New Releases by George F. Walker

Orphans for the Czar ruefully exposes the duplicity, revenge, and self-interest at the core of a culture about to go up in flames. Suggested by Gorsky''s novel The Life of a Useless Man and set shortly before Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg, the play focuses on a hapless double agent as he tries to stay on the right side of both the revolutionaries and the czarists. The orphaned fool Vasley leaves his impoverished village to work in his uncle''s bookstore in the city, and becomes engrossed by the women, the intelligentsia, the spies, and all their conflicting ideologies. A comedy of pathos about the fragility of people in unstable times, Orphans for the Czar is also a plea for the possibility of decency.

Canada''s top playwright sears the page with three new works that excoriate political culture, individualism and the accompanying moral depravity.

An allegory of our post-9/11 lives, but also a paean to the will that carries us through our darkest hours.

Recognizable characters play out their coincidental relationships in a city park. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.

First published as a trilogy in 1986, The Power Playscontain Gossip(1977), Filthy Rich(1979), and The Art of War(1983). Completely revised and updated for this new Talonbooks edition, these three plays showcase both the development and the culmination of Walker''s engagement with the film noir style.

Includes "Beautiful City," "Love and Anger" and "Tough."

Contains Walker''s own selection of his early plays: Beyond Mozambique, Zastrozzi, Theatre of the Film Noir and Nothing Sacred.

Six plays that take place in the same hotel room, including "Problem Child," "Risk Everything," "The End of Civilization" and others.

Escape from Happiness takes place in the kitchen of an old, slightly rundown house in a not-so-classy section of a large city. It''s home to Nora, a good-natured, slow-moving, fairly batty middle-aged woman; her daughter Gail, who is tough, sensible, and a little high-strung; Gail''s husband Junior, an affable but rather dim fellow. Also living here is Tom, who is dying of some unspecified disease; Tom is, according to Nora, a stranger who looks exactly like (and coincidentally has the same name as) her husband, who deserted the family ten years ago after trying to burn down the house.

It is 1859, and under the leadership of progressive Czar Alexander II, Russia is rushing pell-mell from the 11th century to the 19th. Serfdom has been abolished, and something approaching parliamentary democracy has been installed. Arkady, a fresh college graduate, proceeds with his friend Bazarov, a charismatic nihilist, to the estate of his father, a down-at-the-heels gentleman farmer. It appears as though dad and the housekeeper have just had a child, and dad is deeply in love - although their difference in class makes marriage impossible to contemplate. Arkady, enraptured with the new thought he learned at college, is eager to impact the New Russia, though he has no idea how. Bazarov, who has burnished his fashionable cynicism to a near-blinding sheen, has resolved to say or think nothing which is not ''useful.'' It is surprising, still, how talkative he is. As we learn only at the end of the first Act, Arkady''s uncle Pavel, a Europeanized dandy, has begun to stalk Bazarov''s mistress, Anna - because he was in love with Anna''s late mother.

Set in Europe in the late 19th century, Zastrozzi is a melodrama focused on the efforts of the hypnotic Zastrozzi to vanquish a mysterious Italian named Verezzi whom Zastrozzi believes poses an ominous threat to him.For his part, Zastrozzi is a ruthless killer, an atheist who believes only in his own powers to master or destroy anyone who gets in his way. He is warily admired by his student Bernardo and he spars physically, intellectually and emotionally with the steely, arrogant Mathilda, a woman who disdains the bourgeoisie but is intrigued by Zastrozzi, despite the inherent dangers.Zastrozzi spends much of his time pontificating about the vagaries of life. Despite his seemingly superior intelligence he has been thwarted for three years in his attempts to track down the dreamy Verezzi, who in actuality is a deranged painter with little grasp on reality. Verezzi''s survival has actually been orchestrated by Victor, a disarmingly normal little man who may be a master puppeteer in disguise.