been seen for seven years. But when the doorbell goes, it’s a different woman on their doorstep, an intermediary who demands they “confess” to what they did all those years ago, before the daughter will agree to be seen. Do they have anything to confess? Is it better to confess to something terrible they never did in order to see their beloved child and what happens when the truth is scarified?

SWITZERLAND

The story of the imagined final three days in the life of famous American novelist, Patricia Highsmith, the creator of “The Talented Mr Ripley”. Famously mean, witty, cruel and reclusive, Highsmith is visited in her her modernist bunker in Switzerland by a representative of her New York publishing house, intent on persuading the ailing writer to churn out one more best-selling Ripley before she dies. But over three days, a cat and mouse game develops that examines how a queen of violent crime might like to die and the complex nature of the love affair between a writer and her characters. A psychological thriller.

THREE LITTLE WORDS

Two couples: one straight, one lesbian and the best of friends. At least until the straight wife confesses that while she loves her husband, she wants out of the marriage. Her bid for freedom ignites comic mayhem as all four characters negotiate the complex bonds of love and friendship. Is existential yearning infectious and do we have a duty to other couples to endure unhappiness?

RAPTURE

The play begins at a dinner party for three affluent couples to welcome one couple back into the fold after they mysteriously disappeared for seven months, following a house fire in which all their possessions were lost. Renouncing material things, the returning couple’s discovery of a spiritual mission — a million miles from their old consumerist lives — triggers envy, fury, cynicism and fear in their friends.

NINETY

Isabel and William used to be married and now it is the eve of William’s wedding to another woman. Isabel invites William to give her Ninety minutes to persuade him why he still loves her. He is adamant he’s over her but under pressure, he agrees. As the play is performed in real time, the best moments of their life together come back to them. And so, too, the tragedy that befell them. In 90 minutes, the tables are turned. William realises he is in love with her but Isabel, too, has changed course.

TRUE MINDS

Daisy, a gorgeous young writer has had an unexpected hit with her book “Simply Oedipus” in which she expounds the theory that however archaic, no man will marry a woman his mother doesn’t approve of. In the middle of a raging storm, Daisy is about to meet her frightening arch-conservative future mother-in-law for the first time and everything has to be perfect so that she gives her son, Benedict, her approval. But capsizing Daisy’s plans are a series of unexpected visitors including her politically radical and bombastic father, her hippy mother and Mitch, her charismatic ex-boyfriend just out of rehab. When Benedict finally arrives, Daisy must wrestle whether the person she likes least – Mitch – is actually the one she loves. True Minds is a fast-talking, quick witted contemporary romantic comedy for six.

PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

 A one-woman show for a skilled singer/actress featuring Harper Clements, a mousy, anonymous middle-ranking staff member in the Entertainment Department of the White House over seven administrations. Harper has effectively grown up in the White House after a personal catastrophe as a young woman compelled her to leave her small town in Georgia. Harper’s personal story intersects with the performers and Presidents she has met in over forty years of service. Insight into the workings of the hub of Western power contrast with the tiny details of an ordinary life as the voices and songs of many of the great singers of the 20th century evoke Harper’s joys and sorrows.  

SONGS FOR NOBODIES

A one woman show for a singer/actress, which presents both comically and poignantly, how destinies intersect. Five vignettes featuring the interaction between the lives of five musical legends and five anonymous women: Judy Garland and a bathroom-attendant, Patsy Cline and an usher, Billie Holliday and a young reporter, Edith Piaf and a librarian whose life-course was altered by the singer’s actions and Maria Callas and a nanny. The actress performs all ten voices, singing in the style of the five greats. For a virtuoso performer.

THE GIFT

 Two couples meet at a luxury holiday resort. Sadie and Ed, rich, intelligent but unsophisticated are attempting to inject some new life in their marriage. Chloe and Martin, in their early thirties, are poor but sophisticated and obsessed with the world of visual arts. They have won the holiday in a raffle. Over the course of a drunken evening, these two superficially dissimilar couples bond, discovering that beneath surface appearances, they have subtle connections. When they take a boat out the next day, the weather changes and Ed falls overboard. Martin saves his life and as a result, the older couple insist on giving the younger couple a substantial gift – Martin and Chloe demur. Sadie elicits a promise from them that they will meet them again in a year and name their gift. When the reunion occurs, Martin and Chloe ask for something that impels all four to examine the cost of love and creativity. For four actors.

DAY ONE, A HOTEL, EVENING

 A contemporary ensemble comedy about love, seduction, boredom, desire and envy. It all starts very simply on day one, in the evening, in a hotel room.

Forty-somethings Sam and Tom are not just business partners, but good friends, as are their wives, Madeleine and Stella. Their privileged lives feature the usual rituals of the cosmopolitan middle-class: wining, dining and property investments.

But as boredom insinuates its way into their smug and ordered lives, each of the four embarks on a thrilling adventure, finding their destinies intersecting catastrophically with the beguiling and dangerous young strangers, Ray and Rose. A play for six. 

REDEMPTION (1997)

 New York City. A two-hander. A man and woman reunite after many years in a city apartment. They are linked by the seemingly random murder of a man: her husband and his brother. The victim was not only an adored man, but a brilliant and famous cellist. What appears to be a reconciliation of two grieving survivors is ultimately revealed as the reconciliation of two lovers, whose grief has been long tainted by guilt. They betrayed him… but is their betrayal implicated in his death?

Three Additional Productions. Reviews due 2025