Two of them—The School for Scandal and The Rivals—are among the funniest in the English language.The Rivals, brimming with false identities and with romantic entanglements carried on amid a cloud of parental disapproval, satirizes the pretentiousness and sentimentality of the age. It features a cast of memorable characters, among them the lovely Lydia Languish, whose pretty head has been filled with nonsense from romantic novels; Capt. Jack Absolute, a young officer in love with Lydia; Sir Anthony Absolute, Jack's autocratic father; Sir Lucius O'Trigger, a fiery Irishman; and Jack's provincial neighbor, Bob Acres, a bumptious but lovable country squire in love with Lydia.Hoping to win Lydia's affection, Captain Jack woos the pretty miss by pretending to be a penniless ensign named Beverley, an act that nearly incites a duel with Acres. His actions also provoke serious objections from Lydia's aunt, Mrs. Malaprop, a misspeaking matron whose ludicrous misuse of words gave the English language a new term: malapropism. Ultimately, the hilarious complications are resolved in a radiant comic masterpiece that will entertain and delight theater devotees and students of English drama alike.

    It is a dramatic study of sexual conflict and jealousy between an older and a younger man; as well as a subtle psychological portrait of an inadequate and sexually-obsessed middle-aged man.Sleuth was filmed by Joseph Mankiewicz, with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine in the leading roles, and this edition is fully illustrated with stills from the film, for which Anthony Shaffer wrote the screenplay.Anthony Shaffer has written several television and stage plays, including the West End success Murderer (also available from arion Boyars Publishers). He has also written many screenplays, including Play with a Gypsy, Hitchcock's Frenzy, The Wicker Man, and the Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun.

    The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown.

    Just before his works are celebrated at an exhibition in London, Jonathan journeys to the village where his former lover, Patricia, lives with her British husband, Nick. Archaeologists working on a dig, their spare existence is spent sifting through a Roman rubbish heap to discover the past. In their cold, remote house, Jonathan discovers an early painting of Patricia he'd done when they were young lovers. The subsequent struggle for the painting embodies the unreconciled passions of the past. Patricia has never forgiven Jonathan for leaving her, Nick despises Jonathan and the kind of art he produces, and Jonathan has never been able to recapture the inspiration and purity he felt when he painted Patricia. In taut scenes that dart from past to present and back, the characters are forced to deal with the unanswerable question of anti-Semitism, the legacy of the Holocaust and assimilation, the sadness of lost love, the role of the artist and the location of the human soul at the end of a ragged century.

    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.

    When a young actor from the big city lives with two aging bachelor farmers to gather stories about rural life, the farmers' lives are irrevocably altered when art attempts to imitate life and the line between truth and fiction is crossed.

    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?

    Set in a bar in a remote part of Ireland, The Weir tells of a young woman who has a story to frighten the locals out of their lives.

    "An unflaggingly witty and often moving slice of life . . . Poor Super Man explodes on to the stage like a bold comic strip, complete with snappy captions and hard, bright, witty dialogue," writes the Edmonton Journal.

    . . this passionate play about a family struggling to outrun social prophecy is potent and intensely acted." --The New York Times"Pipeline showcases an American play wright in full blaze." --Huffington Post"This is a writer who has a flawless ear for the way kids see the world and their ability to navigate it with surgical eloquence." --DeadlineNya, an inner-city teacher, is desperate to give her only son, Omari, opportunities he'd otherwise never have in the flawed public education system. When an incident at his private school threatens to get him expelled, Nya must con- front the full weight of the impact her parenting decisions have made on her son. Inspired by the "school-to-prison" pipeline that ensnares people of color, Morisseau brings us a powerful play that delves into issues of class, race, parenting, and education in America and questions the systematic structures that ultimately trap underserved communities.Dominique Morisseau's plays include Detroit '67, Paradise Blue, Skeleton Crew, Sunset Baby, Follow Me to Nellie's, Third Grade, Black at Michigan, Socks, Roses Are Played Out, and Love and Nappiness. Morisseau is a recipient of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, two NAACP Image Awards, a commendation from the Primus Prize by the American Theatre Critics Association, and the winner of the 2012 Barrie and Bernice Stavis Play wright Award by National Theatre Conference.

    A stranger at the next table who has had enough. And a dead man—with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man’s Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by playwright Sarah Ruhl, recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play The Clean House. A work about how we memorialize the dead—and how that remembering changes us—it is the odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world.

    Her characters are the oppressed, from the spinster Lizzie Borden in the title play, Blood Relations, to the prisoners of One Tiger to a Hill, to Leah, &quotchosen&quot daughter/mistress of rum runner Mr. Big in Whiskey Six Cadenza.

    A mystery, really. A man has been murdered. The mystery is, who he is, who murdered him and what were the circumstances? And to solve it, Wilson looks at the outsides and insides of his tiny, Middle Western town. He looks at a middle-aging woman who falls in love with the young man who comes to work in her cafe. He looks at a coarse, nasty woman mistreating her senile mother, who is obsessed with visions of Eldritch being evil and headed for blood-spilling. He looks at a tender relationship between a young man and a dreamy, crippled girl. But Wilson sees far more than this. He is grasping the very fabric of Bible Belt America, with its catchword morality ("virgin," "God-fearing") and its capability for the vicious. He senses the rhythm of its life and the cruelty it can impose. He understands the speech patterns of its loveless gossips, its sex-hungry boys, its compassionless preachers, its car-conscious blondes." In the end his portrait of Eldritch is full length, and the truth of its revelations will be pondered long after the stage lights have dimmed and the play has ended.

    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

    Inspired by a true story, Radium Girls traces the efforts of Grace Fryer, a dial painter, as she fights for her day in court. Her chief adversary is her former employer, Arthur Roeder, an idealistic man who cannot bring himself to believe that the same element that shrinks tumors could have anything to do with the terrifying rash of illnesses among his employees. As the case goes on, however, Grace finds herself battling not only with the U.S. Radium Corporation, but also with her own family and friends, who fear that her campaign for justice will backfire.(Not to be confused with the one-act version of this story by the same title.)