Set in the seventeenth century, the play follows Anna Fierling -- "Mother Courage" -- an itinerant trader, as she pulls her wagon of wares and her children through the blood and carnage of Europe's religious wars. Battered by hardships, brutality, and the degradation and death of her children, she ultimately finds herself alone with the one thing in which she truly believes -- her ramshackle wagon with its tattered flag and freight of boots and brandy. Fitting herself in its harness, the old woman manages, with the last of her strength, to drag it onward to the next battle. In the enduring figure of Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht has created one of the most extraordinary characters in the literature of drama.

    R. Gurney has wittily captured the manners of upper-middle-class WASP America, but never as gracefully or with such dazzling economy as in Love Letters. Tracing the lifelong correspondence of the staid, dutiful lawyer Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and the lively, unstable artist Melissa Gardner, the story of their bittersweet relationship gradually unfolds from what is written--and what is left unsaid--in their letters. A smash hit both off and on Broadway, Love Letters captures Andy and Melissa with a precision of detail and depth of feeling that only Gurney can command. Two other, thematically related plays by Gurney, The Golden Age and What I Did Last Summer, are included, providing a trio of wry and affectionate paeans to love lost, found, and fleetingly glimpsed.

    The Confidential Clerk was first produced at the Edinburgh Festival in the summer of 1953.'The dialogue of The Confidential Clerk has a precision and a lightly felt rhythm unmatched in the writing of any contemporary dramatist.' Times Literary Supplement'A triumph of dramatic skill: the handling of the two levels of the play is masterly and Eliot's verse registers its greatest achievement on the stage - passages of great lyrical beauty are incorporated into the dialogue.' Spectator

    Ivanov, a young estate owner, is too intelligent and too bored to endure his provincial life. He is a "superfluous man," attracted to a beautiful young woman who threatens his moral foundations and leads him ultimately to tragedy. This new translation beautifully captures Chekhov's dialogue for modern audiences.

    A nubile young actress wrestles with an aging Hollywood star for the affections of a renowned novelist. And everyone discovers just how disappointing love, art, and growing up can be. In this irreverent, contemporary, and very funny remix of Chekhov’s The Seagull, Aaron Posner stages a timeless battle between young and old, past and present, in search of the true meaning of it all. Original songs composed by James Sugg draw the famously subtextual inner thoughts of Chekhov’s characters explicitly to the surface. STUPID FUCKING BIRD will tickle, tantalize, and incite you to consider how art, love, and revolution fuel your own pursuit of happiness.

    A complex work revolving around a fictionalized Seurat immersed in single-minded concentration while painting the masterpiece, the production has evolved into a meditation on art, emotional connection, and community. This publication contains the entire script of the musical. "Sunday is itself a modernist creation, perhaps the first truly modernist work of musical theatre that Broadway has produced ... a watershed event that demands nothing less than a retrospective, even revisionist, look at the development of the serious Broadway musical."- Frank Rich, The New York Times Magazine

    Recommended for all collections." - Choice

    

    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.

    Carol's formidable father is also expected. Then the lights fuse, and the the arrival of several other unexpected visitors in the darkness wrecks the evening.

    For two jaded middle-aged couples, coming face-to-face with what might have been proves to be a shattering experience. The genius script by Sondheim and Goldman makes a cinematic, nightmarish hallucination of past and present blended together, employing lush era musical theatre pastiche and a deft eye for storytelling to tell not only the story of Ben, Phyllis, Sally and Buddy, but also the story of how the promise of America between the World Wars disintegrated into memory. Considered by many to be one of the best American musicals of all time, and still at the peak of form and craft. Those that saw the original Broadway production in 1971 and the all-star Lincoln Center concert in 1985 remember it as one of the most dazzling and poignant shows ever."A stunning musical…a pastiche so brilliant as to be breathtaking."—New York Daily News"Follies is utterly magnificent."—Women’s Wear DailyStephen Sondheim is the preeminent composer and lyricist of the American musical theatre. His best known works include West Side Story, Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Company, among others. Mr. Sondheim celebrates his 70th birthday this year.The late James Goldman is best known for his play and screenplay A Lion in Winter and also was the author of Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole and A Family Affair.

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

    Esme Allen is a well-known West End actress at just the moment when the West End is ceasing to offer actors a regular way of life. The visit of her young daughter, Amy, with a new boyfriend sets in train a series of events which only find their shape sixteen years later.David Hare's new play, which mixes love, death, and the theatre in a heady and original way, was sold out at the National Theatre, and transferred to the West End in January 1998.This is the definitive version of Amy's View.

    

    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.