Martin Sherman Plays ─ 2: Passing By / Onassis / The Miser

Onassis portrays the last years of the life of the wealthy shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who, after a notorious affair with Maria Callas, married Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of US President John F. Kennedy, in 1968.

Passing By, first performed in New York in 1975, is both a brave and a charming romantic comedy about a love between two men whose hearts pull them together as their lives pull them apart. “One of the most radical plays ever written. Quirky, funny, touching, romantic and revolutionary. It overturned my life. Perhaps it will do the same for others.” Simon Callow

The Miser is Moliere’s satirical masterpiece about obsession and status endures. Fast, funny and full of energy, this sparkling new version by Martin Sherman is as pertinent today as it was when first written and performed by Moliere in the seventeenth century. Sherman’s adaptation received its world premiere at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, on 11 April 2013.

Martin Sherman’s early plays include Passing By, Cracks and Rio Grande, all originally presented by Playwrights Horizons in New York. Bent premiered at the Royal Court in 1979, transferred to the Criterion Theatre and was then presented on Broadway, where it received a Tony nomination for Best Play and won the Dramatist Guild's Hull-Warriner Award. It has been voted one of the NT2000 One Hundred Plays of the Century. His next plays were Messiah (1983), When She Danced (1988), A Madhouse in Goa (1989), Some Sunny Day (1996) and Rose (1999). Rose received an Olivier nomination for Best Play and transferred to Broadway the following season. Sherman has written an adaptation of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India for Shared Experience (2002) and a new version of a Luigi Pirandello play, Absolutely! (Perhaps) (2003). Sherman Plays: 1 was published by Methuen Drama in 2004.