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'Belle' is a parody of Tennessee Williams' wonderful play 'The Glass Menagerie'. In this version Amanda is frustrated with her over-sensitive, hypochondriac son named Lawrence.  Lawrence refuses to leave the house or get a job; he’s too shy to ever met anyone; and he spends all his time playing with his collection of glass cocktail stirrers. 

Lawrence’s more regular brother Tom brings home a “feminine caller” from the warehouse, and Lawrence is overwhelmed by the butch girl Ginny who is deaf and shouts all the time.  Ginny and Lawrence eventually sort of hit it off, and she teaches him how to swagger and talk about baseball in a loud voice.  But then she leaves, and Tom goes off to the movies (where he has a tendency to meet and bring home sailors who have missed their boat), and Amanda is stuck forever with hopeless Lawrence

The Actor's Nightmare

George is an accountant who wanders onto an empty stage, not certain where he is or how he got there.  The stage manager informs him he’s the understudy, and must go on in a few minutes.  George doesn’t know his name, doesn’t think he’s an actor , and has no idea what play he’s supposed to do.

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He’s pushed onstage dressed as Hamlet, and finds himself opposite a glamorous actress who seemingly is in Noel Coward’s Private Lives. George does his best to guess the lines, and guess appropriate behavior, but then the actress leaves, and suddenly a new actor comes in, spouting Shakespearean verse (from Hamlet).  This is much harder to guess, and after a while George is left alone and must improvise his own Shakespearean soliloquy.

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In the closing sections, George finds himself thrust into a Samuel Beckett play (a combination of Waiting for Godot and Endgame), which he has very little knowledge of. And then suddenly he’s Sir Thomas More in the historical drama A Man for All Seasons, facing a beheading for opposing Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boylen – and alarmingly the executioner seems more real than he should.