5 Plays You Shouldn’t See with Your Parents

by Treehouse Editors

M.G. Hammond

Have you ever been watching a movie with your parents when suddenly a really inappropriate scene comes on involving sex, drug use, intense violence, or anything else that is totally embarrassing to let them see you interested in? So then you start to fiddle with the nearest objects to pretend like you aren’t paying attention and you get this distinct feeling that your parents are just as uncomfortable as you are. Well, the following five plays will provide the same squeamishness, but they are also enlightening, moving, and incredibly entertaining.

  1. Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet – Winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, this play provides plenty of gratifying profanity and cynicism and is a great example of “Mamet Speak,” the quick, overlapping, and deceitful style of dialogue the playwright is known for. Plus, it will really make you hate salesmen. It may also make you hate yourself a little if you’ve ever worked retail. There is also a film adaptation with an amazing cast.
  2. Moon Over Buffalo by Ken Ludwig – This farce about the nature of show business will have you in stitches the whole way through. The situational comedy includes alcoholism, sexual innuendo, and overall ridiculousness.
  3. August: Osage County by Tracy Letts – This one has got all the impropriety you could ever need: professor-student affair, parent-kid pot smoking, pedophilia, incest, and a crazy, pill-popping matriarch. Oh, and it also won the Pulitzer in 2008.
  4. The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler – Yeah, you know I have to include this one. But seriously, go see it, watch it, or read it. It will make you uncomfortable in all the right ways. And it’s especially relevant right now.
  5. Pippin by Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson – Okay, this one is a musical, and a not-so-familiar coming of age story involving war and patricide. There’s also a choreographed orgy scene. Fosse at his best.

Mary Grace Hammond studies poetry and psychology at UNC Wilmington. Besides editing for Treehouse, writing, and studying, she spends her time spoiling her two dogs, singing show tunes with her pet bird, and watching really terrible horror movies.