Rudyard Kipling's determination to send his myopic son to war triggers a bitter family conflict which leaves Kipling devastated by the conflict between his two greates passions: a love for children-above all his own-and a devotion to King and Country.

    This latest work from the author of Our Lady of 121st Street "shares many of the traits that have made Mr. Guirgis a playwright to reckon with in recent years: a fierce and questing mind that refuses to settle for glib answers, a gift for identifying with life's losers and an unforced eloquence that finds the poetry in lowdown street talk. [Guirgis brings to the play] a stirring sense of Christian existential pain, which wonders at the paradoxes of faith" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times).

    Batman Begins was a successful re-boot of the popular Batman franchise, and The Dark Knight sequel takes the fresh perspective further, developing the highly anticipated, raw cat-and-mouse game between our superhero Batman and his twisted arch-nemesis The Joker. Celebrated stars include Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman, returning as Batman, Alfred, Lucius Fox, and Lieutenant Gordon, respectively; and new additions Heath Ledger as The Joker, as well as Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Aaron Eckhart. The Art of the Dark Knight is the ultimate companion book to the movie, showcasing production ephemera including storyboard art, character sketches, Nolan’s original shooting script, still photos, and even personal behind-the-scenes material created by the Nolans and Crowley during the movie. The Art of the Dark Knight is certain to appeal to diehard and new fans alike.

    “Well written and I was left wanting to read on.... It is certainly an intriguing concept” (Troubador)“Writing is dynamic and fast-paced. There's a definite charm about the novel that, I think, would appeal to the kind of audience cultivated by writers such as Marina Lewycka” (HHB Agency)“What a charming novel. I’m from Dundee myself, and the masterful way you wove together setting and culture was admirable. Your characters, too, were powerful yet compassionate, and the prose had a lovely twisting quality” (Canongate Press)“This is fresh and intriguing” (Andrew Lownie)Mrs Keiller's Marmalade is a book about marmalade, the isolation of old age, respect for tradition and the pain of abandonment. Maggie Keiller is a fictional descendent of John Keiller, the last patriarch of Keiller marmalade, whose clan famously created the first ‘Dundee Marmalade’. She is married John's son Billy Keiller in 1909 but lost him in the same year to a storm which visited their small enclave of Auchobane, a village perched precociously on the Dundee coastline of North-East Scotland. Forward fifty years, and Maggie lives a lonely life in Rose Cottage surrounded only by her jars of fine and vintage homemade marmalade. Her only visitor is Dougie, an elderly grocery man and decorated veteran. Maggie’s life is changed when she unexpectedly receives a letter from her estranged niece in London, asking for haven for her teenage daughter. Maggie takes her on, not out of affection for her niece whom she loathes, but to fill the void left by her childless marriage. Isla arrives in 1969, a year on the cusp of a revolution in the London she has just left, and in her own life, hiding the pregnancy she has kept from her mother. Maggie teaches Isla about her heritage, and hopes to pass on to her the tradition of marmalade making. For Isla, abandoned by mother and lover, and struggling to cope with the imminent arrival of an unwanted child, her bond with Maggie becomes a channel to help regain the self-esteem taken from her over her young years. The book culminates in Isla’s entry into the silver spoon Marmalade competition, fifty years after Maggie Keiller had taken the same prize.

    This collection presents a cross-section of Shaw's most important theater workâ��Mrs. Warren's Profession, Man and Superman, Major Barbara, and Pygmalion. Each play is fully annotated. "Contexts and Criticism" features all-new material on the author and his work, from traditional critical readings to more theorized approaches, among them essays on Shaw's Fabianism and his alleged feminism. Contributors include Leon Hugo, Sally Peters, Tracy C. Davis, John A. Bertolini, Stanley Weintraub, and J. Ellen Gainor. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included.

    It covers all of Kane's major plays and productions, contains hitherto unpublished material and reviews, and looks at her continuing influence after her tragic early death. Locating the main dramatic sources and features of her work as well as centralizing her place within the 'new wave' of emergent British dramatists in the 1990's, Graham Saunders provides an introduction for those familiar and unfamiliar with her work.

    Laugh-out-loud funny, and sometimes heartbreakingly moving, these tiny plays in which every one of us could have a starring role are little windows into other people's lives that reveal the triumphs, disasters, prejudices, horrors and joys of twenty-first-century life.

    But her sudden premonition of their lives in 1937 casts a shadow over their dreams and expectations.

    I'm not obsessed with sex. I just can't stop thinking about it.’ The Fleabag bites back. A rip-roaring account of some sort of female living her sort of life.Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s debut play is an outrageously funny monologue for a female performer. It premiered at the 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, performed by Phoebe herself, before transferring to Soho Theatre, London, for several successful runs, followed by a UK tour. It won a Fringe First Award in Edinburgh, the Most Promising New Playwright and Best Female Performance at the Off West End Theatre Awards, The Stage Award for Best Solo Performer and the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright. It received a Special Commendation in the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. In 2016 it was turned into a wildly successful and ‘utterly riveting’ (Guardian) BBC television series.This edition also features an introduction by the author.‘Believe the hype, Waller-Bridge’s raw writing… really is as good as everyone says’ - The Stage'Sucker-punch funny... I've never seen a play quite like it' - Scotsman'frank and sometimes brutally funny... devastatingly good' - The Times'blessed with a rare and compelling life force... deliciously dirty and scabrously funny' - Evening Standard

    With its vivid array of dramatic monologues, allegories, and tall tales, this absurdist, unreal exploration of modern society brings us a chorus of unique and unforgettable voices. All are welcome at this twilit, visionary carnival: the man whose wife drapes a border-curtain across the middle of the marital home; the black bear with a dark secret; the woman who oversees giant snowballs in the freezer. "My girlfriend won me in a sealed auction but wouldn't / tell me how much she bid," begins one speaker; "I hadn't meant to go grave robbing with Richard Dawkins / but he can be very persuasive," another tells us. The storyteller behind this human tapestry has about him a sly undercover idealism: he shares with many of his characters a stargazing capacity for belief, or for being, at the very least, entirely "genuine in his disbelief." In these startling poems, with their unique cartoon-strip energy and air of misrule, Armitage creates world after world, peculiar and always particular, where the only certainty is the unexpected.

    A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, and all of the Shakespearan classics are efficiently organized into comedies, tragedies, and histories. This compact tome is perfect for either digesting small bites of information or devouring in one sitting. It features synopses, character profiles, and illustrations certain to entertain both novices and Shakespeare lovers alike.

    In the century since its first performance, The Cherry Orchard has undergone a wide range of conflicting interpretations: tragic and comic, naturalistic and symbolic, reactionary and radical. Beginning with the 1904 premiere at Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre, this study traces the performance history of one of the landmark plays of the modern theatre. Considering the work of such directors as Anatoly Efros, Giorgio Strehler, Peter Brook, and Peter Stein, Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard explores the way different artists, periods and cultures have reinvented Chekhov's poignant comedy of failure and hope.

    An incendiary tale of race, madness and a Darwinian power struggle at the heart of a dying National Health Service, Blue/Orange premiered at London's Cottesloe Theatre in April 2000 and transferred to the West End in 2001.

    In that small apartment, Black and White, as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history, mining the origins of two fundamentally opposing world views. White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is desperate to deny it. Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life. Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deceptively intimate work by one of the most insightful writers of our time.

    Your husband is not the Red Cross. The last time he started consoling a cute, suicidal chick, he married her. ""Becky Shaw" is an amusing and cleverly constructed comedy about ambition, the cost of being truthful, and the perils of a blind date. The fast and funny dialogue navigates between five distinctively perverse and disingenuously dysfunctional characters.The plot is as follows: from the moment that Becky arrives overdressed for her blind date with straight-talking Max, it's clear the evening won't go to plan. In the immediate fallout, Becky becomes an object of devotion for her boss Andrew, who appears to have a fetish for vulnerable women. In turn Andrew's wife Suzanna turns to her step-brother Max for comfort, and their mutual desire begins to resurface.Gina Gionfriddo's masterful play is a biting American comedy with sharp, witty dialogue and a carefully crafted yet unforced story arc. Character-driven, "Becky Shaw" is a comic tale of tangled love lives and a subtle but acerbic comedy of manners.