Blithe Spirit
Noël Coward - 1941
Written in 1941, Blithe Spirit remained the longest-running comedy in British Theatre for years. Plotted around the central role of one of Coward's best loved characters, a medium Madame Arcati (originally played by Margaret Rutherford). Coward's play is a spirited charade about a man with 2 wives, one dead and another alive.
Dancing at Lughnasa
Brian Friel - 1990
In a house just outside the village of Ballybeg live the five Mundy sisters, barely making ends meet, their ages ranging from twenty-six up to forty. The two male members of the household are brother Jack, a missionary priest, repatriated from Africa by his superiors after twenty-five years, and the seven-year-old child of the youngest sister. In depicting two days in the life of this menage, Brian Friel evokes not simply the interior landscape of a group of human beings trapped in their domestic situation, but the wider landscape, interior and exterior, Christian and pagan, of which they are nonetheless a part.
Prodigal Son (TCG Edition)
John Patrick Shanley - 2016
Prodigal Son is pure, splendid Shanley: shaggily idealistic and always scratching a philosophical itch underneath jokes and banter." -- Davide Cote, Time Out New York“Shanley chooses characters stretched to the breaking point between rage and love… His are characters of obsessive passions who match those passions with hyper-melodic language.” --BOMB magazineWhen a troubled but gifted boy from the South Bronx arrives at a private school in New Hampshire, two faculty members wrestle with how to help him adjust to his new environment. The boy is violent, brilliant, alienated, and on fire with a ferocious loneliness. As with his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Doubt, John Patrick Shanley has drawn on his personal experiences to create an explosive portrait of a young man on the verge of either salvation or destruction.John Patrick Shanley is the author of Doubt, a parable (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award for Best Play), Outside Mullingar (Tony nomination for Best Play), Defiance, Storefront Church, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, and Dirty Story, among many other plays. He wrote the teleplay for Live from Baghdad (Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing of a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special) and the screenplays for Congo, Alive, Five Corners, Joe Versus the Volcano, Doubt, a parable (Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay) and Moonstruck (Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay).
Teechers
John Godber - 1989
Using the format of an end-of-term play, the new drama teacher's progress through two terms of recalcitrant classes, synical colleagues and obstructive caretakers is reviewed. Disillutioned, he departs for a safer private school.
The Brothers Size
Tarell Alvin McCraney - 2007
And there is Oshoosi, fresh out of prison, who always takes the wrong track. When his ex-cell mate Elegba gives him a clapped-out car, true freedom seems just around the corner... The Brothers Size is the European debut of an amazing young writer who plants Nigerian myth in the fertile soil of Louisiana. The play premiered at Drum, Plymouth, in October 2007, before touring and transferring to the Young Vic, London.
Motortown
Simon Stephens - 2006
He visits an old flame, buys a gun and goes on a blistering road trip through the new home front.'I don't blame the war. The war was alright. I miss it. It's just you come back to this.'Written during the London bombings of 2005, Motortown is a fierce, violent and controversial response to the anti-war movement - and to the war itself. Chaotic and complex, powerful and provocative, Simon Stephen's new play portrays a volatile and morally insecure world.Motortown premieres at the Royal Court Theatre on 21 April 2006. It follows the critically acclaimed On the Shore of the Wide World (Manchester Royal Exchange/National Theatre), winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play (2005).
Look Back in Anger
John Osborne - 1957
He browbeats his flatmate, terrorizes his wife, and is not above sleeping with her best friend-who loathes Jimmy almost as much as he loathes himself. Yet this working-class Hamlet, the original Angry Young Man, is one of the most mesmerizing characters ever to burst onto a stage, a malevolently vital, volcanically articulate internal exile in the dreary, dreaming Siberia of postwar England.First produced in 1956, Look Back in Anger launched a revolution in the English theater. Savagely, sadly, and always impolitely, it compels readers and audiences to acknowledge the hidden currents of rottenness and rage in what used to be called "the good life."
Three Plays: Absurd Person Singular / Absent Friends / Bedroom Farce
Alan Ayckbourn - 1975
A scathing comedy of social striving in the suburbs, Absurd Person Singular follows the fortunes of three couples who turn up in each other's kitchens on three successive Christmases, to hilarious and devastating effect.
Salomé
Oscar Wilde - 1891
Symbolist poets and writers — Stéphane Mallarmé and Maurice Maeterlinck among them — defended the play's literary brilliance. Beyond its notoriety, the drama's haunting poetic imagery, biblical cadences, and febrile atmosphere have earned it a reputation as a masterpiece of the Aesthetic movement of fin de siècle England.Written originally in French in 1892, this sinister tale of a woman scorned and her vengeance was translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas. The play inspired some of Aubrey Beardsley's finest illustrations, and an abridged version served as the text for Strauss' renowned opera of the same name. This volume reprints the complete text of the first English edition, published in 1894, and also includes "A Note on Salomé" by Robert Ross, Wilde's lifelong friend and literary executor. Students, lovers of literature and drama, and admirers of Oscar Wilde and his remarkable literary gifts will rejoice in this inexpensive edition.
Complete Plays
Sarah Kane - 2000
That play, and the others that followed, have been produced all over the world. This anthology includes Kane's never-before-published Channel 4 screenplay, Skin. Complete Plays include Blasted, Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis, and Skin.
Bachelorette
Leslye Headland - 2011
Fueled by jealousy and resentment, the girls embark on a night of debauchery that goes from playfully wasted to devastatingly destructive. Their old fears, unfulfilled desires and deep bonds with each other transform a prenuptial bender into a night they'll never forget. A wicked black comedy about female friendship and growing up in an age of excess.