Published Works
BELONGINGS AND LONGINGS
Available through Dramatic Publishing
Steve Pickering and Geoffrey Baer in the Organic Lab Theater's production of Belongings and Longings.
These three interrelated one-act plays concern five people in their late 20s and early 30s who are looking for love and lust and everything in between. In the first play, Richard, who is seeing Diane, plays host at her apartment to Lou, Diane's former boyfriend. Lou and his friend, Pete, have arrived to collect Lou's things. But when Lou and Pete begin to walk out with paintings, lamps and all of the furniture, Richard realizes that he may have inadvertently let two burglars into the apartment. In the second play, Diane, who is now married with a child on the way, and Jill, who is a free spirit, meet and exchange world views. But eventually we learn that Diane's new husband could well be having an affair with this other woman. In the final play, Jill breaks up with Pete, and that leads to a complete circle. A killing may have occurred. And a new coupling may be about to take place.
"An unqualified success. Ostensibly a comedy of manners on contemporary relationships, 'Belongings and Longings' is really a reverberating, interconnected mind game, one that suggests and probes more than it discloses. Post writes with a shrewd ear for modern banter, a tantalizing affinity for Pinteresque mystery and a sublime dramatic architecture."
— Chicago Tribune
"Post has subtitled this work 'a play about love and furniture,' but it is more complicated than that. His willingness, and his ability, to explore the darker corners of that much traveled— but rarely illuminated— territory of romantic love and intimacy makes these vignettes an intense and moving experience."
— Chicago Sun-Times
Available through Broadway Play Publishing Inc
BLISSFIELD
Kevin Gudahl and Kelly Hazen in Victory Gardens Theater's production of Blissfield.
Carter Bartosek, a foreign correspondent stationed in Beirut, returns to his Midwest hometown for the funeral of his best friend, a former congressman who apparently took his own life while high on alcohol and painkillers. Carter discovers that his friend had left the larger political arena in order to run for mayor of this town, which has transformed itself from an industrial community in decline to a high-tech hub, and that his progressive agenda might have alienated certain members of this now affluent municipality. Over the course of five days, Carter kicks through the ashes of his childhood and confronts those people who he considers to be his extended family in search of the truth surrounding this alleged suicide. Was his friend murdered for his politics? And, if so, what does that say about Carter himself and this bucolic place he once called home?
"Mysteriously magic 'Blissfield' presents a compelling case…A piece that clicks along smoothly with suspense and surprise and finishes with a tremendous kick of irony… It's like a terrific B-movie, with brains - and a conscience."
— Chicago Tribune
"A total success…Douglas Post has a gift for suspense, and he creates a genuine curiosity and, thankfully, a satisfying revelation."
— New City
"A zippy thriller…a veritable whodunnit, albeit one with a few weighty themes thrown into its dramatic mix…a plot-centered play with plenty of narrative curves and some salacious crime details to chew upon."
— Network Chicago
"Crisp and compelling…Post's play is full of twists and turns involving love affairs and alienated affection, precocious children and greed…It reminded me of Roman Polanski's ‘Chinatown.'"
— Windy City Times
"It’s not the simple story of a detective coming in, finding the corpse, and going about looking for the killer. 'Blissfield' looks at the impact of urban renewal on an intimate level, and the emotional attachment we have to the places where we grew up."
— Stagebill
"Situational murder…Just when this black-and-white morality play seems cut-and-dried out, it takes a marvelous turn for the gray…We're left with a far more disturbing reaction than a murder mystery elicits."
— Chicago Free Press
"Smart…skillful…it's an edge-of-the-chair mystery that's also a thoughtful, articulate drama."
— Metromix
BRAVE NEW WORLD
Available through Dramatic Publishing
Dan Wirth in the Chicago New Plays Festival Company’s readers theatre presentation of Brave New World.
Set against the futuristic society of the World State, where human beings are genetically bred into a strict caste system, individuality is spurned, and conformity is celebrated, this chilling tale of an alarming tomorrow depicts an existence where real emotion is rare and true freedom is a nowhere to be found. It follows Bernard Marx, a man who considers himself to be an outsider, Lenina Crowne, who senses she is meant for something more than pleasure and escapism, and John “the Savage,” who longs to be a part of this “civilized” culture. Their paths and interactions lead them into the uncharted territories of friendship, love, lust, outrage, and finally a rebellious outbreak against the technology that reins them in, the mind-numbing drugs they are daily fed, and a regime that seeks to control their spirits, as well as their souls.
“Adapting Huxley’s prophetic story is a mammoth undertaking and one that Douglas Post achieves with a level of skill and dramatic verve that makes this play feel freshly minted. ‘Brave New World’ is a story of our times that has been faithfully adapted for the stage in this version that will ensure that Huxley’s vision of our future shall continue to endure for many years to come.”
— Edward Hall
Artistic Director
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
"Douglas Post's adaptation of ‘Brave New World,’ Huxley's famously 'banned book,’ comes at you with all its timely shocks, debates, and adult themes intact. This boldly futuristic dystopia feels just as relevant and frightening in our current moment as when first published in 1932, in the midst of the depression and at the dawn of modern Fascism. Post's speedy and suspenseful version makes Huxley's horrific warning very clear - that this future world is built upon a trivial and passive culture, and that future is now."
— Nick Sandys
Actor, Director and
Fight Director
“Before the face of totalitarianism, the question is always ‘What can be done?’ Douglas Post's telling of Huxley's story is taut, suspenseful, and ultimately devastating. It's a quick jolt and a sharp kick. In a time of peril like ours is, ‘Brave New World’ is the anti-soma we need.”
— Terry McCabe
Producer and Artistic Director
City Lit Theater
DETECTIVE SKETCHES AND OTHER SHORT PLAYS
Available through Dramatic Publishing
Steve Pickering and Nancy Heap in the Organic Lab Theater's production of Detective Sketches.
This collection of five plays includes the one-act comedy Detective Sketches (Trouble is Eating My Pants), which centers on a fearless private investigator named Alex Diver and his search for the elusive Lady in Green. It also contains four ten-minute plays entitled Escape From Groovytown, in which an urban professional attempts to outrun gentrification, Falling Through the Cracks, where a woman who is almost homeless confronts her son on the subway, Somewhere on the Coast of Belize, about two New York bargemen attempting to unload a boat filled with trash on a third world country, and At Night in the Asylum, which imagines the midnight of the soul as seen through the residents of a condo building.
"A manic farce of a spoof…using the hard-boiled genre as a source for a surreal trip and a little lighthearted Brechtian anti-materialism."
— Chicago Tribune
"An unabashed goof on every hard-boiled detective story from 'The Maltese Falcon' to 'Chinatown.' That it works is a testament to Post's writing."
— Chicago Reader
"A crowd and critic-pleasing success. The B-movie scenario, straight from Central Scripting, weaves a web of evil around a ton of four-star stereotypes; it yields at least two guffaws a minute. Post hits every chestnut in the gumshoe canon."
— Windy City Times
"Douglas Post's 'Escape From Groovytown' is a mildly sci-fi, deliciously nasty putdown of yuppie chic."
— Chicago Tribune
"The show ends on a particularly brilliant note with 'At Night in the Asylum,' Douglas Post's work for the ensemble. It does for an urban high-rise what Edgar Lee Masters did for the town of Spoon River."
— Chicago Sun-Times
Available through Dramatists Play Service
DROWNING SORROWS
Kenn E. Head, John Judd and Keli Garrett in the Victory Gardens Theater's production of Drowning Sorrows.
Duncan Crawford, a bartender on the island of St. John, is considering abandoning his way of life for greater adventure when Emily Miles, an heiress from Manhattan, wanders into his establishment and begins to recount her sad tale. She tells him how she was left at the altar at the tender age of nineteen by a fiancé who suddenly disappeared, how she has spent the past twenty years searching for this man, and how she now believes that she has found him in the person of Duncan. Duncan denies this, but Emily is certain. To complicate matters, Emily's husband, Raymond, an investment banker, offers Duncan $10,000 to pretend he is the man Emily is looking for in the hope that she will finally come to some sort of closure over the event. The story continues to twist and turn right up to the ambiguous conclusion - Duncan might be playing along with Raymond or he might actually be the man Emily claims he is.
"A specialty of playwright Douglas Post: a philosophical mystery … working in territory that Alfred Hitchcock explored … Post weaves in deeper considerations on memory, commitment and the strange ways of the passage of time."
— Chicago Tribune
"Post's play, unfolding in a swiftly moving succession of scenes without intermission, shines when his sharply drawn characters trade wisecracks and ironies."
— Chicago Sun-Times
"A kind of dramatic Rorschach test, Post's psychological puzzler forces audiences to fill in some tantalizing blanks."
— Chicago Reader
"The story twists and turns right up to the ambiguous conclusion."
— Copley News Service
"An intimate and engaging 90 minutes."
— Windy City Times
Available through Dramatists Play Service
EARTH AND SKY
Justin Deas, Ted Marcoux and Jennifer Van Dyck in the Second Stage Theatre's production of Earth and Sky.
This winner of the L. Arnold Weissberger Playwriting Competition concerns a would-be poet and part-time librarian named Sara McKeon whose lover of ten weeks, David Ames, is found dead one hot August morning in the city of Chicago. It appears that David, owner and manager of an expensive art-deco restaurant, may have been involved in several illicit activities including kidnapping, rape and murder. Unable to believe that the man she gave her heart to was a killer, and outraged by the fact that the police seem to have closed the book on the case, Sara begins her own investigation of the crime and is led deeper and deeper through the urban labyrinth into the contemporary underworld. As the detective story moves forward in time, scenes from the love affair take us back to the moment when Sara and David first met. Finally the plots converge and Sara finds herself face to face with the person who murdered her beloved.
"Douglas Post's play is a case of film noir on stage. Hard-bitten but with a tinge of sentiment … the devious U-turns in the plot continue past the ending of this taut new thriller."
— The New York Times
"It is thoroughly engrossing, holding you fast for about 100 intermissionless minutes … a genuine cop thriller, with devious plot turns, tough, corner-of-the-mouth, Chandler-and-Hammett-style dialogue, and enough surprises to startle rabbits out of holes let alone hats."
— The New York Post
"A winner … a satisfying whodunnit shot through with sardonic humour … psychologically absorbing … richly poetic … a seriously good play."
— Portsmouth News
"A brilliant and remarkable play … compulsively gripping … an undoubted success."
— Bournmouth Daily News
"Its final moments might well go down in the theatre history as some of the most heartrending of any modern production."
— Bath Echo
HOWARDS END
Available through Theatrical Rights Worldwide
Natalie Santoro, Mark Ulrich, Eliza Stoughton, Terry Bell and Heather Chrisler in Remy Bumppo Theatre Company’s production of Howards End.
The bohemian Schlegel sisters are two independent women negotiating the seemingly unbridgeable gulfs that class, money and gender throw in their paths, as they seek love, purpose and connection at the dawn of the 20th century. As they chart their course through a rapidly changing London where industry is booming and people are modernizing, they encounter the Wilcoxes, who are wealthy capitalists that made their fortune in the colonies, and the Basts, who struggle to make ends meet. Helen Schlegel and her sibling take on the pet project of trying to improve the life of Leonard Bast, while Henry Wilcox, recently widowed, pursues the elusive Margaret Schlegel. Meantime, Henry’s adult children vie for his attention while Leonard’s wife, a former prostitute, encounters a client from her past leading to disastrous results in the present. Howards End is a play about materialism and idealism, about the practical and the poetic, and three very different families whose lives intertwine through art and real estate in a world speeding towards cataclysm.
"In Forster’s great and astoundingly prescient novel, which now has been newly adapted into a concise and lively stage play for Remy Bumppo Theatre Company by Douglas Post, the Schlegel sisters are portraits of empathetic rebellion, proto-feminist points of view slowly beaten into submission by the sexism, inequity and wholesale unfairness that surround them…Post is very successful in making us realize that Forster could see a lot of what would befall humanity a hundred years later…'Howards End' is so full of timeless truths for living."
— Chicago Tribune
"“A thoughtful evening of exquisitely staged storytelling…This adaptation is not unlike a corset made with spandex providing new flexibility to traditionally restrictive material."
— Chicago Sun-Times
"Douglas Post’s new adaptation for Remy Bumppo resonates in our age of class unrest and digital disconnects."
— Chicago Reader
"A sterling adaptation of one of the great novels of the 20th century."
— Splash Magazine
"Douglas Post’s faithful theatrical adaptation is truly eloquent…This is a beautiful, carefully constructed play…The script is sure to become the definitive stage treatment of Forster’s novel."
— Chicago Theatre & Concert
Reviews
THE KINGDOM OF GRIMM
Available through Dramatic Publishing
John Smythe and Talon Beeson in Chicago Playworks' production of The Kingdom of Grimm.
This winner of the first Cunningham Commission Award for Youth Theatre is an inspiring new musical based on three stories by the Brothers Grimm. One winter's day, Hans, a farm boy who has lost his way in the woods, stumbles across a golden key. It unlocks an enchanted chest that holds the imprisoned Gerhardt the Great and his troupe of traveling players. To show their thanks, the players perform three tales for Hans: "The Golden Goose," "The Three Huntsmen" and "The Four Skillful Brothers." Their theatrical antics are underscored by a collection of songs that range in style from ballads to blues to rock. Finally, the players depart, leaving Hans with some valuable lessons about generosity, loyalty, and hard work.
"A new musical from DePaul's Chicago Playworks enchants theatergoers."
— Time Out Chicago
"An A+ for kids and an A for parents."
— Chicago Parent
"There's nothing grim about Grimm, and the DePaul play's lessons are positively positive."
— The Catholic New World
MURDER IN GREEN MEADOWS
Available through Dramatists Play Service
Kate Spiro and Shelley Thompson in the Nuffield Theatre's production of Murder in Green Meadows.
Receiving six Emmy Award nominations when first presented on TV with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, this psychological thriller tells the story of Thomas Devereaux, a successful architect and local contractor, and his lovely wife, Joan, who have recently moved into their dream house in the suburban town of Green Meadows, Illinois. They are soon visited by their new neighbors, Carolyn and Jeff Symons, and a friendship develops between the two couples. But underneath the cool, middle American exterior, something is truly rotten. A previous sexual relationship between Joan and a teenage lawn-boy is revealed, as is the fact that Thomas learned of the infidelity and may have murdered his wife's lover. To make matters worse, an affair develops between Joan and Jeff. One summer evening, following the Symons' departure after a friendly game of cards, Thomas lets Joan know that he is aware of this new deception, and his violent nature takes hold. He makes two demands of his wife: one, she must stop seeing Jeff. Two, she must kill him. What follows is a diabolical plot that continues to thicken through the final showdown between a murderer and an aggrieved widow.
“'Murder in Green Meadows' will appeal to fans of the mystery-thriller genre. There are engrossing twists and turns, and an ending in which the perfect crime is exposed through a tiny detail. It is the very normalcy of the situation and the façade of the good-neighbor ideal that lends suspense to the action.”
— The New York Times
"A thoroughly satisfying thriller on all points."
— WMAQ-TV
"A wonderful evening of sleuth and murder."
— Near North News
"It spins a web of deception, sex, murder and mindgames as two suburban couples discover their darker sides."
— Chicago Tribune
"A screaming hit … a tautly constructed plot … the people are the action."
— Portsmouth News
“An archly manipulative psycho-thriller…a well-made murder mystery…it holds your attention like a leash.”
— Windy City Times
"This tale of lust and death in the 'ideal' home is certain to become a classic."
— Southampton Daily Echo
Available through Broadway Play Publishing Inc
PERSONAL EFFECTS
Dan Holahan, Catherine Ferraro, Lester Keefe and Mary O’Dowd in Circle Theatre’s production of Personal Effects.
This winner of the Midwestern Playwrights Festival Award is a thriller that centers on Nicholas Barnes, a successful Los Angeles tax attorney, who suddenly looses his assets, his condo, his career, his lover and the life he thought he had. He finds himself out on the streets, homeless and hunted by the law. After a failed attempt at suicide and some time in a transient hotel, he undertakes an investigation with his cousin, a woman who has been through a similar set of misfortunes, to determine why these actions have been taken against him and what sort of a familial link exists behind these crimes.
"Douglas Post is one of those rare scribes who is both a serious playwright capable of exploring important themes and an unabashed lover of the thriller genre with a weakness for the ripping yarn. It’s a savvy niche. 'Personal Effects' is a play that revels in a good plot twist even as it explores such themes as communal guilt, the limits of revenge and the possibilities of forgiveness."
— Chicago Tribune
"A terrific play…a beautifully crafted noir thriller…a surprisingly tense plot that deals with powerful themes such as revenge and forgiveness with enchanting use of symbolism and the connection of spiritualism and the eternal urge to return to the land, to one’s roots."
— Chicago Critic
"A taut, suspenseful production that leaves you guessing to the bitter, fantastic end."
— Chicago Arts & Entertainment
"Filled with edge-of-your-seat suspense and spine-tingling surprises."
— Wicker Park Voice
"Edgy and interesting…flawless and imaginative…if you are a lover of drama and theater this production is worth the visit."
— Oak Park Journal
SCROOGE AND THE GHOSTLY SPIRITS
Available through Dramatic Publishing
Frank Farrell and Catherine Athenson in Citadel Theatre’s production of Scrooge and the Ghostly Spirits.
Poor Ebenezer Scrooge. It is Christmas Eve and everyone in London is finding merriment in the season except for the miserly soul who moves through the chambers that once belonged to his deceased partner. But when the Ghost of Jacob Marley suddenly appears, and is followed in rapid succession by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, Scrooge’s cynical world is turned upside down as he sees who he was, who he is, and what he may hope to become. This musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic tale strips the story down to its essence while adding seventeen songs that speak to the heart and to the holidays. Running 90 minutes with no intermission, it follows the transformation of a man of business into a person who truly understands that mankind is his one and only business.
"This original, 90-minute musical by Chicagoan Douglas Post is filled with delightfully familiar characters, as well as plenty of color, lyrical harmony and Christmas cheer to spice up every theatergoers’ holiday season."
— Chicago Theatre & Concert
Reviews
"A tight new musical retelling of Dickens with a focus on the real business of life."
— Chicagoland Musical Theatre
"The musical structure immediately sets the play apart and there are many times when the songs take moments of the familiar script to heights they have rarely reached in other productions."
— Chicago On Stage
"A delightful family entertainment that is perfect for the holiday season."
— Chicago Theater and the Arts
"Douglas Post is one of our most reliable playwrights and I’m delighted to see that he’s taken on the challenge of Dickens and the holidays."
— WDCB Radio
Available through Broadway Play Publishing Inc
SOMEBODY FOREIGN
Bethanny Alexander and Greg Hardin in City Lit Theater Company’s production of Somebody Foreign.
Liz Fletcher is a human rights activist and professor of Middle Eastern Studies at a private college in a small town outside of Chicago. One Saturday night, her brother and his fiancée are brutally murdered in their newly remodeled home. The killer leaves behind few clues. The community is overcome with fear. And Liz, because of her affiliation with certain groups in the Gaza Strip, becomes the target of an investigation by the FBI, the local police, and the media.
"An involving, plot-driven thriller."
— Chicago Tribune
"A cautionary tale about what might happen in a society where the fear of terrorism could lead to an intrusion on individual rights."
— Chicago Sun-Times
"A worthy and timely play…Post has written a powerful piece of resistance to political pressure that gets us debating governmental witch hunts."
— Theater in Chicago
"A scary exercise in prosecutorial abuse…a crisp 100 minute script…Post’s political thriller depicts a government-triggered and media fueled feeding frenzy."
— Chicago Free Press
"A spellbinding thriller…McCabe takes the challenging work with its multitude of unrelated incidents and spins them into a taut, nerve shattering web."
— Theatreworld Internet
Magazine
THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
Available through Dramatic Publishing
Karen Sheridan, Thomas J. Kelly and Mark Edward Heap in the Organic Lab Theater's production of The Wind in the Willows.
Produced at over 250 theatres around the world, this musical tells the story of the friendship of the good-hearted Water Rat, the shy and curious Mole, and the sensible Badger. What tests that friendship are the antics of Mr. Toad, a wily and impulsive animal given to sudden crazes such as stealing motor cars and driving them recklessly around the countryside. Their task is to save Toad from himself and then rescue the magnificent Toad Hall from the devious weasels, ferrets and stoats.
"Douglas Post's music and lyrics will go a long way toward reconciling us to rodents … the music ranges from sweetly melodic to snappy … the title theme is lovely."
— The New York Times
"One of the wisest and most delightful productions to grace a Chicago stage this season … Douglas Post has crafted a poetic, deeply intelligent, and hilariously funny script with lyrics to match. He has also composed a magical and eclectic score that runs the gamut from haunting English ballads and rippling reggae to tongue-in-cheek punk and lilting Latin congas."
— Chicago Sun-Times
"A charming original score by Douglas Post whose songs warm the heart while neatly prodding the intellect … Post has written a dozen memorable and enigmatic songs, rich in simple melody and folk style while simultaneously diversified and hypnotic."
— Chicago Tribune
"A song-dream for audiences of any age … Post is not afraid to blend overt, raffish comedy with quiet reflection, even a sense of spirituality."
— Chicago Reader
"From the elegant title tune to the happy reunion number, this is clearly a score in search of a recording contract."
— WEVD-AM