The action is comprised of a mosaic of interrelated scenes-some funny, some touching, some rueful-which, taken together, create an in-depth portrait of a vanishing species: the upper-middle-class WASP. The actors change roles, personalities and ages with virtuoso skill as they portray a wide variety of characters, from little boys to stern grandfathers, and from giggling teenage girls to Irish housemaids. Each vignette introduces a new set of people and events; a father lectures his son on grammar and politics; a boy returns from boarding school to discover his mother's infidelity; a senile grandmother doesn't recognize her own sons at Christmas dinner; a daughter, her marriage a shambles, pleads futilely to return home, etc. Dovetailing swiftly and smoothly, the varied scenes coalesce, ultimately, into a theatrical experience of exceptional range, compassionate humor and abundant humanity.

    There is the very questionable theme in these days of the relationship between masters and servants, which this play tends to undermine.' Lord Cromer, who banned performances of Miss Julie from the English stage in October 1925It's Midsummer's Eve in the kitchen of a nobleman's house and his haughty daughter Julie flirts and plays with Jean, her father's manservant. But it's a dangerous game and once she has been seduced by him he holds the upper hand.Miss Julie, Strindberg's mighty play on power, sex and class is presented here in a coruscating version by Frank McGuinness.

    It was only when Max Ophuls made his famous film in 1950 that the work became better known as La Ronde. Now David Hare has reset these circular scenes of love and betrayal in the present day, with a cast of two actors playing a succession of characters whose sexual lives enmesh like a daisy chain. The Blue Room is a meditation on men and women, sex and social class, actors and the theater. With deft insight about the gap between the sexes, The Blue Room takes the treacherous Freudian subject of projection and desire and reinvents it in a bittersweet landscape that is both eternal and completely up-to-date.

    

    It is an exploration of intimacy, identity, and the courage it takes to be who you really are.

    There's a funny smell coming from one of Jim's storage units. And Kate's losing it after spending all day with the police. There's no going back after what they've seen.Breathing Corpses was first performed at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs in February 2005.

    Laugh with the actors, tap your feet to the music, and turn to your neighbor.

    

    Theatre script, playbook

    Jacobs Theater, New York City, in March 2009.

    The lawyer is married to a beautiful, well-to-do girl in the midwest whose family sets the pace in local society and intends to run his marriage and his career as well. He has rebelled, come to New York, and taken up residence with this intriguing young woman. He is lonely and in need of consolation; she is one of those rare women whose only purpose seems to be making others happy. Their briefly fulfilling relationship is unhappily destined to failure: he is a cultured gentile with a wife and painful memories while she is a plain Jewish girl with little education and a horrible Bronx accent. They share happy and humorous moments together, but they both see with sadness the utter hopelessness of the affair."It's a whale of a hit, a bittersweet joy ride." - The New York Mirror ."An absorbing, affectionate, and funny delight." - The New York Daily News

    Macon and Bess are two mail-order brides, lured to the West by the promise of new beginnings through marriage to men they have never met. While waiting for their respective husbands-to-be, one bubbling with optimism, the other mousy and plain, the two women become instant best friends. As Abundance follows the two women through their friendship and adventures for the next 25 years, this Western epic unearths the dark underside of American mythology. A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Ed Begley Jr., Gary Cole, Amy Madigan, Steven Weber and JoBeth Williams.

    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.

    . . . Ruhl writes with the imaginative sweep that allows Woolf's poetry to soar."—Variety"Sarah Ruhl's smart new translation [of Three Sisters] feels just right to contemporary American ears—lean, colloquial, and conversational for us and true to Chekhov's original work."—The Cincinnati EnquirerIn her stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf's gender-bending, period-hopping novel, award-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl "is her usual unfailingly elegant, unbeatably witty self, cleverly braiding her own brand-name wit with Woolf's" (New York )magazine. Preserving Woolf's vital ideas and lyrical tone, Ruhl brings to the stage the life of an Elizabethan nobleman who's magically transformed into an immortal woman. In her fresh translation of Three Sisters, the Anton Chekhov classic of ennui and frustration, Ruhl employs her signature lyricism and elegant understanding of intimacy to reveal the discontent felt by fretful Olga, unhappy Masha, and idealistic Irina as they long to leave rural Russia for the ever-alluring Moscow.Sarah Ruhl's other plays include the Pulitzer Prize finalists In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) and The Clean House, as well as Passion Play, Dean Man's Cell Phone, Demeter in the City, Eurydice, Melancholy Play, and Late: a cowboy song. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a PEN/Laura Pels Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Her plays have premiered on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in many theaters around the world.

    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.