I'd suggest
Waiting for Godot, but since you have two women and one man whom you'd like to cast, that might not be the best choice (although some of my suggestions below have only one woman, that was hard to avoid, and one has no men).
Some ideas:
The Last Yankee by Arthur Miller (3 women, 2 men)
Old Times by Harold Pinter (2 women, 1 man)
Bosoms and Neglect by John Guare (2 women, 1 man, but slightly complicated scenic demands so perhaps not the best choice.)
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur by Tennessee Williams (4 women)
Serenading Louie by Lanford Wilson (2 women, 2 men)
Doubt by John Patrick Shanley (3 women, 1 man)
Lovers by Brian Friel (3 women, 2 men. This consists of two one-acts, one of which has a very simple set.)
Fool for Love by Same Shepard (1 woman, 3 men)
The Faith Healer by Brian Friel (1 woman, 2 men)
Molly Sweeney by Brian Friel (1 woman, 2 men)
The Dying Gaul by Craig Lucas (1 woman, 2 men)
The Chairs by Eugene Ionesco (1 woman, 1 man)
Benefactors by Michael Frayn (2 women, 2 men)
Talley's Folly by Lanford Wilson (1 woman, 1 man)
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh (2 women, 2 men)
Also, lots of playwrights have written one-acts with small casts that can be done with very simple sets. Two, three or even four of these (depending on the lengths of individual plays) could work. Chekhov, Guare, Harry Kondoleon, Durang, Ionesco, Beckett, Pinter, Lanford Wilson, and Williams are some playwrights whose one-acts I think might be especially worth looking at, but there are plenty of others. Doing several one-acts gives the actors opportunities to show versatility. It can be fun for actors to play two or more characters during the course of an evening (or afternoon).
A few of the earlier suggestions that were made are not examples of what you asked for.
Harvey has 13 characters. Perhaps a couple could be doubled (though I'm not sure that would work too well), but it still would be over the max of five that you stated.
The Miracle Worker requires a minimum of 10 or so. And I'm guessing (perhaps wrongly) that the person who suggested
A Minority of One meant a
A Majority of One, which has a dozen or so characters (of which several are Asian so you'd need a bunch of interested Asian actors) and several sets.
And while
God of Carnage is a good show and has only four characters, it requires a projectile-vomiting effect for one of the characters, which is apparently not so easy to pull off. So if you're going to have a small tech budget (which sounds likely), it may not be a good choice.
Updated On: 6/29/11 at 01:40 AM
