Plays, playscripts, drama

Book SynopsisFrances Babbage is Reader in Theatre and Performance at the University of Sheffield, UK. She has published widely on performance, adaptation and rewriting and is the author of Re-Visioning Myth: Modern and Contemporary Drama by Women (2011) and Augusto Boal (2004).Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Prologue Chapter 1 A theory of adaptation Chapter 2 Performing novels Chapter 3 Performing short stories Chapter 4 Performing autobiography Chapter 5 Performing children's fiction Epilogue Index

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Book SynopsisA moment of kindness in a sea of unfamiliarity A long, hard day at work A lively party A nostalgic lullabyThe story begins in Nigeria where the character of Dele plays a last game of football with his friends and says goodbye to his son Chidi, telling him he will send for him. He then embarks on a voyage where he meets strangers along the way carrying their own stories of upheaval, struggle and hope - sharing his dream to make their home in a new city and be joined by their families. Dele's journey melds with the present day. In an inner-city hostel, Dele is an old man being looked after by Tian Mey, his carer. He reflects the past and his journey to where he is now and his story intertwines with the other migrants, both in his memories of the journey and the present-day reality of the hostel. Based on the illustrated novel by Oscar winner Shaun Tan, one man's tale echoes the many arrivals' happening around us all the time. This epic migration story unfolds through an extraordiTrade ReviewCaptures the confusions of immigration very well . . . beautifully understated . . . encompasses many kinds of language: physical, musical and emotional . . . It's a distinctive piece, full of ideas about how to integrate theatre and circus, which slyly creeps up on you and seizes your heart. -- Lyn Gardner * Guardian *It’s a beautiful, moving piece of loss and longing that never feels less than honest and truthful to those whose stories it represents. -- Lesley Bates * Stage *

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Book Synopsis1938. Hampstead, London. Sigmund Freud has fled Nazi-occupied Austria and settled in leafy Swiss Cottage. At eighty-two-years-old, he aims to spend his final days in peace. However, when Salvador Dalí turns up to discover a less-than-fully dressed woman in the closet, peace becomes somewhat elusive . . . An acknowledged modern classic, Terry Johnson's hilarious farce explores the fall-out when two of the twentieth century's most brilliant and original minds collide. It touches on many themes including Nazi Germany, the Surrealist movement, Judaism, Freud's theories of the unconscious mind, family relationships, life and death, and love and loss. Johnson's celebrated play raises intriguing questions about Freud's radical revision of his theories of hysteria.Trade ReviewTerry Johnson is a writer of cracking acting parts, and one of the critically cherished few who can build characters and action from a thematic starting point * Independent on Sunday *Terry Johnson is that rare creature: a moralist with wit. He writes with responsible gaiety * Guardian *One of the most brilliantly original and entertaining new plays I have seen in years: wild, weird and funny, serious, compassionate and shocking, blasphemous and reverential, intellectual and frivolous, a factual fantasy, a demented farce, a black nightmare. * The Sunday Times *Uniting flurries of brilliantly developed farce with fizzing intellectual slapstick * Independent *

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Book SynopsisWe're just the least lucky girls in all the world. All three of us. You and me and Ruthy have been given a big sad spoon of bad luck. A girl growing up in a battered part of Stockport in a battered time at the end of the Seventies falls in love with the man who will break her heart into a thousand pieces. Blindsided is a surprising and romantic play about warped love, jealousy, and damaged lives, spanning from the beginnings of the Thatcher Government in 1979 to the birth of New Labour in 1997.This edition features an introduction by Dr Jacqueline Bolton.Trade Review[Stephens] has emerged in this millennium as an outstanding playwright * Financial Times *A brilliant writer of immense imagination with an acute observation of people's foibles * Independent *fascinating * The Times *Stephens serves up extreme, articulate characters who hold the interest * The Times *The play opens with a scene of highly charged sexual chemistry that shows why Stephens is an award-winning writer. * Independent *the dialogue has a rare quality of moment-by-moment intensity * Daily Telegraph *a play that you feel in your bones . . . The writing is like a series of electric shocks. * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisThe press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart, and democracy itself cannot function. Pravda (which means truth) is a satire written at the height of Thatcherism when huge political changes were afoot. The play essentially studies, through black humour and close scrutiny, the tabloid ethic and the media industry as a get-rich-quick-fix. In the programme for the original 1985 production of Pravda, Brenton wrote: Pravda means ''the truth''. English newspapers aren''t propaganda sheets. The question is, why do so many of them choose to behave as if they are?The character of Lambert Le Roux is a South African newspaper tycoon and the owner of several companies, striding his way through the regional papers en route to Fleet Street. Turning broadsheets tabloid, dumbing down the message, and stretching the truth, Le Roux takes no prisoners as he manipulates politicians and creates a media monopoly out of a once-respected inTrade ReviewPravda is an epic comedy - part The Front Page, part Arturo Ui - in which a press baron resembling Rupert Murdoch . . . does battle with over thirty characters as he conquers Fleet Street journalism and, by implication, liberal England's soul. * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisThe Christian Humanitarian Reading Initiative for Spiritual Theatre (or C.H.R.I.S.T. for short) are putting on a production of The Nativity Story. It''s opening night and nothing is going to plan. Despite a collapsing manger, a deranged donkey, and a director on the brink of hysteria, the show must go on.This hilarious tour-de-force is the second farce from Mischief, creators of the critically acclaimed The Play That Goes Wrong. Once again, we watch as order unravels itself and pandemonium ensues in a piece that will be loved both as a piece to perform and one to watch. The Nativity Goes Wrong received its world premiere at Reading Rep on 22 December.Trade ReviewAt one point I feared I was going to hyperventilate * Daily Mail, on The Play That Goes Wrong *A triumph of split-second timing * Metro, on The Play That Goes Wrong *

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Book SynopsisA modern parable set against the backdrop of the first Old Firm clash of the season. Funny, hard-hitting and thought-provoking, the second edition of Scarfed for Life tells the story of two teenage friends caught in the crossfire of polite suburban prejudice and garden equipment. Ideal for secondary school students, the play draws on what sectarianism and prejudice actually mean to young Glaswegians, and how it affects them and their peers. Scarfed for Life is a hard-hitting play based on the experiences of discrimination and prejudice among the young people of Glasgow.The play toured secondary schools in Scotland in 2011 and Scottish prisons in 2013. The language in this edition has been revised specifically with school-age students in mind, and is an ideal, issue-led play for students 14+.Trade ReviewScarfed for Life is a loud, lively piece about sectarianism in Glasgow ... and uses a mix of broad, mouthy comedy and serious agitprop to tell the story of two teenage friends ... who both find themselves facing serious problems - bullying and violent aggression . . . A play like Scarfed for Life can play a useful role in challenging entrenched attitudes. * The Scotsman *

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Book SynopsisEdited and introduced by leading cultural and theatre critic Aleks Sierz, this bold and urgent collection of contemporary plays by England''s newest and most relevant young writers explores the various cultures and identities of a nation that is at once traditional, nationalistic and multicultural. Eden''s Empire, by James Graham is an uncompromising political thriller exploring the events of the Suez Crisis, and the tragic story of its flawed hero Churchill''s golden boy and heir apparent, Anthony Eden. Alaska, by D. C. Moore features Frank, an ordinary bloke who likes smoking, history and playing House of the Dead 3. He can put up with his job on a cinema kiosk until a new supervisor arrives who is younger than him. And Asian. A Day at the Racists, by Anders Lustgarten is a timely examination of the rise of the BNP which attempts to understand why people might be drawn to the BNP and diagnoses the deeper cause of that attraction.Shades, by Alia Bano sTrade ReviewGraham's play is both a dramatic piece of living history and a timely demonstration of the danger of allowing foreign policy to be dictated by a prime minister who flagrantly flouts international law. * Michael Billington, Guardian, on Eden's Empire *The measure of DC Moore's quality as a writer is his ability to garner sympathy for this immensely dislikeable university drop-out. * The British Theatre Guide on Alaska *Boasting the digestibility of a rom-com and the roughage of an issues drama, Alia Bano's tale of London Muslims looking for love is a superb start to the Royal Court's Young Writers Festival ... Like most good rom-com folk, Bano's characters are smart, headstrong, witty and self-aware. That they happen to be both united and divided by their background gives Bano her story ... The play's great achievement is to be engagingly irreverent while knowing that irreverence can be an orthodoxy too ... Reza ... says he resents being asked to choose between Britishness and being a Muslim. Such sentiments have been expressed before, but rarely with the propulsive plotting, inspiring intelligence and light touch of this hugely enjoyable play * Dominic Maxwell, The Times on Shades *must-see for anyone concerned about the threat of extreme nationalism and curious to explore the context behind that threat. * whatsonstage.com on A Day at the Racists *This thrilling debut play by Rachel De-lahay plugs straight into the jittery heart of multicultural London today ... De-lahay has an alert ear for comic dialogue and her portrait of mixed-race, upwardly mobile twentysomethings on the estate – one character works in PR, another is an aspiring model – crackles with wit as well as moments of deep emotion. The play raises the provocative question of whether it is possible to shrug off the fraught issue of racial identity ... It’s a play that combines sharp one-liners with a savvy sense of the way we live now ... One leaves the theatre impatient to discover what Rachel De-lahay will come up with next. * Telegraph, on The Westbridge *Table of ContentsIntroduction, by Aleks Sierz Eden's Empire, by James Graham Alaska, by D. C. Moore A Day at the Racists, by Anders Lustgarten Shades, by Alia Bano The Westbridge, by Rachel De-lahay

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Book SynopsisMy dad is a superhero. No one else knows cos it has to stay a secret.Alistair McDowall's play is a funny and poignant one-man show that thrusts us into the life of Britain's only part-time superhero. Struggling to balance his family responsibilities and more conventional job with defeating super-villains and rescuing families from burning buildings, Captain Amazing represents how all parents strive to be heroes in the eyes of their children. Discover this man's origins, his family life, and how even the invincible aren't immune to tragedy.Captain Amazing received its world premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013, starring Mark Weinman, and directed by Clive Judd. It was revived for a national tour from March 2014.'[He] is the kind of man you wouldn't look twice at in the street: balding; stooped; tentative. He's skating over the surface of life, marking time with his job at B&Q, barely acquiring possessions, not speaking to his alcoholic father. And then he meetTrade ReviewThis is an intelligent, involving examination of the transformative potential of fatherhood – of its ability to take a man who can barely look at himself in the mirror, and make him feel all-powerful, worthy of love. For my money, it may well be the best one-man show you’re likely to see at the Fringe this year. * Daily Telegraph on Captain Amazing *Sizzling exuberance and imagination * Observer, on Brilliant Adventures *Remarkable young writing talent . . . There is a convincing tang of lived experience in the evocation of a practically lawless pocket of the north-east. * Guardian, on Brilliant Adventures *Alistair McDowall's fascinating debut - which won a Judges Award in the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2011 - plays by its own rules . . . Note the name Alistair McDowall. He’s a writer to watch. * The Times *An intense performance that is moving and funny in equal measure . . . What is presented on stage is a work of pure joy * Whatsonstage *We need playwrights like McDowall. He believes in potential, champions underdogs and writes with such full-blooded bighearted empathy that you can't help but be won over * Scotsman *A monologue that crackles with invention . . . This is a terrific piece of writing – full of crackle, invention and heart * Guardian *It's a poignant understated salute to everyday acts of courage. * The Times *Table of Contentsplay text

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Book SynopsisYou may be the wealthiest colored woman in New Orleans, but you built this house on sand, lies and dead bodies.New Orleans, 1836. Following an era of French colonial rule and relative racial acceptance, Louisiana's free people of color' are prospering. Beatrice, a free woman of colour, has become one of the city's wealthiest women through her relationship with a rich white man. However, when her lover mysteriously dies, Beatrice imposes a six-month period of mourning on herself and her three daughters. But, as the summer heat intensifies, the foundations of freedom she has built for herself and their three unwed daughters begin to crumble. Society is changing, racial divides are growing and, as the members of the household turn on each other in their fight for survival, it could cost them everything. A bewitching new drama of desire, jealousy, murder and voodoo, The House That Will Not Stand received its world premiere at Berkeley Rep, US, in January 2014, and wasTrade ReviewMarcus Gardley's play is a lyrical vision of rivalry, jealousy and racial prejudice. Set in New Orleans in the 1830s, it strikingly depicts passion and repression in a style that is sometimes reminiscent of Federico Garcia Lorca's great The House of Bernarda Alba yet also affords fresh insight into a largely unfamiliar historical period. * Evening Standard *For all of Gardley's palpable debt to Lorca, his play has a historical fascination and exuberant theatricality all its own. [...] It's a rich mix, but Gardley vividly captures the sense of a house not only divided against itself but also caught up in a war of different traditions. * Guardian *The House That Will Not Stand . . . opens a fascinating window on to the largely forgotten phenomenon of placage . . . * The Times *Gardley is an acclaimed poet as well as a playwright, and his script . . . is shot through with a dreamy lyricism. At times, the effect is startlingly beautiful . . . * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisThere's no-one in the streets but us. You run that way and I'll run this way. Whoever gets back to the front door first without getting shot, wins.In a Palestinian town eleven-year-old Lubna and twelve-year-old Khalil are playing on the empty stairwell in their apartment block. As the siege intensifies outside, fear for their safety becomes as crippling as the conflict itself.Dalia Taha's play offers a new way of seeing how war fractures childhood. Fireworks (Al'ab Nariya) is part of International Playwrights: A Genesis Foundation Project and received its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 12 February 2015.Trade ReviewBy concentrating on their experience, Dalia Taha's play offers a refreshingly oblique perspective on the conflict in Gaza. * Evening Standard *. . . she [Dalia Taha] gives a vivid account of the psychic damage done to children growing up in a city like Gaza and of the elaborate pretences adopted by their parents to protect them from reality. . . . Taha's point is clearly that any hope of normality is fractured in a military crisis and that, while children are the immediate victims, the besieged adults are enmeshed in their own web of pretence. . . . Taha's play . . . offers a frighteningly convincing picture of the tragedy of lost innocence. * Guardian *Taha's writing, beautifully translated by Clem Naylor, is bracingly naturalistic, immersing us fully in her characters' tense, circumscribed lives through a series of vignettes. . . . This is a compelling example of the power of theatre to transport us deep into the human reality of a conflict from which, packaged on our television screens, it is far too easy to turn our minds. * Observer *This debut play by Dalia Taha is an intimate chamber piece, showing life in the shadows of a Palestinian town besieged by Israeli air strikes. . . . It's an undeniably powerful idea that is made all the more heartbreaking by the play's tragic outcome . . . It's a disconcerting, provocative jolt for the audience and proof that Dalia Taha is a young playwright of considerable promise. * Daily Telegraph *How do you protect your children from the harshest realities of the world without resorting to undue pretence or handicapping their preparation for adulthood? It's a hard enough problem for parents anywhere, but imagine if you were a present-day Palestinian in a town under siege. That's the situation that Palestinian writer Dalia Taha brings alive with remarkable power and insight in Fireworks. * Independent *

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Book SynopsisThis is where the world began. This was Caesar's highway. Hannibal's road to glory. These were the trading routes of the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, the Ottomans and the Byzantines . . . We all come from the sea and back to the sea we will go. The Mediterranean gave birth to the world.Step into the shoes of those whose job it is to enforce our harsh new rules: an Italian coastguard and a payday lender from Leeds. How do they do it? And what happens to them? Lampedusa is a powerful play about immigration and welfare. This edition was published to coincide with the premiere at the Soho Theatre, London, on 8 April 2015, as part of the Soho Theatre's season of Politics.Trade ReviewIt is heartening that theatre has found such an articulate voice to ask these inevitable and necessary questions. * Financial Times *Anders Lustgarten's powerfully affecting play . . . There's withering anger at a corrupt political system that dehumanises those in desperate need, possibly allowing asylum seekers to drown as a deterrent or interpreting any efforts at self-respect in the long-term sick as proof that they are "fit to work". But Lustgarten's play offers hope. * Independent *What makes Anders Lustgarten exceptional is that he thinks globally. . . . part of the power of this piece, his best yet, is that it links a subject of international importance to our own society. . . . Poverty and desperation are the themes. But what is striking is Lustgarten's ability to treat them not as lofty abstractions but to give them a concrete reality. He has clearly done his homework and writes with gripping precision about the fate of dead migrants as they drown in cold water. . . . Lustgarten'splay is about the survival of hope. . . . Lustgarten in this brave, bold and moving play tackles the subject of mass migration seriously and, just as in Shrapnel he reminded us that bombs kill people, he here shows that behind the horrendous statistics of drowned refugees or scare stories in the press about supposed benefit scroungers lie tragic individual tales. * Guardian *The subject matter is meaty, and Lustgarten's antipathy to political injustice is laudable. * Evening Standard *Lampedusa is one of the most gently enticing pieces of storytelling you will see, softly encroaching on the moral consciousness like a lullaby. . . . Lustgarten's descriptions of drowning have a power that comes from fleshy detail matched by poetic virtuosity. There's dark beauty here, on the sharp end of Europe's implosion * The Times *Lustgarten's text is brilliant: he tells the stories of both Stefano and Denise with enormous directness and power. The writing is bright in its intensity, combining both fact and humour. . . . Lampedusa is a political play that shows how human contact and empathy can make things better, without any ideology or without relying on our rulers to do everything for us. The result is a short but stunning piece of radical theatre. * Tribune *. . . a curiously moving hymn to the small, transfiguring acts of compassion amid a sea of indifference. * Daily Telegraph *Anders Lustgarten has emerged in the past few years as perhaps Britain's most visible and visibly engaged political playwright. . . . Lustgarten's portrait is haunting, potent and humane. * Time Out London *Lustgarten is an activist as well as a writer . . . the two stories work beautifully together, and the finale is nothing short of heart-rendering. * Financial Times *

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Book SynopsisSometimes when I'm at work and waiting for customers I think about the two of us living like kings and not bothering about the future. Because there may not be any future to bother about, you know. Not for anybody, one of these days. And it's a wicked world. Average couple Janet and Howard's lives begin to unravel when Howard's photographic memory helps win him a gameshow fortune. Janet doesn't want their lives to change that much. She's quite happy working at the supermarket, cooking for her husband three times a day and watching quiz shows in the evening. But once Howard unleashes his photographic brain on the world, the once modest used-car salesman can't seem to stop. And what he sees as the logical conclusion to his success isn't something Janet can agree to. Burgess's 1961 darkly comic satire of drab English consumerism is adapted for the stage by Lucia Cox. This edition was published to coincide with the US premiere at the Brits Off-Broadway Festival, at 59E59 ThTrade ReviewWearing its influences on its sleeve, One Hand Clapping is an enjoyable if bitter-sweet portrait of the struggling sanctity of lifetime togetherness amidst the darker side of convenience culture. Daringly surreal and innovatively executed. * What's On Stage *

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Book SynopsisWole Soyinka - playwright, novelist, poet and polemical essayist - was born in Nigeria in 1934. Educated there and at Leeds University, he worked in the British theatre before returning to West Africa in 1960. In 1986 he became the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.Trade ReviewThis rich turbulent piece, which starts as folk comedy and ends as Greek tragedy, takes on board an abundance of ideas: identity, tradition, the passage from life to death . . . Soyinka's play is as much philosophical as political. * Michael Billington, Guardian, 9.4.09 *Based on events in 1940s Nigeria, the story attains a more classically tragic power in showing two forces unable to understand each other. On one side there is the Yoruba culture, in which the death of a king is followed by the suicide of his favoured liegeman . . . on the other, the powers that be with their contrary code that suicide is illegal and to be prevented, even if it costs more lives. * Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, 13.4.09 *Wole Soyinka's play is one of the great creations of twentieth-century theatre: it has the fire, grandeur, cruelty and humanity of Greek tragedy, the moral cutting edge of modern political thinking, and the African writer's take on his own people's values: loving mocking, ironical and ruthlessly observant . . . Soyinka writes with the moral ambivalence and relentless questioning of Shakespeare. * John Peter, Sunday Times, 19.4.09 *

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Book SynopsisMarlene hosts a dinner party in a London restaurant to celebrate her promotion to managing director of 'Top Girls' employment agency. Her guests are five women from the past: Isabella Bird (1831- 1904) - the adventurous traveller; Lady Nijo (b1258) - the mediaeval courtesan who became a Buddhist nun and travelled on foot through Japan; Dull Gret, who as Dulle Griet in a Bruegel painting, led a crowd of women on a charge through hell; Pope Joan - the transvestite early female pope and last but not least Patient Griselda, an obedient wife out of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. As the evening continues we are involved with the stories of all five women and the impending crisis in Marlene's own life. A classic of contemporary theatre, Churchill's play is seen as a landmark for a new generation of playwrights. It was premiered by the Royal Court in 1982."Top Girls has a combination of directness and complexity which keeps you both emotionally and intellectually alert. You can smell liTrade Review"Top Girls has a combination of directness and complexity which keeps you both emotionally and intellectually alert. You can smell life, and at the same time feel locked in an argument with an agile and passionate mind." * The Sunday Times, John Peter *

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Book SynopsisNoises Off is not one play but two - simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage farce that develops during Nothing On's final rehearsal and tour. The two farces begin to interlock, as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage, and exit from that only to make their entrances back into Nothing On. In the end, at the disastrous final performance in Stockton-on-Tees, the two farces can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into one single collective nervous breakdown. Noises Off won both the Evening Standard and the Olivier Awards for Best Comedy when it was first produced, and ran in the West End for nearly five years. Michael Frayn's most recent play, Copenhagen, won both the Evening Standard Best Play Award in London and the Tony Best Play Award in New York. Trade Review'Frayn's construct is based on the principle that if farce involves watching the wheels come off a well-oiled machine, then nothing could be funnier than seeing the wheels fall off a farce itself... Pure comedy gold.' * Alfred Hickling, Guardian, 26.2.09 *'Michael Frayn's deleriously funny comedy about actors in crisis is probably being produced somewhere in the world every week of the year.' * Jeremy Kingston, The Times, 21.05.10 *'Another of Frayn's regular motifs surfaces here, the mayhem that results when precise order breaks down.' * Jeremy Kingston, The Times, 21.05.10 *'Is Michael Frayn's farce about a farce the funniest play ever commited to paper? It would certainly be in my top 3.' * Robert Dawson Scott, The Times, 22.06.10 *'You have to hand it to Michael Frayn. He is nothing if not electric. It is scarcely beleivable that he is the author of Copenhagen (a deeply philisophical play about the politics of science) and this most famous of modern English farces, Noises off.' * Mark Brown, Sunday Herald, 13.06.10 *As finely worked as a Swiss watch and as funny as the human condition permits..the zigzag brilliance of the text as the clunky lines of the farce-within-a-farce rub against the sharp dialogue of reality. -- Michael Billington * Guardian *Genius farce..achingly, foot-stompingly, seal-honkingly hysterical. Frayn has written more serious plays but none more profound. Only Noises Off captures the baffling resilience of human existence. -- David Jays * Sunday Times *A spot on parody..achieves an almost mathematical elegance as Frayn calculates all the many and varied ways in which it can all go wrong. Noises Off is cunningly structured. ..Noises Off offers an infallible escape in to happiness. -- Charles Spencer * Daily Telegraph *Michael Frayn's play feels fresh, witty and polished. It is a triptych that illuminates the fragility of drama and the relationships of those who create it. It is entertaining and painful - a summation of all that farce can do. -- Henry Hitchings * Evening Standard *There has never been a more brilliantly conceived machine for helpless laughter than Michael Frayn's 1982 classic Noises Off.. ..deliriously funny.. -- Paul Taylor * Independent *Many claims have been made for Michael Frayn's award-winning Noises Off, including that it's the funniest play ever written. The skilfull structure of the piece means the performance builds and builds.. -- Julie Carpenter * Daily Express *It's comic bliss. -- Georgina Brown * Mail on Sunday *A brilliant farce set behind the scenes of a dreadful one..a richly detailed tapestry of catastrophe. -- Andrzej Lukowski * Time Out London *Frank Rich loved it, 'Noises Off', said the great N'Yawk critic, 'is, was and always will be the funniest play written in my lifetime'. Frayn's orchestration of his materials is dazzlingly skillful. -- Lloyd Evans * Spectator *Imagine a comedy so definitively comic that there seemed no point in ever writing another. I cannot think of another play which has quite so obviously been written by a comic genius. ..a jaw-droppingly clever piece of work. -- John Nathan * Jewish Chronicle *remains a laughter-generating machine * Stage *Michael Frayn's first-rate farce about a farce follows a second-rate troupe stating a third-rate British sex comedy . . . widely thought . . . to be the funniest play every written . . . It is, to put it academically, a metafarce - a farce about a farce - into which Mr. Frayn has inserted a near-literal turn of the dramatic screw whose ingenuity borders on genius . . . To say that nothing goes right for them is to understate the case by a factor of . . . oh, ten thousand. [...] flawless. If laughter is the best medicine, then 'Noises Off' is surely capable at the very least of curing double pneumonia. * Wall Street Journal *a classic farce and a fiendishly ingenious homage to the form . . . raucously delightful * New York Times *this kind of comedic brilliance never gets stale. * Variety *not just one of the funniest plays ever written but one of the best. * Vulture *

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Book SynopsisHedda is an intelligent and ambitious woman, trapped in the stifling environment of a bourgeois 19th-century marriage. When writer Eilert Loevborg, an old flame returns to Hedda's life with a masterpiece that might threaten her husband's career, Hedda decides to take drastic and fatal action.

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Book SynopsisAnton Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian physician, dramatist and author, is considered to be one of the greatest writers of short stories and modern drama. Born in Taganrog, a port town near the Black Sea, he attended medical school at Moscow University. He began writing to supplement his income, writing short humorous sketches of contemporary Russian life. A successful literary careered followed, before his premature death of TB at the age of 44. He is best-remembered for his four dramatic masterpieces: The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1899), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904).Table of ContentsThe Seagull; Uncle Vanya; Three Sisters; The Cherry Orchard

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Trade ReviewJames Graham has a gimlet eye for newsworthy subjects . . . James Graham’s gimlet-eyed play gives both sides of 70s anarchism and shows there’s still plenty to get angry about * Guardian *Graham has an acute eye for the recurring patterns in the political fabric . . . tender, witty and . . . troublingly freighted with contemporary resonance. * Daily Telegraph *challenging but rewarding play . . . [Graham] is an outstanding political dramatist. * The Times *Graham is a funny writer on serious topics, and the script has his usual mix of ambition and levity. * Independent *

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Book SynopsisMark Monday was a Certified Master Teacher of the Michael Chekhov Technique and served as President of the Great Lakes Michael Chekhov Consortium. Mark was a teacher, professional actor/director and a former Head of the MFA Acting Program at Kent State University. He taught, directed, and performed throughout the U.S., U.K., and Europe. Mark Monday frequently presented workshops and papers on the Chekhov technique at many conferences, universities, and professional theatres, including the Hilberry Repertory Company and Cleveland Playhouse.Trade ReviewProvides performers and directors with a practical set of exercises and also with a lexicon with which they can articulate their practice. This, in turn, supports a focused, structured and navigable pathway through a potentially difficult and precarious career ... if the Chekhov Technique appeals to you, [this] will quickly become dog-eared and tatty. * Youth Theatre Ireland *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter One-Analysis and Composition of the Play Chapter Two-Archetypes and Casting Chapter Three-Creating the Ensemble-Establishing Atmosphere Chapter Four-Revealing the Language of the Rehearsal Process Chapter Five-Beginning Work on Scenes-Composition Chapter Six-Work on Individual Speeches-Composition Chapter Seven-Psychological Gesture as Action Chapter Eight-Character Relationships Chapter Nine-Chekhov and Musical Theatre/Opera Chapter Ten-Tempo Chapter Eleven-Characterization Chapter Twelve-Middle to Final Rehearsals Chapter Thirteen-Further Exercises for Teachers and Directors Conclusion

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Book SynopsisGerry Adams has disguised himself as a newborn baby and successfully infiltrated my family home.Eric Miller is a Belfast Loyalist. He believes his five-week old granddaughter is Gerry Adams.His family keep telling him to stop living in the past and fighting old battles that nobody cares about anymore, but his cultural heritage is under siege. He must act.David Ireland's black comedy takes one man's identity crisis to the limits as he uncovers the modern day complexity of Ulster Loyalism.Cyprus Avenue was first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on 11 February 2016, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, London in April 2016.Trade Review[A] complex, unsettling and provocative play about nationhood and identity * The Stage *Ireland’s play slyly makes the case that it is not discrimination that ensures survival . . . but rather the ability to be two opposing things at once: Irish and British, politician and terrorist, even comedy and tragedy. If tragicomedy is the natural Irish form, Ireland makes his own inversion here, beginning with amused splutters, ending in hard gulps. * Irish Times *

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Book Synopsis

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