A classical muse appears, and the young woman becomes the goddess Athena--a tireless advocate for Odysseus in his struggle to get home. With her trademark irreverent and witty twist on classic works, Zimmerman brings to life the story of Odysseus's ten-year journey, depicting his encounters with characters such as Circe, the Cyclops, Poseidon, Calypso, the Sirens, and others.

    Albee there is a theme beneath the surface, in this case the corruption of money and the rottenness of this bigoted exurbia where conformity to its illiberal standards and its hypocritical show of respectability is all that counts. The scene is the suburban home of Jenny and Richard, beautifully played by Barbara Bel Geddes and Barry Nelson. The only thing that seems to stand in the way of their happiness is a lack of money. The action starts in an entertaining comedy of manners style. Then abruptly there enters a Mrs. Toothe in the menacing and fascinating person of Beatrice Straight who offers Jenny the opportunity to make more money than they have ever had, to buy a greenhouse and all the other luxuries that they require for their garden and their lives. Richard's realization that their newfound money is being earned by his wife's whoring comes almost simultaneously with the return of their fourteen-year-old son from school and a champagne cocktail party which they are giving to impress their country club friends. As a result, his horror, disgust and rage has to be kept under wraps in order to keep up essential appearances until tragedy strikes, and Richard realizes that the assembled wives are all involved and their husbands are aware and condoning." More than that, they are prepared not merely to justify but defend the ends through which their means are attained and the devastated Richard, left in agonized despair by the ironic events that charge the final moments of the play, must face the fact of his own share in their communal guilt.

    

    Love in the Dark'One of the most exciting, new and absolutely original aspects of Carr's writing is the manner in which the sexism of the language and religious imagery is exposed... Marina Carr is a playwright to be watched.' Sunday TribuneThe Mai'The writing is at once gentle and raucous... capable of articulating deep-seated woes and resentments in a manner you rarely find outside Eugene O'Neill.' ObserverPortia Coughlan'A play of precocious maturity and accomplishment.' Irish Times'Portia Coughlan packs a hell of a punch. It hurts to look at it. But it has to be seen.' Irish IndependentBy the Bog of Cats...'A poetic realism steeped in the past... Carr has an extraordinary ability to move between the mythic and the real.' Guardian'A great play... a great work of poetry... the word should soon carry across both sides of the Atlantic.' Independent

    He does so with a poet's ear for the cadences and rhythms of chorus and solo verse as well as a commanding dramatic use of the central social and religious myth. In his hands The Bacchae becomes a communal feast, a tumultuous celebration of life, and a robust ritual of the human and social psyche. "The Bacchae is the rites of an extravagant banquet, a monstrous feast," Soyinka writes. "Man reaffirms his indebtedness to earth, dedicates himself to the demands of continuity, and invokes the energies of productivity. Reabsorbed within the communal psyche he provokes the resources of nature; in turn he is replenished for the cyclic rain in his fragile individual potency." The blending of two master playwrights—Euripides and Soyinka—makes for an unforgettable experience.

    She falls in love with his son, Hood, and the narrative unfolds in tragedy of immense proportions. Medea is a verse adaptation of Euripides' drama and was created especially for the actress Judith Anderson. Their combined genius made the play one of the outstanding successes of the 1940s. In Medea, Jeffers relentlessly drove toward what Ralph Waldo Emerson had called "the proper tragic element" terror.

    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.

    

    Under the editorship of Herbert Golder and the late William Arrowsmith, each volume includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions, and a glossary of the mythical and geographical references in the plays. Produced more frequently on the ancient stage than any other tragedy, Orestes retells with striking innovations the story of the young man who kills his mother to avenge her murder of his father. Though eventually exonerated, Orestes becomes a fugitive from the Furies (avenging spirits) of his mother's blood. On the brink of destruction, he is saved in the end by Apollo, who had commanded the matricide. Powerful and gripping, Orestes sweeps us along with a momentum that starting slowly, builds inevitably to one of the most spectacular climaxes in all Greek tragedy.

    Writing with a pitch and heat that gets to the heart of the unforgiving classical world, Carson, a poet and classicist, translates four of the eighteen surviving plays by Euripides.Includes Heracles, Hecuba, Hippolytus, Alcestis.

    Lyly’s Endymion (1588) represents his famous Euphuistic style at its best and also gives us vintage Lyly as courtier and dramatist. In this love comedy, Lyly retells an ancient legend of the prolonged sleep of the man with whom the moon (Cynthia) fell in love. The fable is piquantly relevant to Queen Elizabeth and her exasperated if adoring courtiers. This edition makes a new and compelling argument for the relevance of Endymion to the threat of the Spanish Armada invasion of 1588 and to the role of the Earl of Oxford in England’s politics of that troubled decade. Full commentary is provided on every aspect of the play, including its philosophical allegory about the relation of the moon to mortal life on earth.

    It has received worldwide productions, whether as a study of parent-child relationships, as in its landmark 1976 production directed by Miller in Beijing, or as a critique of Western capitalism and has been filmed once for television and twice for movies.

    She is in love with young Artashes Otaryan, son of Elizbarov's late companion. Soon Artashes reveals to her the secret that his family has kept for years -- Elizbarov had stolen the fortune of his former companion; as a proof he presents to her Elizbarov's letters to his father. Margarita is appalled by her father's loss of honor, and is torn between her duty as a daughter and her sense of right and wrong.

    Forced to abandon the life he has built, he embarks on a last, frantic search to recruit a friend, anyone, to speak in his defence. But Death is close behind, and time is running out.One of the great primal, spiritual myths, Everyman asks whether it is only in death that we can understand our lives. A cornerstone of English drama since the 15th century, this new adaptation by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy was presented at the National Theatre, London, in April 2015.

    Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. Set in the Malayan jungle in 1942, this play explores what happens when soldiers have to confront the reality of war.