Plays

[lathany]

Which plays are well enough known that the average¹ reader would:
(a) have heard of
(b) know one or more characters of (specifically the male lead).

I want a choice of plays for a piece of writing I'm doing.

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¹ No, I wouldn't like to define average. Take your best guess!

Comments

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

I'd guess Shakespeare plays are the most likely to work - especially the ones with the character names in the title and most especially the ones which have been made into films. So Romeo and Juliet would work very well because even without any knowledge of plays or Shakespeare and failing to notice the names are in the title someone could remember that one with the Di Caprio bloke in.

Not so much A Midsummers Night Dream though, unless the characters you're looking for are Oberon and Titania and Puck - I have trouble remembering the names of the 'main characters' in that :-)

There's always "I Want to be Your Canary" but that might not be the right kind of average :-)

Do musicals count?

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Musicals count!

I thought Shakespeare too. The main problem being that it's a bit of a cliché (eg. murder mysteries do Macbeth if they want a play).

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

I guess that's the problem with wanting a play people may have heard of - it does narrow the field a little.
If there's musicals as well there's things like Les Mis and all the long running classics which an 'average' person might know. There's the long running theatre classics like The Woman in Black and The Mousetrap but i've no idea if they're quite specific to England.
There's the stage adaptations of things like His Dark Materials where the characters might be known from the books.
This is Our Youth? Starred a number of well known 'actors' (some of whom could even act) and may have made into average knowledge as a result?

Some Tom Stoppard's may have made it into well known, i've had some discouraging experiences talking about Arcadia for example though.