new title: Sacred & Profane

Update : our latest title, Sacred & Profane Love is due to be published on 15 April 2015, price £12.00, Euros 15. Postage in UK is £1.50 extra.

It will comprise two contrasting plays by Edmond Rostand, the idealistic French poet, newly translated into English prose from the original French:  The Woman of Samaria (La Samaritaine) and The Last Night of Don Juan (La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan). Both display his gift for the theatre, his wit and his imagination. The subject of each play is the same: love, both sacred and profane, true and false. Both carry the message that Rostand wished to convey in all his plays: the redeeming power of pure love, whether it be the love of God or the love of a human being.

La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan is Rostand’s original take on the legendary seducer, who, on his way down to hell with the Commander, has, Rostand imagines, negotiated with the devil for ten more years of destructive life on earth. Now the ten years are up and the devil returns in unexpected guise to reclaim him. Little by little the devil strips away all Don Juan's pride and arrogance, until he is fit for nothing but an unexpected personal hell. There are some marvellous moments of pure theatre and many witty exchanges along the way.

The Woman of Samaria

Our other new translation retells the New Testament story of Jesus’s meeting with the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s Well. The Woman of Samaria (La Samaritaine), written for Sarah Bernhardt, was first performed in April 1897, the year which would culminate in the amazing success of Cyrano de Bergerac.

This poetic and moving play is about the power of love, human and divine, to transform our lives. Apparently even the cast found it so moving that they were in tears as the curtain fell on the last scene.

To negotiate performance rights of either play please contact the publisher at <gengepress@aol.com>.