This is where they send the new, the under-qualified, the old. And most of all the British. Mars is full of blonde Americans. It's like they're building the master race out there.Billions of miles from home, the lone research base on Pluto has lost contact with Earth. Unable to leave or send for help, the skeleton crew sit waiting.Waiting.Waiting long enough for time to start eating away at them.To lose all sense of it.To start seeing things in the dark outside.Alistair McDowall's play X premiered at the Royal Court on 30 March 2016 in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.

    Let's take check: Finn Bar, slightly ruffled but still in fighting form. Maggie, could do with a full night's sleep but otherwise all in order... Stay here. Don't answer the door. I'll go out and get some proper food.In a new flat, three children play hide and seek. Eliot wears a crown, little Finn, King of the Wild Thing's, draws on the walls. Maggie climbs them. Hiding from the world, needing to be found, their one shared focus a mobile phone. Will it ring? Who will call? And what are they waiting for?Tusk Tusk is a tale of family loyalty as an uncertain future circles. Polly Stenham's second play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in March 2009.

    Each playlet focuses on a different individual dramatising their life in the run-up to the tragedy.Published to coincide with the English language premiere at the Traverse Theatre in August as part of the International Edinburgh Festival before transferring to the Birmingham Rep, this is the first stage play to confront the London bombings of 7 July 2005.

    But at a time when women are second-class citizens, can her charm and spirit protect her from the dangers of the court? And at what cost?

    While teenager Abigail parties a few doors away, the pretentious Beverly and her estate agent husband, Laurence, entertain their neighbours – Abigail’s mother, Susan, ex-footballer, Tony, and his wife, Angela. But as the alcohol flows, tensions in the hosts’ barely functional marriage emerge and their obsessions, prejudices and petty competitiveness are ruthlessly, and hilariously, exposed. ‘Goose-Pimples’, meanwhile, is easily as sharp and uncompromising. This time, the action focuses on ambitious casino croupier, Jackie, and Saudi businessman, Muhammad, who meet – and misunderstand – one another spectacularly.

    From high-class hookers to 7/7 survivors these monologues paint a revelatory picture of Britain as it is today. After rave reviews at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival and in New York, "Eight" opened in London's West End in July 2009.

    And which one of him is the original. . . ?“Churchill’s harrowing bioethics fable leaves us with a number of things to chew on.” –Kris Vire, Time Out Chicago“A Number confirms Churchill’s status as the first dramatist of the 21st century. On the face of it, it is human cloning… Like all Churchill’s best plays, A Number deals with both the essentials and the extremities of human experience… The questions this brilliant, harrowing play asks are almost unanswerable, which is why they must be asked.” –Sunday Times“Caryl Churchill’s magnificent new play only last an hour but contains more drama, and more ideas, than most writers manage in a dozen full-length works.” –Daily TelegraphCaryl Churchill has written for the stage, television and radio. A renowned and prolific playwright, her plays include Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, Bliss, Love and Information, Mad Forest and A Number. In 2002, she received the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

    What Rebecca Gilman makes of this familiar scenario is something startlingly real and compelling, delving deeply into the small space that can divide a feeling of hope from one of hopelessness, as Curt and Sandy both try to get a foothold in the American dream of a house, a job, a life, a relationship with another human being.Gilman's previous play, Boy Gets Girl, was acclaimed by Time magazine as the best play of 2000, saying that "with Spinning into Butter, her play about race relations on campus, Rebecca Gilman gave notice that she was a playwright to watch. And with this intense drama of a woman's encounter with a stalker, she became one to hail . . . It's not just a gripping play but also an important one." Marked by Gilman's characteristically sharp delineation of character, pitch-perfect dialogue, and effortless use of humor that is both biting and silly, Blue Surge is a worthy successor to these plays--an intimate look at the class struggle in America today as well as a brilliant example of the dramatic craft from one of today's most accomplished practitioners. It will have its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in the spring of 2001.

    . . . A tragic and hilarious vision of life in an English country community. Butterworth’s new work was the most talked about new work of the season."—The London Paper

    The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown.

    Taking place only months before the outbreak of World War One (and written during the conflict) it focuses on Hannay’s attempts to warn the government of an unfolding plot to steal Great Britain’s military plans. Throughout the book Hannay must escape from German spies and the British police, who falsely believe that he has murdered the very man who revealed the plot to him. The book would prove incredibly popular upon its release and has been cited as the first “man-on-the-run” style story which has been re-used in films in literature ever since. The novel itself has been adapted for the screen no less than four times.

    In a series of elegant, nonchronological scenes spanning the years from 1946 to 2015, the play hopscotches through Mary Page Marlowe’s quiet existence as an accountant from Ohio—complicating notions of what it means to lead a “simple life.”

    . . even more ambitious than Vogel's "How I Learned to Drive" . . . it covers more ground and is bolder in its storytelling. Vogel's language is at its most poetic, eloquent and elegiac. In fact, its vivid imagery rivals the prose style of any great American short story writer. The play sounds like it might have been adapted from a beautiful, undiscovered novella."-"New Haven Register""One of the most absorbing evenings of theatre to come along in some time."-"Variety"Past and present collide on a snowy Christmas Eve for a troubled family of five. Humorous and heart-wrenching, this beautifully written play proves that magic can be found in the simplest breaths of life. Combining the elements of No theatre and Bunraku with contemporary Western sensibilities, Vogel's "Ride" is a mesmerizing homage to the works of Thornton Wilder, including "Our Town." A moving and memorable study of the American family careening near the edge of oblivion.Paula Vogel's plays include "The Baltimore Waltz," "Mineola Twins," "Hot 'n' Throbbing," "Desdemona," "And Baby Makes Seven," among others. Ms. Vogel will be the resident playwright during the Signature Theatre's 2004?05 season dedicated to her works. She has taught at Brown University in the MFA playwriting program since 1985.

    Over the course of the night, Ben and Amy explore the choices now available to them in an existence different from the one they knew just the day before. LaBute presents the brutal realities of the war between the sexes and explores whether one can be truly opportunistic in a time of universal selflessness.

    Her first step is to admit that she has a problem. But the problem isn't with Emma, it's with everything else. She needs to tell the truth, but she's smart enough to know that there's no such thing. When intoxication feels like the only way to survive the modern world, how can she ever sober up?