Brian Richard Mori’s critically acclaimed play is set in an adult bookshop and movie arcade in Times Square on a scorching summer day in 1979. The story revolves around Earl, the middle-aged manager of the shop, who feels a weary disappointment on how his life has evolved, and his young friend, Mikie, a naïve and inexperienced nineteen-year-old. Despite the seamy surroundings, Earl has a strong sense of basic morality, and he wants to help Mikie achieve a better life than his own. When Earl sets up Mikie on a date with a waitress friend of his, the story takes a hilarious turn. The play explores themes of morality, friendship, sexuality, and the yearning for love. Therein lies much of the irony and comedy and timeliness of ADULT FICTION.

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Introduction to THE BEST PLAYS OF 2000

"Having acted in Brian Richard Mori's ADULT FICTION during readings and backers' auditions, I testify firsthand that each and every reading generated unabashed enthusiasm from theatrically astute audiences.  On the page, this play may seem like a thinly disguised father and son story set against a sleazy erotic background.  Read it again.  One sees the loneliness of lost dreams and dreams that are about to be lost.  ADULT FICTION will bring a laugh and a tear to the eyes of any audience.  Brian Mori, like the other writers in this collection, is a lighthouse in a foggy theatrical world."  - Dan Lauria

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TRICITY NEWS (Nick Montesano):  “Sometimes the most apt of pupils and the most philosophical of teachers miss emphasizing the single most important aspect of a lesson.  The result leaves both with more to learn.  The New Jersey Repertory Theatre in Long Branch is currently presenting the New Jersey premiere of Brian Richard Mori’s ADULT FICTION.  Don’t miss it.  Mori’s tender tale is set in the most unlikely, yet somehow appropriate of places, an adult bookstore in Times Square in 1979.  What unravels is the relationship between Earl, the proprietor of the shop, and Mikie, the son of one of Earl’s former love interests.  In the course of one evening, the two men discuss life, women, predestination, money, coffee, kiddy porn and life.  And when Earl sets Mikie up on a date, Earl instructs his young protégé how to bring candy, take her to a movie, compliment her, and not expect sex right away.  We are sure that Mikie knows exactly what to do.  The results, however, are nothing short of hysterical and disastrous with bitingly difficult realizations for both men.  This is an outstanding evening of theatre.  The play itself is a masterwork of character study.  Mori has written a story with a poetic vernacular that rings so true it almost sounds improvised.... The language of Mori’s play serves to create characters that are tender and rich, and he weaves a tale that is filled with subtlety, sadness and an underling hope.”  

THE TWO RIVER TIMES (Philip Dorian):  "ADULT FICTION is a startling good play.  Playwright Brian Richard Mori has a sure ear for common dialogue, and, ably guided by director Stewart Fisher, Jerry Marino and Aaron Vieira act the heck out of it.... The laughs don’t come from quips; rather they come from recognition of the awkwardness we’ve all experienced in similar situations.... Mr. Mori is a talent to watch.... ADULT FICTION is not an optimistic play; its theme is failed relationships.... [B]e drawn into the expressive writing, directing and acting of ADULT FICTION."

THE TWO RIVER TIMES (NEW JERSEY THEATRE:  THE BEST OF 2000) (Philip Dorian):  “'It was a ‘startling good play.’”  Brian Richard Mori’s expressive writing, Stewart Fisher’s crisp direction, and sensitive performances by Jerry Marino and Aaron Vieira made ADULT FICTION the best of New Jersey Repertory Company’s 2000 offerings.  Producers Gabe and SuzAnne Barabas searched high and low for new plays by promising playwrights.  The results span the same spectrum; ADULT FICTION was a high.” 

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Production: Theatre De Lucia - Lima, Peru

Production:  New Jersey Repertory Company - Long Branch, NJ

Production:  GeVa Theatre - Rochester, NY

Showcase:  Van Dam Theatre - New York, NY

Optioned for off-Broadway by Evans Haile

Optioned for off-Broadway by Raft Theatre

Optioned for off-Broadway by Force Ten Productions

Optioned for off-Broadway by the First East Coast Theatre and Publishing Company

Winner of the Davie Prize for Playwrighting

Multiple readings across the U.S.

Published by Next Stage Press

Published by Smith & Kraus in an anthology entitled THE BEST PLAYS OF 2000

Adapted for the screen and optioned by Anthony Zerbe

The story centers around the mattress relationship of a perpetually sleepy husband and his enterprising wife, who makes extra cash as a phone sex operator.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES (Dale Winogura):  "[T]he marital grace of BEDTIME STORIES combine to create an openly warm and tangible tone.  The actors complement the dialogue, fleshing out believably stunted or expressively caring portraits.... A fine evening of theatre... rich in character.”

VILLAGE VIEW (George T. Chronis):  "BEDTIME STORIES is a delightful comedy centered around the mattress relationship of a perpetually tired husband (Tony Mosley) and his wife (Donna Weiss) who makes extra cash as a phone sex operator.... [The play] proves to be an insightful as well as humorous look at today’s changing relationships.”

DRAMA-LOGUE (Elias Stimac):  "[E]ntertaining.... It is to the credit of the charming Weiss and the superbly subtle Mosley, along with some nice touches by director Nicholas Cohn, that we get to know who these characters are in such a short period of time.”

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Production:  Red Room Theatre - New York, NY

Production:  American Renegade Theatre - North Hollywood, CA

Production:  Parenthesis Theatre Club - Atlanta, GA

Production:  Nat Horne Theatre - New York, NY

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Published by Smith & Kraus in an anthology entitled THE BEST TEN MINUTE PLAYS OF 2005.  2 ACTORS

A savagely funny portrait of Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, as told by his Iago, David Wildstein, who was his high school classmate and '“mastermind” behind the Bridgegate fiasco. The play recounts their beginnings, at Livingston High School, through Christie’s governorship and the events leading up to, during, and beyond Bridgegate, to the present.

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Reading: New Jersey Repertory Company, Long Branch, NJ

Reading: Cape May Stage, Cape May, NJ

One of two finalists for the 2020 Stanley Drama Award

Two chipper housewives, straight out of a '60s commercial, gush in superlatives about pie, coffee, and sex toys.

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NJ ARTS MAVEN (Ruth Ross):  “[Leslie Williams] Reagoso is a very funny know-it-all connoisseur in COFFEE TALK (by Brian Richard Mori and directed by [Liz] Zazzi), wherein a hostess serves her guest (Gloria Lamoureaux) coffee ground from beans she grew, harvested, roasted and ground herself!  Lamoureaux engages in excellent physical therapy with a gift of a giant vibrator; it’s worth the price of a ticket just to watch her turn it on.”

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Production:  Impact Theatre - Berkeley, CA

Production:  New Jersey Repertory Theatre - Long Branch, NJ

Production:  Mondo Cafe Theatre - Summit, NJ

Production:  Tierney's Tavern - Montclair, NJ
 

COMING ATTRACTIONS is a comic valentine to movies (and to New York movie theatres), set in the early 2000s: one set, three characters, no intermission.

Young, Black Howard University student, Kenneth Clark, who writes reviews and celebrity profiles for his school paper, has come to New York to interview the legendary film critic, Andrew Safrin, who has recently lost his job. Polly Klein, Safrin’s bitter rival, shows up to “commiserate,” and secrets are laid bare in this comedy of betrayals.

Stage Reading: Theatre555, directed by Stephen Ditmyer, and starring Richard Masur, Deborah Offner, and Leland Shields Taylor.

Stage Reading: New Jersey Repertory Company, directed by Will Pomerantz, and starring Richard Masur, Becca Lish, and Jonathan Burke.

The play is an adult sex comedy which takes place on a single day:  November 7, 2000, Election Day.  The story focuses on three couples in their mid- to late-thirties who get together to watch the election returns.  The couples are grappling with the same thing the rest of the country was grappling with:  do they stay the course or do they opt for change? 

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“It’s refreshing to read a script that was clearly written for educated, savvy adults.  His story assumes a certain amount of intelligence on the part of its audience.  It’s something of a surprise to read a script about sex that doesn’t talk down to its audience.”  - James Glover, Bush Theatre

“I’d like to congratulate Brian on how he literally brought the national crisis home, showing how it affects everyday people.  His play is an engaging comic examination of the insidiousness and indifference that has seeped into contemporary relationships.  The structural cleverness of simultaneous action, the sharp writing and compelling characters all contribute to make CONCESSIONS the successful wry wicked comedy of manners that it is.  The cinematic nature of the play effectively communicates the extent to which his characters -- and the nation at large -- are rocked from their very foundation of deceit.”  - Liz Engleman, McCarter Theatre

“CONCESSIONS was an enjoyable read, and it shows a great deal of deftness in dialogue.  The way in which he has orchestrated the action in the fragmented scenes is also an admirable feat.”  - Kyle Brenton, Pittsburgh Public Theatre

“His writing shows a strong sense of wit and pacing and craft; certainly the themes are timely.”  - Marge Betley, GeVa Theatre

"He has written an engaging play which hilariously juxtaposes sex with politics.”  - Amy Levinson, Geffen Playhouse

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Workshop:  Alabama Shakespeare Festival - Montgomery, AL

Reading:  Abingdon Theatre Company - New York, NY

Reading:  New Jersey Repertory Company - Long Branch, NJ

A brief, poetic meditation on love, birth, and sex as told by two couples.

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Production:  New Vic Theatre - New York, NY

A monologue of a man reflecting on the narcissistic nature of selfies.

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Published by Fresh Words: An International Literary Magazine

Sitting alone in his squalid tenement room, Buster, blind and lonely, waits anxiously for his only friend, Butch, a boastful, jive-talking product of the streets, who stops by each week to share a bottle of cheap wine.  This dark urban comedy leads to even darker tragedy, when Butch, bent on revenge, sets his sights on robbing a liquor store, with blind Buster serving as the lookout. The results of this oftentimes funny and moving rollercoaster ride sends the audience reeling into a sadness beyond belief.

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VILLAGER:  "Watching Brian Mori’s DREAMS OF FLIGHT carries you down into a bottomless sadness that reaches below the grief produced by the presence of death.... The two are reminiscent of Didi and Gogo in Godot except that they use their minute and waning capabilities to destroy themselves rather than being caught in a cycle of aimless repetition.”

SOHO WEEKLY NEWS:  "Mori has penned a vaudeville of down-and-outs, a tragicomedy starring Buster and Butch.... [A]n intense and provocative piece.... [I]t demonstrates a nascent dramatic talent.”  

THE DRAMATISTS GUILD QUARTERLY: "[A] marvelous discovery.”

INSIDE LINCOLN PARK:  "[W]hips at the senses with the ghettoized signifyin’ interplay between the timorous Buster and the boastful, egocentric Butch.  The dialogue is true.  The acting by Mssrs. [Jeris] Poindexter and [Seiphus M.] Booker contains a brutal honesty that can only come from the soul.”

CHICAGO TRIBUNE:  "[A] gritty, tough, one act play about two denizens of black ghetto, an unflinching honest portrayal of slum squalor and hopelessness.  Mori’s sociological awareness is unimpeachable.... [Poindexter and Booker] are sharp and funny in conveying Mori’s ghetto humor and rough, obscene realities.”

WDCD (90.9 FM):  "[Buster] is a very moving metaphor for us all.  His blind stumblings lead the way for all those who grope for other people but who are frightened when they touch them.... [A] highly compassionate look at how our self-deficiencies bring our soaring intentions and hopes crashing down tragically on the hard ground of reality.”

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Production: Theatre for a New Generation (The Producers Club) - New York, NY

Production:  Leicester College (Mad Susan Theatre Company) - Leicester, England

Production:  Aflabi Ojumu Productions - Brooklyn, NY

Production:  Notre Dame de Namur University - Belmont, CA

Production:  Simba Theatre Company - Los Vegas, NV

Production:  Victory Gardens Theatre - Chicago, IL

Production:  Ensemble Theatre - Houston, TX

Production:  Impossible Ragtime Theatre - New York, NY

Published by Dramatists Play Service

Two hard-nosed, tough-as-nails ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents capture and interrogate Eve as she tries to sneak back into the Garden of Eden.

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Production:  New Jersey Repertory Company - Long Branch, NJ

Published by Smith and Kraus in 2017 THEATRE BRUT FESTIVAL ANTHOLOGY

A young man gets an unexpected grilling from an overprotective, loquacious father when he goes to pick up the man's daughter on his first date.

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Production:  Nat Horne Theatre - New York, NY

HELLMAN v. McCARTHY is based on the greatest literary feud in modern American history.  On January 24, 1980, Mary McCarthy, famed novelist, critic and memoirist, appeared as a guest on THE DICK CAVETT SHOW and declared that “every word [Lillian Hellman] writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’”  Hellman went ballistic and sued McCarthy, Dick Cavett, Cavett’s production company, and PBS for libel.  The lawsuit, which spanned more than four years, was the talk of the literary community. Dick Cavett played himself in the critically acclaimed world premiere at the Abingdon Theatre Company. 

Cast Size: 4M, 2W

Running Time: 90 Minutes

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Productions:

*Abingdon Theatre, New York, New York

*Pygmalion Productions, Salt Lake City, Utah

*Theatre 40, Beverly Hills, California

*Dalton Little Theatre, Dalton, Georgia

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Published by Next Stage Press: https://nextstagepress.wpengine.com/hellman-v-mccarthy/

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PBS/WNET/Thirteen - Theatre Close-up

https://vimeo.com/198059952

Password: TCU13_wnet*

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4366084/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

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ABINGDON THEATRE COMPANY – NEW YORK, NY

ARTS & LEISURE NEWS (Karen White):  “Playwright Brian Richard Mori and Director Jan Buttram bring a cheerful exuberance to HELLMAN v. McCARTHY…. [T]he ride is a good one: filled with entertaining dialogue, humor and clowning that doesn’t miss, and attention grabbing drama throughout a well-paced 90 minutes, with no intermission…. The split screen [effect between Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy] is cogently weaved.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS (Jennifer Farrar):  “…playwright Brian Richard Mori creates a lively theatrical imagining of how the two women, especially Hellman, might have behaved behind the scenes while the libel lawsuit ran its course until Hellman’s death in June 1984….90 fast-flying minutes.”

CURTAIN UP (Elyse Sommer):  “... a brisk, entertaining 90 minutes.”

THE EPOCH TIMES (Diana Barth):  “…top-notch…. [T]he content of HELLMAN v. McCARTHY is sure to interest those who are intrigued by both the period in question as well as its spicy, aggressive participants.”

EXEUNT MAGAZINE (Molly Grogan):  “The production reads as both a historic document and a cautionary tale. It was pride that paved the fall of Hellman and McCarthy. It’s a story that even the humorist in Cavett doesn’t find funny at all and a lesson he would rather we not forget.”

HI DRAMA (Mark Savitt):  “This is an historical play that is both clever and engaging.” 

HUFFINGTON POST (David Finkle): “The incident, which delighted literati everywhere, titillated Brian Richard Mori so much that he’s concocted a brisk and pithy 90-minuter.”

LIGHTING AND SOUND AMERICA (David Barbour):  “It is a stimulating and amusing experience, thanks to fine performances and some stellar displays of bad behavior.”

MAXAMOO:  “…excellent….tinged with humor. HELLMAN v. McCARTHY holds added value to those who remember the feud but there are lessons to learn from this part-intellectual, part-legal drama even for those unfamiliar with the play’s history.”

NEW YORK CALLING (William Wolf):  “The battle harking back to the clawing against one another by two literary lions is captured dramatically in HELLMAN v. McCARTHY’s excellent theatre.”

NEW YORK MAGAZINE’s Approval Matrix:  “highbrow/brilliant.”

NY THEATRE NOW (Rochelle Denton):  “The play by Brian Richard Mori is alternatively funny and bitchy…. I couldn’t help but contrast what a good time [Dick Cavett] and we were having with the misery the play’s two protagonists wreaked on each other and their beleaguered lawyers, and how ultimately they both died bitter, rancorous -- lonely and stubborn to the end.” 

NEW YORK TIMES (Charles Isherwood):  “A literary catfight, with context by Cavett. Mr. Mori has researched his play diligently. He does a credible and creditable job of both bringing these figures to theatrical life, and sketching in the background to their conflict.”

OFF-OFF ONLINE (Edward Karam):  “Mori’s script is up to the juicy story.”

STAGE AND CINEMA (Paulanne Simmons):  “…the pathos is mixed with a good deal of biting humor.” 

THEATRE IS EASY (Eleanor J. Bader):  “Best Bet. A brilliantly-written, fast-paced, and somewhat fictionalized account of the literary feud between playwright/memoirist Lillian Hellman and critic/novelist Mary McCarthy…. compelling drama….Mori’s crisp writing and the cast’s pitch-perfect delivery makes for an exceptionally entertaining and provocative night of theatre.”

THEATRE MANIA (David Gordon):  “Perhaps the most meta experience onstage this season.”

THEATRE PIZZAZZ (Sandi Durell):  “The 90 minutes moves swiftly…. If you’re interested in a backward glimpse into this historical (and sometimes hysterical) moment in time, set your sights on HELLMAN v. McCARTHY.”

THEATRE SCENE (Joel Benjamin):  “Brian Richard Mori’s HELLMAN v. McCARTHY is a forthright representation of the calamitous conflict between playwright Lillian Hellman and novelist and critic Mary McCarthy who were locked in mortal legal combat from 1979 until Hellman’s death in 1984.”

THE WESTCHESTER GUARDIAN (John Simon):  “Mori must be commended for making what is, after all of necessity fiction, blend in so smoothly with the not that copious fact…. [A] play juggling drama and comedy, with perspicacity and a marvelous sense of the absurd.”

WOMEN AROUND TOWN (Alix Cohen):  “…sizzles as much as it informs. This is smart writing requiring a smart audience. Expertly staged to illuminate character as well as depict literally side by side reactions, it also specifies political issues which may lose you if not well informed…. Brava!”  

THEATRE 40 – BEVERLY HILLS, CA

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT (Ed Rampell):  “Brian Richard Mori’s vivid, fast moving account of the clash of the literary titans … is exceptionally well constructed and acted…. Playwright Mori does a superb job delineating these characters, and it’s sheer brilliance to introduce Hellman while she’s playing Scrabble…. Absolutely ideal for those interested in the characters and subjects depicted….. Mori and company have managed to cut the content to fit this year’s fashion.”

ARTS IN LA (Neal Weaver):  “Mori manages to incorporate a lot of biographical detail into his script… and he has persuasively reconstructed a one-on-one meeting between the two furious ladies.”

BEVERLY HILLS COURIER (Norma Zager):  “… sheer enjoyment…. There is something wonderful about watching a literary figure inspired play in a small theatre…. The ninety-nine seat venue added greatly to the feeling of intimacy that makes the play work so well on yet another level….”

BROADWAY WORLD LOS ANGELES (Don Grigware):  “Brian Richard Mori has written a very well-structured and engrossing play…. Mori’s meticulous portraits of all the characters especially the women are right on target and he builds the storyline with tremendous suspense throughout the 100 minute one-act…. Don’t miss HELLMAN v. McCARTHY!  It is a riveting piece that will keep you on the edge of your seats.  It is simultaneously intelligent and thoroughly enjoyable theatre.

”EXAMINER (Michael Edwards):  “… the trek to Theatre 40 or the Saban should not be missed, by any theatre and/or history aficionado in Los Angeles.  *****

THE GEEK AUTHORITY (Lorenzo Marchessi):  “… cleverly written play…. HELLMAN v. McCARTHY is a wonderfully charming, funny and provocative piece to see for all.”

LA DRAMA CRITICS CIRCLE (Melinda Schupmann):  “The construction of Mori’s play… is worth the 90-minute production.”

LIFE IN LA (Brianne Schaer):  “… smart and humorous play…. Although the play is set in the early 1980s, its material is accessible to today’s viewers who are sure to enjoy its humor [and] compelling storyline…. not to be missed…. Wonderfully entertaining…”

LOS ANGELES POST (Dan Berkowtiz):  “the play… proves to be an absorbing cautionary tale about the dangers of taking oneself too seriously…. There’s bile to spare in the dialogue, much of it acidly funny….. Mr. Mori has given each woman a few moments of surcease from the fight, and the actresses make the most of them…”

SANTA MONICA DAILY PRESS (Cynthia Citron):  “… a wonderful play…”

SCENES AROUND TOWN (Harrison Held):  “A fun nite at the Theatre 40 opening of HELLMAN v. McCARTHY…. The interesting & very entertaining play based on true facts includes what if fantasy scenes & is well written by Brian Richard Mori….. fast moving 90 minute play…”

STAGE RAW (Bill Raden):  “… fascinating…. Mori’s script cleverly uses the PBS edition of Cavett’s show and its inciting, 1980 interview with McCarthy…. What may be most astonishing about HELLMAN v. McCARTHY, however, is that somehow its crazy, postmodernist blend of fact, speculative fiction, live reenactment and intimate celebrity evening ultimately turns out to be so satisfying.”

THEATRE IN LA (Audrey Linden):  “It is a real coup for Theatre 40 to present the West Coast Premiere of Mori’s play…. Mori’s play was fascinating on many levels.  [He] captured the dowager, dragon that Hellman was beautifully…. This is an insightful, well-written and well-acted play not to be missed.”

PYGMALION THEATRE COMPANY - SALT LAKE CITY, UT

SALT LAKE CITY TRIBUNE (Barbara M. Bannon):  “… sassy and funny…. the talk is consistently clever, and Mori’s portraits of the two women are entertaining and larger than life.  He keeps the action moving by cutting cinematically back and forth between Hellman and McCarthy as they state their case and react to each other…. What emerges from the mix is a sad and funny portrait of two fascinating women who were too much alike to ever see eye-to-eye.”

CITY WEEKLY (Danna Bowes):  “… scathingly funny…. [The play] lays out its wares and allows the audience to examine [Hellman and McCarthy] as closely as they like.  It works just as well as a light comedy where Hellman gets off mean zingers at everyone else’s expense as it does as a unique look at women of a colorful epoch.”

UTAH ARTS MAGAZINE (Geoff Wichert):  “The distillation necessary  to fit two such extraordinary lifetimes into one evening – in fact 90 minutes – gives HELLMAN v. McCARTHY something of the quality of a popular novel made into a film…. These would be thankless roles, depicting yet another odd couple locked in self-destructive legal squabbles, were their parts not so juicy and, thanks to Mori’s meticulous editing of their copiously-documented verbal skills, exquisitely funny.”

UTAH THEATRE BLOGGERS (Megan Crivello):  “HELLMAN v. McCARTHY is an adventurous take on a slice of the literary and celebrity past.  It is fast paced and well done.  Audiences will be drawn into a slightly lurid, slightly preposterous world that proved the adage ‘Well-behaved women rarely make history’.”

Two strangers meet at Max’s Tavern for one final drink before the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown

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The Coronavirus Plays Project

The play focuses on a best-selling, womanizing World War II historian, Benjamin Gardner, who is accused of plagiarism; his loyal wife Helen; and their two sons -- Tom, coasting through life, who has an on-again off-again relationship with their father; and his younger brother Peter, who has just completed their father’s “authorized” biography.  During the course of the play, family secrets are laid bare and the truth of Benjamin’s plagiarism charge comes shockingly to light.

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Reading:  Abingdon Theatre Company - New York, NY

Two old men wearing the exact same clothes meet by chance on a park bench.

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Production:  Theatre 22 - New York, NY

A one-man play on Richard Nixon set in the White House's Lincoln Sitting Room on the eve of his resignation.

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“Whoever I’ve shown NIXON IN SECLUSION to has commented favourably on the high quality of the writing.  Of course, I’ve only shown it to those whose opinions I value.  I think the play is brilliant.  I had hoped that Mike Nichols could spend sometime on it with us.  Mike finishes his next picture sometime in the fall and we may be able to get together then and “regroup.’”  - E. G. Marshall

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Adapted for television     

A satirical comedy about a small, amateur theatre company struggling through the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Produced by Planet Connections

The personal and professional ups-and-downs of three-card monte playing brothers.

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Production:  American Renaissance Theatre - New York, NY

The remarkable true story of Mary Toft, a poor, illiterate woman who, in 1726, in the Village of Godalming in the County of Surrey, England, convinced half of England, including the most prominent doctors of their day, that she had given birth to rabbits. 

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"What a strange and lovely -- if I can use that term -- play.  It has an authentic and dramatic flair, thoroughly distinct characters, and a wonderful tone that resists the temptation to comment on its own outrageousness.  [The play] captures an atmosphere that is startlingly idiosyncratic, and it finds a dramatic expression of what I suspect may be profound value questions about what it takes to make a go of things in this life.”  - Shepard Sobel, The Pearl Theatre Company

“[W]e had a lot of fun with this play and it was seriously considered for inclusion up to the end.  Eventually, it was decided that it was a bit too graphic sexually, and a bit too ‘gross’ for our audiences here in Orlando.  But it is really a fun piece.”  - Patrick Flick, Orlando Shakespeare Festival

"The play’s premise is fascinating and bizarre, and the writer has crafted a funny, sly and contemporary satire out of the material.”  - Tanya Palmer, The Goodman Theatre

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Semi-finalist:  Orlando Shakespeare’s Harriet Lake Festival of Plays

Semi-finalist:  Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center’s National Playwrights Conference

Reading:  New Jersey Repertory Company

Adapted for the screen

The play is a meditation on compromise, about the portrayal of black actors in the early days of the motion picture industry, arguably "Hollywood's" darkest stain.  The two scene structure centers on a morning's rehearsal of a forgettable scene of a forgettable movie, circa 1936.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES:  "Brian Richard Mori’s one-act play is akin to short fiction, packing a lot into a small slice of life.... [The play] smartly and accurately targets the racism in early Hollywood films.”

DRAMA-LOGUE:  "SLOW FADE TO BLACK takes a hard look at the successful ‘colored’ actors in the film industry of 1936.... Mori’s script is meticulously clever in setting us up -- allowing us to put down our collective political correctness to laugh spontaneously -- only to smack reality in our faces.”

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Production:  University of Illinois (Second Annual Juneteenth Festival of New Works: A Cultural Celebration of Emancipation!) - Louisville, KY

Production:  Studio Theatre, Inc. - New York, NY

Production:  Bitter Truth Theatre - North Hollywood, CA

Production:  Neighborhood Playhouse - Atlanta, GA

Adapted for the screen

A comedian of dubious talent signs his soul to the Devil (an agent) for an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and 20 years "Top Banana."

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Reading:  Shelter West Theatre Company - New York, NY

Adapted for the screen

The play is based loosely on the infamous Lana Turner-Johnny Stompanato-Cheryl Crane scandal, told from “Johnny’s” point of view.  Johnny, a young gigolo/hood, sees Serena, an older, legendary movie actress, as his ticket to a new life, while Serena dreams of the glory days when she was the Hollywood glamour queen.  Caught in the middle of this doomed triangle is Chris, Serena’s 14-year-old daughter –- moody and awkward, with little of her mother’s grace or beauty.

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Reading:  Shelter West Theatre Company - New York, NY

Adapted for the screen

A young married couple, on a picnic, hope to rekindle their lost passion.

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Production:  Staten Island Shakespearian Co. - Staten Island, NY

A “reimagionation,” set in wartime Iraq, based on the play WOYZECK by Georg Büchner

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FORWARD

Georg Büchner’s WOYZECK, the first modern tragedy and the major forerunner of modernist avant-garde plays, is not the easiest play to love. It is blunt, nihilist, misogynistic; its characters are two-dimensional; scenes are fragmented and self-contained, and none flows out of or into any of the others; and yet one cannot deny its relevance or its cumulative power.

Büchner died at age 23 in 1837 of typhus. He left behind three plays -- DANTON’S DEATH (considered, by some, to be the finest first play ever written), LEONCE AND LENA, and the unfinished WOYZECK. According to a letter Büchner wrote to his fiancée, he was within one week of completing the play before he died. His handwriting was often difficult to decipher and the scenes were short and fragmented, left in no sequential order. The play was not published until 42 years after his death, and its first performance, in Munich, was not until 1913.

WOYZECK NOW, based, in part, on 10 different translations or adaptations , including Alban Berg’s libretto for his opera WOYZZECK, is a grotesquely comic, sexually explicit, post-modern “reinvention” of the original play, set during the American military occupation in Iraq, in 2006 -- that bloody, unnecessary war at its most unpredictably violent. Liberties were taken, scenes were shuffled or combined , characters were dropped, names were changed, but I stayed true to the spirit of the original, not only to its overall aesthetic but to the “beats” of each brief scene.

- Brian Richard Mori (2020)

A one-man play based on Geoff Dyer’s OUT OF SHEER RAGE: WRESTLING WITH D. H. LAWRENCE

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Staged Reading: New Jerse Repertory Company, Long Branch, NJ