Innocuous remarks suddenly turn damning. Socratic dialogue gives way to heated assault. And the relationship between a somewhat fatuous teacher and his seemingly hapless pupil turns into a fiendishly accurate X ray of the mechanisms of power, censorship and abuse.

    But when a major global catastrophic event strikes the planet, their date takes on evolutionary significance and the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. Will they survive? What about the fish in the tank? And who is that woman pulling levers and playing the timpani? An epic and intimate comedy that spans over billions of years, boom explores the influences of fate versus randomness in the course of one's life, and life as we know it on the planet.

    It is a play to make us question a standard institution - Anzac Day, the sacred cow among Australian annual celebrations - but it is the likeability and genuineness of the characters that give the play its memorable qualities: Alf, the nobody who becomes a somebody on this day of days; Mum, the anchor of the family; Hughie, their son, with all the uncertainties and rebelliousness of youth; and Wacka, the Anzac, with his simple, healing wisdom.Undoubtedly one of Australia's favourite plays, the One Day of the Year explores the universal theme of father-son conflict against the background of the beery haze and the heady, nostalgic sentimentality of Anzac Day. It is a play to make us question a standard institution - Anzac Day, the sacred cow among Australian annual celebrations - but it is the likeability and genuineness of the characters that give the play its memorable qualities: Alf, the nobody who becomes a somebody on this day of days; Mum, the anchor of the family; Hughie, their son, with all the uncertainties and rebelliousness of youth; and Wacka, the Anzac, with his simple, healing wisdom.

    "What Lenny Bruce was to the 1950s, Bob Dylan to the 1960s, Woody Allen to the 1970s--that's what Eric Bogosian is to this frightening moment of drift in our history."--Frank Rich, The New York Times

    The Telfairs are stonemasons and have been for generations. Ben Telfair has given up his education to apprentice himself to his grandfather, Papaw, a man who knows that "true masonry is not held together by cement but...by the warp of the world." Out of the love that binds these two men and the gulf that separates them from the Telfairs who have forsaken -- or dishonored -- the family trade, Cormac McCarthy has crafted a drama that bears all the hallmarks of his great fiction: precise observation of the physical world; language that has the bite of common speech and the force of Biblical prose; and a breathtaking command of the art of storytelling.

    Tired of writing cheap comedy gags for "Chipper the Chipmunk," a children's television star, Murray finds himself unemployed with plenty of free time with which to pursue his...pursuits. Lectured by his conventional brother Arnold and hounded by "the system," Murray is paid a visit by bickering, uptight social workers, Sandra and Albert, and finds himself solving their problems as well as most of his own."Would be a standout comedy in any season. Filled with laughter and warmth and sweetness and inspired daffiness. One of the quintessential New York comedies."-New York Daily News "An extraordinarily funny play with some brilliantly offbeat lines."-The New York Post

    "Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation"—Time Out "There are few stage authors writing more interestingly than Mark Ravenhill … He is - it is now yet more evident - a searing, intelligent, disturbing sociologist with a talent for satirical dialogue and a flair for sexual sensationalism."—Financial Times Shopping and Fucking: "is a darkly humorous play for today's twenty-somethings … a real coup de theatre"—Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard Faust: "…an intelligent and witty reappropriation of the legend … alive, pertinent and disturbing"—Michael Coveney, Observer Handbag: "…combines urban grit with sly wit, and reveals Mark Ravenhill as a writer of real daring" —Daily Telegraph Some Explicit Polaroids: "laudably ambitious, pulsates with energy … very funny"—Financial Times

    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?

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    The people, including five comic characters abandoned or greatly diminished in the later play, "Uncle Vanya," for which Chekhov borrowed his own characters and material, do not allow themselves to be daunted. This translation of The Wood Demon was produced by the Mark Taper Forum as a classics lab workshop production in 1992...

    Secretly in love with Midia, the wife of a banished revolutionary, Morn finds himself facing renewed bloodshed and disaster when Midia's husband returns, provoking a duel and the return of chaos that Morn has fought so hard to prevent.The first major work and the only play of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pnin, The Tragedy of Mister Morn is translated and published in English here for the first time, and is a moving study of the elusiveness of happiness, the power of imagination and the eternal battle between truth and fantasy.

    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.

    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.

    Recommended for all collections." - Choice

    Escaping into her research, Constance decodes the Gustav Manuscript, and discovers a pair of comedies that she believes are the source for Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet. Transported into the world of her theory, she comes face-to-face with Desdemona and Juliet and discovers that, far from shrinking violets, they are hellions full of surprises. What follows is a riotous retelling of theatrical legend that brings Constance out of her gloom and straight into a new and confident self.