The first of the plays, The Real Inspector Hound, is the longer of the two; here the author has created a looking glass comedy of great suspense and intrigue about two drama critics. The second play, After Magritte, is 'a surrealist comedy in detective form-or is it a comedy in surrealist form? A husband and wife argue whether the figure they saw in the street was a one-legged football player with the ball under his arm, or a man in pajamas with a tortoise under his arm. The play shows that Stoppard is as amusing and clever as always.'

    The people, including five comic characters abandoned or greatly diminished in the later play, "Uncle Vanya," for which Chekhov borrowed his own characters and material, do not allow themselves to be daunted. This translation of The Wood Demon was produced by the Mark Taper Forum as a classics lab workshop production in 1992...

    Both are struggling to escape from lingering parental domination and to establish their own lives and identities. In Janie's case this leads to an inconclusive involvement with a young Jewish doctor who calls her "Monkey"; while Harriet assails the world of big business and has an affair with her hard-driving (and married) boss. Told in a fast-moving series of inventive, alternately hilarious and touchingly revealing scenes, the play explores their parallel stories with uncommon wit and wisdom-resulting, ultimately, in a heightened awareness which, while not providing all the answers, goes a long way toward achieving the maturity and self-assuredness that both protagonists so desperately desire.

    The ghost of a young murdered girl flits through every scene linking the pain and anguish of all the characters struggling to cope with urban life.

    We have History as our guide. In tough times, the British do what we have always done. We muddle through.This House is a timely and relevant political comedy, exploring Westminster and the 1974 hung parliament.In the run-up to the General Election pressure mounts as squabbling whips attempt to attract key regional votes. As it becomes clear the results will be closely balanced, the play tracks the formation, perils and consequences of a coalition government, including the compromises, conflicts and power games all in the interest of gaining control of Parliament.With well-paced, witty and waspish dialogue, This House playfully explores the childish digs and chauvinistic attitudes that riddle political life. Award-winning playwright James Graham combines comedy with comment in this portrayal of the strain between the thinking individual, the pressure to toe the part line and the end goal of winning government.

    Book #1 [1NS-002]: ~ The Virgin and the Playboy ~Julie, accidental virgin, has waited longer than she ever planned to lose her virginity and join everyone else she knows in dating reality. Embarrassed at her plight, she has made arrangements with 1NightStand.com to meet with a handsome stranger for one night of no commitment required sexuality, without having to admit she'd never made love before. Mark is the one single guy left in his group of friends. As such, he is known for the bevy of lovelies he dates, and his stories of wild exploits between the sheets. His participation in 1NightStand.com is on a dare, and he has no idea that his date is...less experienced than he is used to. And so much more... When they enter the penthouse suite in Las Vegas, they enter a chamber designed for luxury and booked for a 1NightStand . . .*-*Book #2 [1NS-142]: ~ The Virgin and the Best Man ~Mark and Julia from The Virgin and the Playboy have set the date! They are to be married at The Castillo Las Vegas, where they met on their 1Night Stand. All their family and friends are invited and they have planned a special surprise for their maid of honor and best man.Karin, Julia’s cousin, a small town librarian, chose family obligations over her dreams of the stars. She loves them all, but wonders when it will be her turn to live as she wishes…if it isn’t too late.Ray, commercial pilot, is every bit as much a playboy as his brother Mark used to be. He isn’t opposed to finding The One, but fears his brother has collected the only perfect jewel.What more appropriate gift for these two than a 1Night Stand with a date personally selected for them by Madame Evangeline . . .*-*Book #3 [1NS-154]: ~ Virgin Under Ground ~Doctorate in hand, Jane Ann Summers is ready to return to the South Seas paradise of her youth, when the director of the institute—her mother—drops a bomb. She cannot return until she experiences more of life...a social life.Determined to waste no time, Jane searches for a shortcut and discovers the 1Night Stand dating service. A single night with geologist Dr. Lukas Gerard, and she can go home and get on with her fascinating study of world weather trends. The only question is whether to have sex with him…after all, it would be her first, and maybe only, time. Lukas’s own field of study has shown him some alarming trends. He believes a killer earthquake may rattle the western half of the United States in the near future. In preparation, he converts an abandoned gold mine to a secret bunker, loaded with supplies and all the comforts of home. Only thing he needs now is company in his hideaway. Unsure how to find the right companion, he turns to 1Night Stand, but neither he nor Jane are prepared for the sudden impact of one of Madame Eve’s connections. One night teaches them there is more to life than science…for both of them . . .

    His wife Sandy is a successful public relations executive. Together, they enjoy the rarified life of wealth and comfort in their urbane Chicago social circles. Yet that uncomplicated existence is turned upside down when the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President is killed in a helicopter crash on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and Reed is cast into the unlikely role as the heir apparent for the Republican nomination for President. Rapidly drawn into a high stakes battle for the Republican nomination, the couple remain unaware that Reed is the intended victim in a complex web of blackmail, murder, and religious extremism that threatens to destroy any remaining wall of separation between church and state. Reed is faced with the impossible choice to divulge the secret that threatens to destroy him, or become the next victim in an out of control religious crusade that might just be too powerful to stop.

    It's in the collisions between pious and rogue thoughts that the play's energy lies. We don't know what to feel. Which is why, once seen, Joe Egg won't go away.'Robert Butler, Independent on Sunday (1993)

    Jody is in his forties and runs a map store. Not one for the outside world, he stays in his store all the time. His friend, Carl is in his late thirties and has been bringing chairs of dead friends into Jody's store and leaving them there. When Jody needs to take an AIDS test, Carl tries to convince him it is not only okay to leave the store, but also that he must take responsibility for his life. If he doesn't, he will join the set of chairs that Carl has taken great pains to place in the right spots around the store. Jody finally leaves the map store to take his HIV test and return to find Carl sitting in a chair of his own. With this gesture, we know that Carl has joined the many of their friends who have died, but now Jody must take Carl's place as the caretaker.

    Winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Playwright, David Lindsay-Abaire's Kimberly-Akimbo focuses, with uncanny depth and quirky wit, on a sixteen-year-old girl suffering from a disease that causes her body to age nearly five times faster than it should.

    During the past ten years Harold Pinter has written a new play, three film scripts, sheaves of poems, several sketches and created, with composer James Clarke, a pioneering work for radio, Voices. He has acted on stage, screen and radio, he has appeared on countless political platforms, and his work has been extensively celebrated in festivals at Dublin's Gate Theatre and New York's Lincoln Center. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and in 2006, the European Theatre Prize. As if this were not enough, he has in the last five years twice come close to death. But he has faced hospitalisation with stoic resilience and his spirit remains as fiercely combative as ever. As he wrote in 2005 to Professor Avraham Oz, one of Israel's leading internal opponents of authoritarianism: "Let's keep fighting."

    Joe sits at the nexus of Washington life: beloved, feared, and courted in equal measure by the very people whose careers and futures he determines. But as the sixties dawn and America undergoes dizzying change, the intense political dramas Joe has been throwing his weight around in—supporting the war in Vietnam and Soviet containment, criticizing student activism—come to bear a profound personal cost.Based on the real-life story of Joe Alsop, whose columns at the time of his 1974 retirement were running three times a week in more than three hundred newspapers, David Auburn’s The Columnist is a deft blend of history and storytelling. A hilarious, searing portrait of the glorious rewards and devastating losses that accompany ego, ambition, and the pursuit of power, The Columnist pens a vital letter from a radically changing decade to our own turbulent era.

    "You Got Older" is a tender and darkly comic new play about family, illness, and cowboys - and how to remain standing when everything you know comes crashing down around you.

    Playwright Olympe De Gouge, assassin Charlotte Corday, and former queen (and fan of ribbons) Marie Antoinette, and Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle hang out, murder Marat, loose their heads, and try to beat back the extremist insanity in revolutionary Paris. This grand and dream-tweaked comedy is about violence and legacy, feminism and terrorism, art and how we actually go about changing the world. It a true story. Or total fiction. Or a play about a play. Or a raucous resurrection that ends in a song and a scaffold.

    It premiered in April 2000 at the Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, starring Kathleen Turner as Mrs RobinsonCalifornia in the 60s. Benjamin's got excellent grades, very proud parents and, since he helped Mrs Robinson with her zipper, a fine future behind him… A cult novel, a classic film, a quintessential hit of the 60s, now Benjamin's disastrous sexual odyssey is brought vividly to life in this world stage premiere production."Terry Johnson is that rare creature: a moralist with wit. He writes with responsible gaiety" (Guardian)