1957 plays

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs is a 1960 American drama film directed by Delbert Mann and starring Robert Preston and Dorothy McGuire. Shirley Knight garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and Lee Kinsolving was nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actor. Knight was also nominated for two Golden Globes. Mann's direction was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing in a Feature Film. The film was based on the Tony Award-nominated 1957 play of the same name by William Inge.

Endgame is an absurdist, tragicomic one-act play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. It is about a blind, paralyzed, domineering elderly man, his geriatric parents, and his servile companion in an abandoned house in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, who await an unspecified "end". Much of the play's content consists of terse, back and forth dialogue between the characters reminiscent of bantering, along with trivial stage actions. The plot is supplanted by the development of a grotesque story-within-a-story that the character Hamm is relating. The play's title refers to chess and frames the characters as acting out a losing battle with each other or their fate.

A Dead Secret is a 1957 crime play by Rodney Ackland. It is a murder drama set in 1911 London and is based on the Seddon murder trial. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool then transferred to the Piccadilly Theatre in London's West End where it ran for 212 performances. The West End cast included Paul Scofield, Madge Brindley, Dinsdale Landen, Megs Jenkins, Harold Scott, Gretchen Franklin, Arthur Lowe, Maureen Delany and Laidman Browne.

The Balcony (French: Le Balcon) is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. It is set in an unnamed city that is experiencing a revolutionary uprising in the streets; most of the action takes place in an upmarket brothel that functions as a microcosm of the regime of the establishment under threat outside.

The Multi-Coloured Umbrella is a 1957 Australian stage play written by Barbara Vernon. It was produced professionally, was adapted for television and radio, and inspired two prequels.

Dear Liar, full title Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters is a play by American actor, director, and playwright Jerome Kilty. It was first staged in 1957 and published in 1960. A television adaptation was made in 1964, directed by David Gardner for National Educational Television. Two film adaptations were later created, one in English by director Gordon Rigsby in 1981 and another in French as Cher menteur (meaning Dear liar) in 1982 by French director Alexandre Tarta.

The Tunnel of Love is a three-act play with five scenes and a prologue, written by Joseph Fields and Peter De Vries, adapted from the latter's 1954 novel. It is a comedy with a simple plot, small cast, and only one setting. The action is concerned with the efforts of a married couple to conceive a child and the complications that set in when they decide to try adoption. The staging by Fields features many entrances and exits from the single set with moderate pacing.

Holiday for Lovers is a 1957 play written by Ronald Alexander. It opened on Broadway on February 14, 1957, and closed after 100 performances on May 11, 1957. It was later adapted into the 1959 film Holiday for Lovers.

Look Homeward, Angel is a 1957 stage play by the playwright Ketti Frings. The play is based on Thomas Wolfe's 1929 largely autobiographical novel of the same title.

The Room is Harold Pinter's first play, written and first produced in 1957. Considered by critics the earliest example of Pinter's "comedy of menace", this play has strong similarities to Pinter's second play, The Birthday Party, including features considered hallmarks of Pinter's early work and of the so-called Pinteresque: dialogue that is comically familiar and yet disturbingly unfamiliar, simultaneously or alternatingly both mundane and frightening; subtle yet contradictory and ambiguous characterizations; a comic yet menacing mood characteristic of mid-twentieth-century English tragicomedy; a plot featuring reversals and surprises that can be both funny and emotionally moving; and an unconventional ending that leaves at least some questions unresolved.