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Simon Gray: Butley; Wise Child; Dutch Uncle; Spoiled; Sleeping Dog
by Simon GrayButley 'What is so wondrous about a play so basically defeatist and hurtful is its ability to be funny. The stark, unsentimental approach to the homosexual relationship, the cynical send-up of academic life, the skeptical view of the teacher-pupil associations are all stunningly illuminated by continuous explosions of sardonic, needling, feline, vituperative and civilised lines.' Evening Standard
Simon Gray: Otherwise Engaged; Dog Days; Molly; Plaintiff and Defendants; Two Sundays; Pig in a Poke; Man in a Side Car
by Simon Gray'A superbly written play, a funny play, an agonising play. It is, moreover, a play of truth and insight. A play to savour.' Punch on Otherwise Engaged'Life in the theatre hasn't brought me anything more rewarding than directing Simon Gray's plays.' Harold PinterPlaintiffs and DefendantsExceptionally good... the play gave such a rending picture of married mess that it was hard to know where to look.' Clive James, Observer'Simon Gray is the one [TV playwright] whose work I most relish seeing for his acerbic wit, wonderful ironies and above all for his care with our mother tongue.' Dennis Potter
A Doll's House
by Henrik IbsenThe Vaughans are all set to enjoy Christmas. Thomas has been promoted and Nora is delighted. Everything at last seems to be going right, until a visitor arrives uninvited and causes them to question just how perfect their marriage is.Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House caused outrage both in its style and subject matter when first staged in 1879. Zinnie Harris's retelling is played against the backdrop of British politics at the turn of the last century - to revel a world where duty, power and hypocrisy rule.Zinnie Harris's version of A Doll's House premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in May 2009.
Neil LaBute: Filthy Talk for Troubled Times; The Mercy Seat; Some Girl(s); This Is How It Goes; Helter Skelter; A Second of Pleasure
by Neil LaButeFilthy Talk for Troubled Time is one of LaBute's earliest plays. A downbeat night at a topless bar exposes the gulf between the twitchy clientele and the waitresses who serve but despise them. The Mercy Seat examines a couple who, on the day after a world-changing atrocity, toy with exploiting it to start a new life. Some Girl(s) follows a young writer's panicked retreat from his imminent wedding as he seeks out old girlfriends and opens new wounds, while in This Is How It Goes the breakdown of a seemingly successful marriage is complicated by submerged bigotry. The collection also includes two short plays about relationships in crisis - A Second of Pleasure and Helter Skelter - which are in equal part tender and chilling.Together these plays form a complex and compelling portrait of the sexes - sometimes warring, sometimes loving, but never fully at peace.
The Victorian in the Wall
by Will AdamsdaleLatte-land. Power-prams, Grand Design knock-throughs, organic everything. A work-shy writer discovers a Victorian man living in the wall of his flat. Everyone's pretty surprised. Adjustments need to be made. Can the strange visitor unlock his hopeless career? His flagging relationship? A story buried in these walls for over a century? (Doubt it. Maybe. Yes.) Contains jokes, songs, banging on recycling boxes, a talking fridge. Will Adamsdale's The Victorian in the Wall premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in May 2013.
Larisa and the Merchants
by Alexander OstrovskyThe Value of Something is Never its Price In a trading town on the banks of the river, penniless Larisa is desperate to marry and escape heartbreak and humiliation. But in this brutal world of transactions true love has no worth. Larisa is up for sale and the local merchants want a bargain. Samuel Adamson's version of Alexander Ostrovsky's rarely seen, sharp and darkly funny play Larisa and the Merchants, premiered at the Arcola in May 2013, produced by InSite Performance.
Public Enemy
by Henrik IbsenWhen Dr. Stockmann discovers that the waters of a new public spa are toxic, he expects gratitude and glory. Instead, his revelation makes him the most hated man in town.Henrik Ibsen's timeless story of corruption, pollution and courage opened in David Harrower's powerful new version at the Young Vic, London, in May 2013.
Remembrance of Things Past: Combray (Classics Ser.)
by Monsieur Marcel ProustRecognized as one of the major literary works of the twentieth-century, Marcel Proust's monumental seven-volume novel brings together memories of childhood and Parisian society before and during the First World War.This new adaptation is based on Harold Pinter's screenplay, written at the request of the film director Joseph Losey in 1972.Remembrance of Things Past premièred at the Royal National Theatre in November 2000.
Gabriel
by Samuel AdamsonThis is noisily Protestant England - the England of William and Mary's Glorious Revolution at the end of a century of civil strife. This is London in the 1690s, the monster city tamed into awe by our only Orpheus: Henry Purcell.Monarchs, princes, prostitutes, wigmakers, composers, tapsters, musicians, transvestites and watermen jostle for attention in the teeming, unruly world of late seventeenth-century London, where enthralling stories both real and imagined merge and intersect.Samuel Adamson's Gabriel premiered at Shakespeare's Globe, London, in July 2013 with Alison Balsom, one of the world's finest trumpeters, performing the music of Purcell and Handel. Every day three trumpet calls from the theatres on the Bankside, then songs would float over the thatch and roll across the water and make my work sweet.
Owen McCafferty: Mojo Mickybo; Shoot the Crow; Closing Time; Scenes from the Big Picture; The Waiting List
by Owen McCaffertyOwen McCafferty's first collection brings together one short- and four full-length plays set in the author's home city of Belfast. Shoot The Crow'Tragicomedy of character and circumstance that makes McCafferty look like a ribald Northern Irish Chekov.' Guardian.Scenes From The Big Picture'An epic that attempts to put the whole of human life on stage - birth, death, love, sex, work, families - the whole damn thing... McCafferty offers us a wise and compassionate view of the human heart.' TelegraphClosing Time'The existence of a writer as good as McCafferty induces a perverse, paradoxical hope.' GuardianMojo Mikibo'A razor sharp evocation of time and place.' Irish Times
Brian Friel: Three Sisters; A Month in the Country; Uncle Vanya; The Yalta Game; The Bear; Afterplay; Performances; The Home Place; Hedda Gabler
by Brian FrielThis third collection by Brian Friel contains two original works: Performances, which considers the relationship between the private life and public work of the composer Leos Janácek; and The Home Place, set in Ballybeg, Donegal, at the dawn of Home Rule. There are three masterful plays based on stories by Chekhov; and Friel's exquisite versions of Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya, of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and of Turgenev's A Month in the Country. Performances 'A minor work the way Thomas Mann's Death in Venice or Beckett's Endgame is a minor work. Deceptively brisk and light in tone but taut and gravely pregnant with meaning... for Friel, life creates its own symbolism and poetry, and so it does in this play.' Sunday Times The Home Place 'A rich, allusive, densely layered play, which has echoes of Friel's masterly Translations while reminding one that he has spent much of his recent life adapting and translating Chekhov... Friel hauntingly conveys the pathos of exile and the delusion of ownership.' Guardian Hedda Gabler 'Across the gulf of the 20th century one great playwright is talking to another... neither a simple translation nor, as the official title has it, or a 'new version', but something altogether larger.' The Irish Times
The Light Princess
by Samuel Adamson Tori AmosI'm done, Father,Keep your crown,I swear you'll never bring me down!I am not queen material!Once, in opposing kingdoms lived a princess and a prince who had lost their mothers. Althea, unable to cry, became light with grief and floated, and so was locked away. Digby, so heavy-hearted that he could never smile, one day declares war. Althea, forced out of hiding, escapes, only to encounter the solemn prince on contested land and the warring heirs begin a passionate affair. But for Althea to find real love, she must first face her own deepest fears.
The Same Deep Water As Me
by Nick PayneHad an accident at work? Tripped on a paving slab? Cut yourself shaving? You could be entitled to compensation. Andrew and Barry at Scorpion Claims, Luton's finest personal injury lawyers, are the men for you. When Kevin, Andrew's high school nemesis, appears in his office the opportunity for a quick win arises. But just how fast does a lie have to spin before it gets out of control?Nick Payne's The Same Deep Water As Me premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in August 2013.
The Events
by David Greig'I have been thinking I might go berserk.'When Claire, a priest, survives an atrocity she sets out on a quest to answer the most difficult question of all: 'Why?' It's a journey that takes her to the edge of reason, science, politics and faith.David Greig's daring new play explores our destructive desire to fathom the unfathomable and asks how far forgiveness can stretch in the face of brutality.The Events was commissioned and first produced by Actors Touring Company in co-production with the Young Vic Theatre, Schauspielhaus Wein and Brageteatret. It premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 2013.
Ciara
by David Harrower'I'm taking your eyes', he'd say, 'and keeping them safe.''I'm taking your ears and keeping them safe.'Ciara's father Mick kept her as his hidden treasure, making sure his only daughter was shielded from what he did and the men and women with whom he associated. Now Mick is dead and his legacy, so bound up in the landscape of Glasgow, that infamous no mean city, must be faced. As Ciara seeks to further the reputation of her art gallery, her world starts to fragment. Marked by the deep contradictions of her father, the art world and the place that made them all, she stands on a threshold. By confronting the past, her future blows wide open. Ciara by David Harrower premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 2013.
Stage Blood: Five tempestuous years in the early life of the National Theatre
by Michael BlakemoreIn 1971, Michael Blakemore joined the National Theatre as Associate Director under Laurence Olivier. The National, still based at the Old Vic, was at a moment of transition awaiting the move to its vast new home on the South Bank. Relying on generous subsidy, it would need an extensive network of supporters in high places. Olivier, a scrupulous and brilliant autocrat from a previous generation, was not the man to deal with these political ramifications. His tenure began to unravel and, behind his back, Peter Hall was appointed to replace him in 1973. As in other aspects of British life, the ethos of public service, which Olivier espoused, was in retreat. Having staged eight productions for the National, Blakemore found himself increasingly uncomfortable under Hall's regime. Stage Blood is the candid and at times painfully funny story of the events that led to his dramatic exit in 1976. He recalls the theatrical triumphs and flops, his volatile relationship with Olivier including directing him in Long Day's Journey into Night, the extravagant dinners in Hall's Barbican flat with Harold Pinter, Jonathan Miller and the other associates, the opening of the new building, and Blakemore's brave and misrepresented decision to speak out. He would not return to the National for fifteen years.
The Old Vic: The Story of a Great Theatre from Kean to Olivier to Spacey
by Terry ColemanThe Old Vic, one of the world's great theatres, opened in 1818 with rowdy melodrama and continued with Edmund Kean in Richard III howled down by the audience. One impresario, among the first of thirteen to go bankrupt there, fled to Milan and ran La Scala. In 1848 a chorus girl tried to murder the leading lady. In 1870 the Vic became a music hall, then a temperance tavern and, from 1912, under Lilian Baylis, both an opera house and the home of Shakespeare. By the 1930s great actors were happy to go there for a pittance - John Gielgud, Charles Laughton, Peggy Ashcroft, and Laurence Olivier. The Vic considered itself a national theatre in all but name.After the second world war the Royal Ballet and the English National Opera both sprang from the Vic, and the National Theatre, at last established in 1963 under Olivier, made its first home there. In 1980 the Vic was saved from becoming a bingo hall by a generous Toronto businessman. Since 2004 Kevin Spacey, Hollywood actor and the winner of two Oscars, has led a new company there, and toured the world.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: A Play
by David HareIt's not just that rich people don't know what they've got. They don't even know what they throw away. India is beginning to prosper. But beyond the luxury hotels surrounding Mumbai airport is an obstacle, amakeshift slum. It's home to foul mouthed Zehrunisa and her garbage sorting son Abdul, entrepreneurs both. Sunil, twelve, picks plastic. Manju, schoolteacher, hopes to be the settlement's first woman to gain a degree. Asha, go-to woman, exploits every scam to become a first-class person. And Fatima, One Leg, is about to make an accusation that will destroy herself and shatter the neighbourhood. Katherine Boo spent three years under the flight-path, recording the lives of Annawadi's diverse inhabitants. Now from Boo's book, which won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2012, David Hare has fashioned an epic play for the stage which details the ingenious and sometimes violent ways in which the poor and disadvantaged negotiate with corruption to seek a handhold on capitalism's lowest rungs.David Hare's stage adaptation of Behind the Beautiful Forevers premiered at the National Theatre, London, in November 2014.
Handbagged: Dinner; Dying For It; A Vampire Story; Welcome To Thebes; Handbagged (Nhb Modern Plays Ser.)
by Moira BuffiniHandbags, hairspray and sensible shoes.The monarch - Liz.Her most powerful subject - Maggie.One believed there was no such thing as society. The other had vowed to serve it.Opening the clasp on the antipathy between two giants of the twentieth century, Handbagged by Moira Buffini premiered at the Tricycle Theatre in September 2013.
Young Chekhov: Platonov; Ivanov; The Seagull (Faber Drama Ser.)
by Anton ChekhovYoung Chekhov contains a trilogy of plays by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov, written as he emerged as the greatest playwright of the late nineteenth century. The three works, Platanov, Ivanov and The Seagull, in contemporary adaptations by David Hare, will be staged at the Chichester Festival Theatre in the summer of 2015.
Our Ajax
by Timberlake WertenbakerTorn between army politics and the love of his soldiers on the front line, a legendary leader spirals out of control.Inspired by Sophocles' classical play, Our Ajax draws on interviews with contemporary servicemen and women to create a modern epic of heroism, love and homeland.Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Ajax premiered at the Southwark Playhouse, London, in November 2014.
The Pass
by John DonnellyIn a high-end hotel room, rising football stars Jason and Ade are living the dream. Goals, girls and glory. Tomorrow they make their first-team debut. But the game starts before you've even walked out the tunnel.Twelve years. Three hotel rooms. One last gamble.An agile new story about sex, fame and how much you're willing to lose in order to win, The Pass premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in January 2014.
Stephen Ward: A Musical
by Christopher Hampton Don BlackStephen Ward charts the rise and fall from grace of the man at the centre of the Profumo Scandal. Friend to film stars, spies, models, government ministers and aristocrats, his rise and ultimate disgrace coincided with the increasingly permissive lifestyle of London's elite in the early 1960s. Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, with book and lyrics by Christopher Hampton and Don Black, centres on Ward's involvement with the young and beautiful Christine Keeler, which led to one of the biggest political scandals and most famous trials of the twentieth century. Stephen Ward premiered at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in December 2013.
Last Days Of Troy
by Simon Armitage Sue RobertsSimon Armitage is rightly celebrated as one of the country's most original and engaging poets; but he is also an adaptor and translator of some of our most important epics, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Death of King Arthur and Homer's Odyssey. The latter, originally a commission for BBC Radio, rendered the classical tale with all the flare, wit and engagement that we have come to expect from this most distinctive of contemporary authors, and in so doing brought Odysseus's return from the Trojan War memorably to life. The Last Days of Troy, a prequel of kinds, tells the tale of the Trojan War itself in a vivid new dramatic adaptation that is published to coincide with the Royal Exchange's stage performance in April 2014.
The Silver Tassie: The Shadow Of A Gunman; The Plough And The Stars; The Silver Tassie; Purple Dust; Hall Of Healing (Faber Contemporary Classics Ser.)
by Sean O'CaseyIreland, World War One. Dashing Harry Heegan leads his football team to victory, arriving home in swaggering celebration before he grabs his kit and heads for the trenches. A nightmare world awaits, the men, reduced to cannon fodder, speaking in mangled incantations as the casualties stack up. Months later, Harry returns, a cripple at the football club party. Everyone but the shattered war veterans dance and forget.Peppered with acrid wit and dark vaudeville humour, The Silver Tassie, Sean O'Casey's powerful anti-war play of 1928, receives a major revival at the National Theatre in April 2014.