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The Wolf From The Door (Modern Plays)
by Rory MullarkeyWe don't actually drink coffee at my coffee morning. – What do you do, then? – We discuss the violent overthrow of the government. Also, there's flower arranging.In this intensely imaginative and daringly brave-thinking play, award-winning playwright Rory Mullarkey imagines a wild road trip across Middle England. Together, Lady Catherine and her young protégé Leo enlist every tearoom, hot yoga class and Women's Institute group on a mission to change the country forever.This play was the 2014 Pinter Commission and the winner of the George Devine Award. It received its world premiere production at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs on 10 September 2014, starring Anna Chancellor as Lady Catherine and directed by James Macdonald.
Tim Price Plays: For Once; Salt, Root and Roe; The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning; I'm With the Band; Protest Song; Under the Sofa (Contemporary Dramatists)
by Tim PriceIntroduced by the author, this is the first collection of Tim Price's plays. The winner of the 2013 James Tait Black Prize for Drama, Tim Price's work includes For Once; Salt, Root and Roe; The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning; I'm With the Band; Protest Song and Under the Sofa (published here for the first time).For Once: Through a series of interweaving accounts, For Once cuts to the heart of a family and a community turned upside down by unimaginable tragedy. Salt, Root and Roe: A wry, heart-breaking drama of love, grief and acceptance set against the mythical backdrop of North Pembrokeshire. The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning: This award-winning play tackles one of the most controversial political stories of our age, placing it in the context of other great Welsh radicals, from the Chartists to Aneurin Bevan.I'm With the Band: A witty response to the Scottish Independence debate in which an Englishman, a Northern Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman struggle to maintain the previous harmony of their rock band.Protest Song: Price's funny and savage monologue which explores the reality of the Occupy movement through Danny who sleeps rough on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral.Under the Sofa: Previously unpublished, Under the Sofa is a mother's monologue about the experience of her son being in prison for a violent crime.
Wingman and Skittles (Modern Plays)
by Richard MarshDad wasn't angry. As I started to cry.He hugged me. He calmed me. And he taught me to lie.Wingman is a new father-son comedy from Fringe-First winner Richard Marsh. Mum's dead. Annoyingly, dad's not. After twenty years apart, can father and son say goodbye to mum without saying hello to each other? This achingly funny story reminds us that no matter how bad life is, family can make it worse. Wingman received its world premiere at the Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, on 30 July 2014, directed by Justin Audibert, before transferring to the Soho Theatre Upstairs from 2 - 20 September and then touring.The play is published alongside Richard Marsh's Skittles, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2011 and then featured on Radio 4 as Richard Marsh: Love and Sweets, winning Best Scripted Comedy at the BBC Audio Drama Awards.'For verse with heart and verve, see Richard Marsh's dazzling love-gone-wrong show Skittles' Telegraph'Richard Marsh's Skittles came at high velocity, whizzing through the various stages of a romantic entanglement that began when two colleagues shared 'a noncommittal Skittle' during a work break, progressing quickly to proposal and marriage . . . Funny and wise.' Guardian
Oh What A Lovely War (Student Editions)
by Theatre Workshop Joan Littlewood Steve LewisFully annotated student edition of a modern classicOh What a Lovely War is a theatrical chronicle of the First World War, told through the songs and documents of the period. First performed by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London in 1963, it received the acclaim of London audiences and critics. It won the Grand Prix of the Théâtre des Nations festival in Paris that year and has gone on to become a classic of the modern theatre. In 1969 a film version was made which extended the play's popular success. The play is now on the standard reading list of schools and universities around the UK and was revived by the Royal National Theatre in 1998.
Oh What A Lovely War
by Theatre WorkshopOh What a Lovely War is a theatrical chronicle of the First World War, told through the songs and documents of the period. First performed by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London in 1963, it received the acclaim of London audiences and critics. It won the Grand Prix of the Théâtre des Nations festival in Paris that year and has gone on to become a classic of the modern theatre. In 1969 a film version was made which extended the play's popular success. The play is now on the standard reading list of schools and universities around the UK and was revived by the Royal National Theatre in 1998. This new version of the play, as edited by Joan Littlewood, returns the script to its original version. Includes a new photo section of the original production, and an Afterword by Victor Spinetti.
The Lonesome West
by Martin McDonaghThis Student Edition features expert and helpful annotation, including a scene-by-scene summary, a detailed commentary on the dramatic, social and political context, and on the themes, characters, language and structure of the play, as well a list of suggested reading and questions for further study and a review of performance history.The Lonesome West was first presented as a Druid Theatre company and Royal Court co-production in the summer of 1997, and is the final part of McDonagh's Leenane trilogy. This edition explores the play's substantial themes and textured controversy, which make it such a popular choice to study: the Catholic Church is exposed as irrelevant and powerless and the characters have a dangerously skewed sense of morality. The text is full of McDonagh's characteristic combination of farce, aggression and wit. The plot follows two brothers, Valene and Coleman, living alone in their father's house after his recent death. They find it impossible to exist without massive and violent disputes over the most mundane and innocent of topics. Only Father Welsh, the local young priest, is prepared to try to reconcile the two before their petty squabblings spiral into vicious and bloody carnage.Martin McDonagh is the most controversial Irish dramatist working today, with his explorations of Irish national identity which look at the darker side of provincial life. His bleak but blackly comic portrayal of modern, rural Ireland courts debate with its dark farce, caricatures of violence and barbarism and an exaggerated, poeticised dialect of Hiberno-English.
The Beauty Queen Of Leenane
by Martin McDonaghThe Beauty Queen of Leenane was first presented as a Druid Theatre/Royal Court Theatre co-production in January 1996. Set in the mountains of Connemara, County Galway, The Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen Folan, a plain and lonely woman in her early forties, and Mag her manipulative ageing mother whose interference in Maureen's first and potentially last loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that is as gothically funny as it is horrific.
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
by Martin McDonaghA farcical look at political violence as it's played out during the Troubles in Northern Ireland against the drab backdrop of a bare, rustic Irish cottage and unending boredom in an inhospitable environment in which a mutilated cat sets off a murderous cycle of revenge. Wee Thomas was a friendly cat. He would always say hello to you were you to see him sitting on a wall. (Pause.) He won't be saying hello no more, God bless him. Not with that lump of a brain gone. Who knocked Wee Thomas over on the lonely road on the island of Inishmore, and was it an accident? "Mad Padraig" will want to know when he gets back from a stint of torture and chip shop bombing in Northern Ireland: he loves that cat more than life itself.
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
by Martin McDonagh'There's more than one way to skin a theatrical cat; and McDonagh's chosen weapons are laughter and gore... Pushing theatre to its limits, McDonagh is making a serious point... a work as subversive as those Synge and O'Casey plays that sparked Dublin riots in the last century' Guardian'A brave satire... Swiftianly savage and parodic... with explicit brutal actino and lines which sing with grace and wit' ObserverWho knocked Mad Padraic's cat over on a lonely road on the island of Inishmore and was it an accident? He'll want to know when he gets back from a stint of torture and chip-shop bombing in Northern Ireland: he loves his cat more than life itself.The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a brilliant satire on terrorism, a powerful corrective to the beautification of violence in contemporary culture, and a hilarious farce. It premiered at the RSC's The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, in May 2001.Commentary and notes by Patrick Lonergan
A Taste Of Honey
by Shelagh DelaneyA Taste of Honey became a sensational theatrical success when first produced in London by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company. It was made into a highly acclaimed film in 1961. The play is about the adolescent Jo and her relationships with those about her - her irresponsible, roving mother Helen and her mum's newly acquired drunken husband, the black sailor who leaves her pregnant and Geoffrey the homosexual art student who moves in to help with the baby. It is also about Jo's unshakeable optimism throughout her trials. This story of a mother and daughter relationship set in working class Manchester continues to enthral new generations of readers and audiences.Now established as a modern classic, this comic and poignant play by a then nineteen-year-old working-class Lancashire girl was praised at its London premiere in 1958 by Graham Greene as having "all the freshness of Mr Osborne's Look Back in Anger and a greater maturity."
Phakama: Making Participatory Performance
by Caoimhe McAvinchey Fabio Santos Lucy Richardson Andrew SiddallAn international arts organisation and network engaging with music, dance, theatre and visual art, Phakama creates adventurous, site-responsive performances with large groups of people from diverse backgrounds. With contributions from participants, artists, academics and cultural commentators from India, Ireland, South Africa, the UK and USA, this book features case studies, interviews and articles covering two decades of practice. At the heart of the book is a selection of carefully explained and beautifully illustrated exercises which will enable Phakama's methodology to be used by organisations and practitioners working with young people internationally. Phakama is a Xhosa and Zulu word for stand up, arise, empower yourself. With a focus on collaborative, non-hierarchical performance making, Phakama invites cultural sharing and critical engagement with the world we live in. As well as engaging with political and critical concerns about contemporary theatre and performance, the book offers unique approaches to devising theatre, applied and social theatre, intercultural performance practices and pedagogic models of collaboration and cultural leadership.
Performing King Lear: Gielgud to Russell Beale
by Jonathan CroallKing Lear is arguably the most complex and demanding play in the whole of Shakespeare. Once thought impossible to stage, today it is performed with increasing frequency, both in Britain and America. It has been staged more often in the last fifty years than in the previous 350 years of its performance history, its bleak message clearly chiming in with the growing harshness, cruelty and violence of the modern world. Performing King Lear offers a very different and practical perspective from most studies of the play, being centred firmly on the reality of creation and performance. The book is based on Jonathan Croall's unique interviews with twenty of the most distinguished actors to have undertaken this daunting role during the last forty years, including Donald Sinden, Tim Pigott-Smith, Timothy West, Julian Glover, Oliver Ford Davies, Derek Jacobi, Christopher Plummer, Michael Pennington, Brian Cox and Simon Russell Beale. He has also talked to two dozen leading directors who have staged the play in London, Stratford and elsewhere. Among them are Nicholas Hytner, David Hare, Kenneth Branagh, Adrian Noble, Deborah Warner, Jonathan Miller and Dominic Dromgoole. Each reveals in precise and absorbing detail how they have dealt with the formidable challenge of interpreting and staging Shakespeare's great tragedy.
Paradise Bound
by Jonathan LarkinComedy about escaping Liverpool humdrum'I wanna walk down the road an' not know where I'm gonna end up. I want real grass that goes on for miles. Not false turf stuck in between a chippy an' a bettin' shop.' Anthony's seen the cranes go up. He's living in the Capital of Culture. So why is it that everything in the Dingle feels the same? What's a boy to do if he wants to talk about the latest subtitled film and drink green tea? If you want something different from everyone around you, can you really find happiness right there in your own backyard? Or is it over the rainbow after all? Paradise Bound is a new Liverpool comedy from Jonathan Larkin. It had its world premiere at the Liverpool Everyman on 28 April 2006.'this debut is proof that the Everyman is back producing the next generation of Liverpool playwrights' Guardian 'The latest talent from Liverpool is . . . Jonathan Larkin and his scabrously funny play pits the image that the city would like to promote of itself against the hard reality.' Lyn Gardner, Guardian
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
by Tennessee WilliamsIn Cat on a Hot Tin Roof a Southern family meet to celebrate 'Big Daddy' Pollit's birthday: Gooper with his wife and children, his brother Brick - an ageing, broken football star - and his wife Maggie. But as the party unfolds the facade of a happy family gathering is fractured by sexual frustration, repressed love, and greed in the light of their father's impending death. This Student Edition provides an extensive introduction and notes by Philip C. Kolin, a world authority on Williams. The introduction includes: a chronology of Williams' life and times; a summary of the plot, commentary on the characters, themes, language and context, and a production history of the play. Together with questions for further study and notes on words and phrases from the text, this is the essential edition of the play for students of literature and drama. Since it was made into a Hollywood film starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is arguably Tennessee Williams' most celebrated play.
The Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee WilliamsOne of Tennessee Williams' most popular plays in a special annotated edition for school and college students. The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' first great popular success and an autobiographical play about his mother and sister, launched the brilliant and controversial career of this ground-breaking American playwright. Set in St Louis during the depression era of the 1930s, it is the poignant drama of a family's gradual disintegration, under pressure both from outside and within. A frustrated mother persuades her rebellious son to provide a 'gentleman caller' for her shy, crippled daughter, but her romantic dreams are shattered by the intervention of harsh reality. This edition provides the author's preferred text, available for the first time in the United Kingdom, and includes Williams' essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, 'The Catastrophe of Success', as well as a short section of Williams' own production notes.
A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams Michael Hooper Patricia HernA Streetcar Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional values in the American South - an old-world graciousness and beauty running decoratively to seed - set against the rough-edged, aggressive materialism of the new world. Through the vividly characterised figures of Southern belle Blanche Dubois, seeking refuge from physical ugliness in decayed gentility, and her brutal brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams dramatises his sense of the South's past as still active and often destructive in modern America. This revised edition features a new production history of the play that considers both stage and screen presentations, an updated bibliography and extensive notes on the language of the play.Commentary and notes by Patricia Hern and Michael Hooper.
Sweet Bird of Youth (Student Editions)
by Tennessee Williams Katherine WeissSweet Bird of Youth is Tennessee William's atmospheric play of 1959 about Chance Wayne, the one-time heart-throb of his hometown who returns hoping to break into the movies and find the girl he loved in his youth. Accompanied by faded movie star, Alexandra Del Lago, grieving in a haze of drugs and alcohol for her lost youth, he discovers that time is shortly to catch-up with him and wreak a terrible retribution for his past actions. In its exploration of corruption, ageing and the effects of time, the play offers a magnificent study of the dark side of the American dreams of youth and fame.This Student Edition provides an extensive introduction and notes by Katherine Weiss. The introduction includes a chronology of Williams' life and times, a summary of the plot, commentary on the characters, themes, language and context, and a production history of the play. Together with questions for further study and notes on words and phrases from the text, this is the essential edition of the play for students of literature and drama.
Sophocles Plays: Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonnus; Antigone
by Sophocles Don TaylorIncludes the plays Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, collectively known as the Theban plays. Starting with Oedipus the King and ending with the ultimate sacrifice of Antigone, his daughter the plays follow the trials of a family cursed by the edict of an oracle that "you will kill your father and marry with your mother". From the fourth century BC - when Aristotle took Oedipus the King as his model tragedy, the influence of Sophocles' great plays has been assured. These three great tragedies have a relevance and immediacy as metaphors for some of the most fundamentally held beliefs and values in our culture.This volume contains the Theban plays - widely studied in schools and universities. Translated and with an introduction and notes from Don Taylor - the playwright who directed these plays for BBC TV
Miller Plays: All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A Memory of Two Mondays; A View from the Bridge
by Arthur MillerReissued with a new jacket to mark the publication of the sixth and final collection of Miller's plays, this volume contains four of the most important and famous plays of the American theatre. All five plays were written by Arthur Miller within a ten-year period which began with his first Broadway hit in 1947: 'With the production of All My Sons, wrote Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times, 'the theatre has acquired a genuine new talent.' This hit was followed by an even greater play: Death of a Salesman. 'A great play of our day', wrote the New York Herald Tribune and the play has gone on to become the classic American tragedy of Willy Loman, a salesman who becomes disillusioned with the American dream. The Crucible (1953) was produced during the McCarthy era and became a parable of the witch-hunting practises of a government rooting out Communists. A View from the Bridge (1955) concerns the lives of longshoremen in the Brooklyn waterfront and has remained one of Miller's most produced plays. A Memory of Two Mondays, a one-act play, was written as a companion piece to A View from the Bridge. 'The greatest American dramatist of our age'. Evening Standard
Miller Plays: The Misfits; After the Fall; Incident at Vichy; The Price; Creation of the World; Playing for Time
by Arthur MillerThis second volume of Arthur Miller's plays contains four stage plays from the sixties and seventies, taking up the theme of individual responsibility from his earlier work. The volume is introduced by the author. The Price (1968) is 'a beautifully intelligent play about two brothers who are pinned in positions of flight from their own histories that are as fruitless as the movements of the men at Pompeii...For Miller, heroism lies on the scale of a man's sense of the possibility of controlling his own life' (Observer). After the Fall (1964) is 'about how we - nations and individuals - destroy ourselves by denying that this is precisely what we are doing'. (Guardian)Incident at Vichy (1964) is 'a short but intense drama of Occupied France... a kind of suspense thriller with moral overtones, continuously absorbing' (New York Post). The Creation of the World and Other Business is based on the Biblical account and was Miller's first Broadway comedy, premiering in 1972. Also included are two of his screenplays: The Misfits, written for and filmed with Marilyn Monroe, and Playing for Time, televised with Vanessa Redgrave, and which won an Emmy award. 'The greatest American dramatist of our age' Evening Standard
Miller Plays: The American Clock; The Archbishop's Ceiling; Two-Way Mirror
by Arthur MillerThe third volume of Miller's plays reissued with a new jacket in the Methuen Drama World Classics series to coincide with the publication of the sixth and final volume of his plays.Plays: 3 contains three of Miller's great stage plays from the late seventies and early eighties. The American Clock is a study of the effects of The Great Depression on American society and the values which helped it survive. The Archbishop's Ceiling, set in a former Archbishop's palace in an Eastern European capital, examines the relationship between four writers, and the erosion of personal integrity in East and West. With the threat of the secret police having bugged the room, the play provides a thrilling study of the effects of surveillance and political pressure on an individual's actions. Produced by the RSC at the Barbican in 1986, it was described as a 'gripping, thrilling play . . . the best of the RSC's current excellent season' (Sunday Times). A revised version of Two-way Mirror, a double bill for a man and a woman, consisting of two short plays - Elegy for a Lady and Some Kind of Love Story - completes the volume.The volume is introduced by the author and features an afterword by Christopher Bigsby.
Miller Plays: The Golden Years; The Man Who Had All the Luck; I Can't Remember Anything; Clara
by Arthur MillerFourth volume of plays in the reissued Arthur Miller CollectionArthur Miller's two early plays, The Golden Years, an historical tragedy about Montezuma's destruction at the hands of Cortez, and The Man Who Had All the Luck, a fable about human freedom and individual responsibility, are brought together in this volume together with two of his contemporary shorter plays, I Can't Remember Anything and Clara, first presented on a double bill as Danger! Memory. The latter focus on the importance and dangers of remembering the past, while the early plays, written at the time of the Second World War, mark the emergence of a drama in which public issues are rooted in private anxieties and chart the beginning of Miller's career that has been one of the most distinguished in dramatic history. Miller writes an Introduction to this volume.
Miller Plays: The Last Yankee; The Ride Down Mount Morgan; Almost Everybody Wins
by Arthur MillerThe fifth volume of Miller's plays reissued with a new jacket in the Methuen Drama World Classics series to coincide with the publication of the sixth and final volume of his plays.This fifth volume of Arthur Miller's work contains two plays from the early nineties: his highly acclaimed The Last Yankee (1993), 'a fine and moving play...Like all Miller's best work, it effortlessly links private and public worlds by connecting personal desperation to insane American values' (Guardian); and The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991), which explores themes of bigamy and betrayal, 'searching, scorching, harsh but compassionate' (Sunday Times). Also contained in the volume is Almost Everybody Wins, the original version of the screenplay Arthur Miller wrote for Karel Reisz's film, Everybody Wins.'The greatest American dramatist of our age.' Evening Standard
Miller Plays: Broken Glass; Mr Peters' Connections; Resurrection Blues; Finishing The Picture
by Arthur MillerMiller Plays: 6 is the final volume in Methuen Drama's acclaimed series of work by Arthur Miller who, during his lifetime, was acknowledged as 'the greatest American dramatist of our age' (Evening Standard). Featuring two plays from the 1990s and his final two plays (2002 and 2004), it is the first ever publication of Miller's final play, Finishing the Picture. Inspired by his experience during the filming of The Misfits withhis then wife Marilyn Monroe, the play was completed and produced atthe Goodman Theatre, Chicago, just months before the playwright's deathin Feburary 2005.Broken Glass (1994) is set in Brooklyn in 1938 andintertwines a woman's obsession with the news from Germany thatgovernment thugs are smashing Jewish stores, with her strangerelationship with her husband. 'It balances private lives with publicmorality. . . it is also an amazingly full-blooded piece, bursting with pain and passion.' (Daily Telegraph). Mr Peter's Connections(1998) is an unforgettable journey through one man's mind at a time ofsuspended consciousness, where the living and dead intermingle in hismemory. Resurrection Blues is Miller's astonishing black comedyset in a South American banana republic, that satirises global politicsand the predatory nature of a media-saturated culture.The volume also features a chronology of the writer's work and an introduction by Enoch Brater, professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan.
The Crucible
by Arthur Miller Susan AbbotsonThis Student Edition of The Crucible is perfect for students of literature and drama and offers an unrivalled guide to Miller's classic play. It features an extensive introduction by Susan C. W. Abbotson which includes: a chronology of Miller's life and times; a summary of the plot and commentary on the characters, themes, language, context and production history of the play. Together with over twenty questions for further study, detailed notes on words and phrases from the text and the additional scene 2 of the second Act, this is the definitive edition of the play. In a small tight-knit community gossip and rumour spread like wildfire inflaming personal grievances until no-one is safe from accusation and vengeance. The Crucible is Miller's classic dramatisation of the witch-hunt and trials that besieged the Puritan community of Salem in 1692. Seen as a chilling parallel to the McCarthyism and repressive culture of fear that gripped America in the 1950s, the play's timeless relevance and appeal remains as strong as when the play opened on Broadway in 1953.