Plays Unpleasant


George Bernard Shaw - 1898
    Warren's Profession-Shaw challenges his audiences' moral complacency in the face of serious social problems and inequities.Author Bio: George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was one of the most prolific writers of the modern theater. He invented the modern comedy of ideas, expounding on social and political problems with a razor-sharp tongue, yet never sacrificing the comic vitality that ensures regular revivals of his plays. He also wrote several important political works, including The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. Dan H. Lawrence, edited Shaw's Collected Letters, his Collected Plays with their Prefaces, and Shaw's Music and (with Daniel Leary) The Complete Prefaces. He is Series Editor for the works of Shaw in Penguin.David Edgar is a playwright, critic, and professor of Playwriting Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Anatomy of a Suicide


Alice Birch - 2017
    For each, the chaos of what has come before brings with it a painful legacy.“I have Stayed. I have Stayed – I have Stayed for as long as I possibly can.”

Nell Gwynn


Jessica Swale - 2016
    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?

The Wood Demon: A Comedy in Four Acts


Anton Chekhov - 1993
    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...

Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off & Dracula


Liz Lochhead - 1987
    Written in Lallan Scots, it is a most exciting piece of poetic drama.

Rockaby and Other Short Pieces


Samuel Beckett - 1994
    We find in Beckett's masterful, exquisite prose, the familiar themes from his earlier works here expressed in the anguished murmurings of the solitary human consciousness.

A Thousand Clowns


Herb Gardner - 1962
    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

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.

Pomona


Alistair McDowall - 2014
    Searching Manchester in desperation, she finds all roads lead to Pomona - an abandoned concrete island at the heart of the city.Here at the centre of everything, journeys end and nightmares are born.A sinister and surreal thriller from Alistair McDowall, Pomona received its world premiere at the Orange Tree Theatre, London, on 12 November 2014.

Chewing Gum Dreams


Michaela Coel - 2013
    Friendship. Aaron, Candice, sex and Connor Jones. Chewing Gum Dreams is a one-woman play that recalls those last days of innocence before adulthood.Written and performed by Michaela Coel who spent her childhood in Hackney, London, Chewing Gum Dreams won the 2012 Alfred Fagon Award."Coel is by turns casually cruel, hilariously funny, naïve, wise and vulnerable. Her play tackles some difficult themes, including sexual assault, violence, and underachievement across generations…a serious new talent." Londonist"An engrossing, engaging and compelling one-woman show... nothing short of virtuosic." What's On Stage"A promising, resilient artist." Ché Walker

Woman in Mind


Alan Ayckbourn - 1986
    By turns sad and funny, satiric and moving, Alan Ayckbourn's intelligent British comedy Woman in Mind charts, without sentimentality or heartless irony, a frowsy middle-aged Englishwoman's hopeless descent into psychosis.

The Blue Room


David Hare - 1998
    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.

Over the River and Through the Woods


Joe DiPietro - 1999
    His parents retired and moved to Florida. That doesn't mean his family isn't still in Jersey. In fact, he sees both sets of his grandparents every Sunday for dinner. This is routine until he has to tell them that he's been offered a dream job. The job he's been waiting for - marketing executive - would take him away from his beloved, but annoying, grandparents. He tells them. The news doesn't sit so well. Thus begins a series of schemes to keep Nick around. How could he betray his family's love to move to Seattle for a job, wonder his grandparents? Well, Frank, Aida, Nunzio, and Emma do their level best, that includes bringing the lovely - and single - Caitlin O'Hare as bait.

Men Should Weep


Ena Lamont Stewart - 1947
    It finds in the lives of Maggie, her family and her neighbours not only all the tragedy that appalling housing, massive unemployment and grinding poverty can produce, but alo a rich vein of comedy - the sense of the ridiculous, the need for a good laugh.