Hairspray (978-1-5578-3514-7); Rent (978-1-5578-3737-0); Fiddler on the Roof (978-0-8791-0136-7)

    A masterful poet of the downtrodden, his plays portray life on New York's hardscrabble streets in a manner both tender and unflinching, while continually exploring the often startling gulf between who we are and how we perceive ourselves. Gathered in this volume is his current off-Broadway hit, Our Lady of 121st Street, a comic portrait of the graduates of a Harlem Catholic school reunited at the funeral of a beloved teacher, along with his two previous plays: the philosophical jailhouse drama Jesus Hopped the A Train and In Arabia, We'd All Be Kings, an Iceman Cometh for the Giuliani era that looks at the effect of Times Square's gentrification on its less desirable inhabitants.

    In his newest play, Celebration, he continues to examine the darker places of relationships. Celebration is an acerbic portrait of a sated culture choking on its own material success. Startling, full of black humor and wicked satire, Celebration displays a vivid zest for life. Also included in this volume is Pinter's classic play The Room. Both plays are invested with the elements that make Pinter's work unique: the disturbingly familiar dialogue, subtle characterization, and abrupt mood and power shifts among characters, which can be by turns terrifying, moving, and wildly funny.

    A celebrity artist shining bright at the crest of the Restoration Ned, or Mr. K as he's called, is applauded onstage and off for his interpretations of Shakespeare's tragic ladies: Ophelia, Cleopatra, especially his Desdemona and his famous "death scene". He s the toast of the town and the very secret "mistress" of the powerful Duke of Buckingham. But when an unknown named Margaret Hughes plays Desdemona one night at an illegal theater, instead of stopping the show, the ever-game King Charles II changes the law to allow women to act. By the stroke of a pen, Kynaston's world is turned upside-down. He loses his cachet, his livelihood, his lover and his sense of self. And as such women as the king's own courtesan Nell Gwynn, and Kynaston s former dresser Maria, become stars, his own light disappears until fate and his desire for revenge give him a chance to take the stage again.

    Unable to understand each other, they embarked on one of the most unusual experiments in British art as the pitmen learned to become painters. Within a few years the most avant-garde artists became their friends, their work was taken for prestigious collections and they were celebrated throughout the British art world; but every day they worked, as before, down the mine.The Pitmen Painters premiered at Live Theatre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in September 2007, before transferring to the National Theatre in 2008.

    Hope and humanity confront cold reality in three intricately connected stories: Hortense yearns for a new life away from rural Jamaica, Gilbert dreams of becoming a lawyer, and Queenie longs to escape her Lincolnshire roots.Helen Edmundson’s stage adaptation of Andrea Levy's novel traces the tangled history of Jamaica and the UK throughout the Second World War until 1948 – the year HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury.

    

    The guide presents the major debates that surround these works as they develop, from Martin Esslin's early appropriation of the plays as examples of the Theatre of the Absurd, to recent poststructuralist and postcolonial readings by critics such as Steven Connor, Mary Bryden and Declan Kiberd. Throughout, Boxall clarifies and contextualizes critical responses to the plays, and considers the difficult relationship between Beckett and his critics.

    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)

    He is sent to Italy by a wealthy financier to try and coax home the rich man's son. In the process Ripley becomes both attracted and seduced, finding the murder the only way to deal with the situation. From that point Ripley tries to cover up his crime. Patricia Highsmith's beguiling tale of morality and amorality is given a dramatic rendering by contemporary dramatist Phyllis Nagy, who knew Highsmith in her later years in Paris."Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)

    Hold tight as the ordinary turns extraordinary in Mark O’Rowe’s exhilarating new play. A blackly comic vision of Dublin infested with demons, from the author of Howie the Rookie.

    In Michael Meyer's fluent, idiomatic translations, The Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler stand as masterpieces of naturalist drama.

    Norman, who works in a doughnut shop and is unable to resist the lure of the sweet pastries, takes great pride in the huge bundle of keys that dangles from his waist; Lucien P. Smith has the mind of a five-year-old but imagines that he is able to read and comprehend the weighty books he lugs about; Arnold, the ringleader of the group, is a hyperactive, compulsive chatterer, who suffers from deep-seated insecurities and a persecution complex; while Barry, a brilliant schizophrenic who is devastated by the unfeeling rejection of his brutal father, fantasizes that he is a golf pro. Mingled with scenes from the daily lives of these four, where "little things" sometimes become momentous (and often very funny), are moments of great poignancy when, with touching effectiveness, we are reminded that the handicapped, like the rest of us, want only to love and laugh and find some meaning and purpose in the brief time that they, like their more fortunate brothers, are allotted on this earth.

    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.