Lend Me a Tenor and Other Plays

by Ken Ludwig

LEND ME A TENOR is about parents versus the tearing down by youth of the barriers set up by the older generation who seek to foil the natural urges of their children. At the same time, LEND ME A TENOR is about the encouragement of youth by their natural heroes, who are ironically, usually of their parents generations.
MOON OVER BUFFALO is about second chances and about the courage that is needed to take a second chance.
LEADING LADIES continues the theme of second chance, issues of compromise and social barriers.
SHAKESPEARE IN HOLLYWOOD has a whole different set of concerns. It is about falling in love and dreaming. It is about myth and magic. It is about a time in our history when censorship took on frightening proportions both in the world of film and the world at large.

Genres: Plays, Comedy, Theatre

296 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

KEN LUDWIG is an internationally-acclaimed playwright whose work has been performed in more than 30 countries in over 20 languages. He has had 6 shows on Broadway and 6 in the West End. He has won two Laurence Olivier Awards, two Helen Hayes Awards, the Edgar Award, the SETC Distinguished Career Award, the Edwin Forrest Award for Services to the Theatre and he is a McCarter/Sallie B. Goodman Fellow. His plays have been commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Bristol Old Vic. His first play on Broadway, Lend Me A Tenor, won three Tony Awards and the New York Times called it "one of the two great farces by a living writer." His other best-known Broadway and West End shows include Crazy For You (5 years on Broadway, Tony Award Winner for Best Musical), Moon Over Buffalo, Leading Ladies, Twentieth Century, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Game’s Afoot, The Fox on the Fairway, Midsummer/Jersey, The Three Musketeers, Treasure Island and The Beaux’ Stratagem. His plays have starred Alec Baldwin, Carol Burnett, Lynn Redgrave, Mickey Rooney, Hal Holbrook, Dixie Carter, Tony Shalhoub, Anne Heche, Joan Collins, and Kristin Bell. His book, How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare, was published in June 2013 by Random House, and his work has been published by the Yale Review. He has degrees from Harvard, where he studied music with Leonard Bernstein, Haverford College and Cambridge University. For more information, please visit www.kenludwig.com

Reviews

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I consider plays one of the most under-valued genres out there. Think about it: when you're reading a novel, the quickest, most fun sections to read are the dialogue, especially when the story is being told and exposition is taking place in the form of witty and/or meaningful exchanges between characters. It's the ultimate form of "show me, don't tell me" and that's all a play is.
So, I love reading plays, but even though Ludwig is a highly praised comedic playwright, I just couldn't get into this. It took me a couple of weeks to read the first (title) play, and I didn't love it enough to continue with the others.
One turn-off for me was the painfully overdone inuendos. This is a situation comedy, and the fuel for that fire is mistaken identity and misunderstanding (when one character is talking about one thing and another character is talking about something else, and they both think they understand each other, but only the audience is in on the joke). This is all well and good, but it was just over-over-the-top in this case, so that the humor felt forced. There were some genuinely funny moments, and I believe this play would be more enjoyable seeing it acted well on stage, but based solely on the writing, I wasn't feeling it as much as I expected to.
But don't let my less-than-glowing review discourage you from reading other plays. It's normally very much worth it!