Keith Waterhouse is one of Britain-s most popular writers in nearly every field. This collection brings together for the first time his most celebrated plays from a career spanning more than forty years. Our Song is a warm, tender, romantic drama, infused with moments of great humour. Pulling himself out of the rut of his middle-aged executive lifestyle, Roger Piper stumbles into a sixteen-month tempestuous affair. Billy Liar tells the story of a funeral parlour worker with a humdrum life, who spends most of his time dreaming of ways to escape his drab existence in Yorkshire. Adapted from his celebrated novel. Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell Gambler, journalist, fervent alcoholic, four-times married Jeffrey Bernard writes the - Low Life- column for the Spectator magazine. Locked in The Coach and Horses in Soho overnight, he has time to reflect on a dissolute life. Good Grief is a sensitive, wryly humorous study of a middle-aged widow, coming to terms with bereavement, who finds the courage to break with the past. Mr and Mrs Nobody is an adaptation of George and Weedon Grossmith-s comic novel The Diary Of A Nobody and Mrs Pooter-s Diary. A respectable Victorian clerk has lofty social aspirations.

Seven passengers meet in the saloon bar of a ship as it sets sail from an unidentified English port. Socialite Mrs Cliveden-Banks is on her way to join her husband, a Colonel in the army; Mr Lingley has important businessin Marseilles; charlady Mrs Midget is making her first passage by sea; Reverend William Duke is looking forward to a holiday, while Tom Prior intends to spend the journey in the ship's saloon bar. Also on board are Henry and Ann, a young couple who seem anxious for the ship to leave port. But the travellers have more incommon than they dare suspect. Out at sea, an eerie calm settles over the ship as Tom is the first to discover the fate which awaits his fellow passengers. . .Outward Bound was one of the biggest West End and Broadway hits of the 1920s and was twice filmed. Its production at the Finborough Theatre in 2012 marks its first London run in more than fifty years.

....a little show about death and other taboos..... Since her big sister, BBC journalist Kate Peyton, was murdered in Somalia, Rebecca has had rather a strange time. She welcomes us to her world in a passionately political, sharply comical and painfully personal account of life after Kate. Crafting a moving and often comic tapestry of private moments from a public tragedy, Rebecca tells her own story of a courageous journalist and a loving big sister, whom she misses.

This second edition of The Horse's Mouth follows the production of War Horse, a play adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's novel, from early concept workshops to one of the most beguiling and original plays ever staged by the National Theatre, the actors working with magnificent,life-sized puppets to take the audience on a gripping journey through history. The Horse's Mouth is a fascinating, behind-the-scenes story of how this acclaimed and highly technical piece of theatre was achieved. In his new Introduction, Mervyn Millar describes how the journey from improbable idea to long-running show has seen our production change.'

Includes the plays Moj of the Antarctic, Desert Boy, Matt Henson: North Star and Muhammad Ali and Me

A brand new Christmas story for children, Holly and Ivan's Christmas Adventure is a magical tale of two brave little toys who fall off the back of Santa's Sleigh on Christmas Eve. Not wanting their new owners to wake up to no presents, they set off on an epic journey to find them. Presented here as both a story book and a play, Holly and Ivan's Christmas Adventure is packed with charming illustrations.

A Masterclass in Comedy, Tragedy, Farce, Shakespeare, New Plays, Opera and Musicals. This practical handbook takes us on a step by step journey from pre-production through the rehearsal process, followed by focused advice on each genre from comedy to tragedy, Shakespeare to new plays and musicals. Special chapters offer strategies for dealing with difficult actors, working with producers and taking on the job of an Artistic Director. An indispensible guide to a director's craft, packed full of advice and peppered with priceless anecdotes about the highs and the lows of a lifetime's work in the theatre.

Includes the plays Spain, I Heart Maths and Up. The theme of self-indulgence unites the three plays in The Ego Plays collection. At the heart of each is a gay man asking a lot of questions& about himself. These questions range from scientififIc and philosophical musings to angst-ridden pleas for enlightenment. They come from men who have become so trapped in their own situations that they can no longer successfully connect with the outside world. Up is a play about despair, I Heart Maths is a play about love and Spain is a play about moving on. Together they present the cognitive processes of three men who have allowed personal problems to grow to monstrous proportions. In each of these plays excessive self analysisleads to the main characters taking desperate measures, though frequently also leading to humorous consequences. But while these plays are comedies, exploring the perils of taking oneself too seriously, they are not intended to be cruel. Instead they set their characters free by making their worst fears come true and then taking them somewhere new.

... I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thinking; hang on a minute; I seem to have the knack of pleasing ladies. In trousers? With short hair? In public? Was that allowed? Indeed it was.' A cool and contemporary look at one of the most intriguing aspects of musical theatre just what is it that makes a woman in trousers so appealing? Accompanied by a piano, mezzo-soprano Jessica Walker dons a few well-chosen items of male attire, giving a supremely well-sung performance that conjures up an entire world, from the swaggering cross-dressers of the Victorian Music Hall to the ambiguous boy-heroes of Mozart and Strauss, to the back-room bulldykes of the Harlem Renaissance. Commissioned and produced by Opera North Projects with the Southbank Centre touring partner Welcome to Yorkshire. The Girl I Left Behind Me is a provocative, flirtatious, personal one woman-guide which deliciously recalls a forgotten chapter of female performance.

The Riots, from spoken evidence, continues the Tricycle's record of addressing current issues, in this case with a dramatic account of the recent riots, brought to the stage more than three months before the Deputy Prime Minister's Committee on Riots is due to report. From tweets by taxi drivers, to moment-by-moment accounts by riot police, it will build a real-time picture of the riots as they unfolded. And then, from interviews with politicians, police, teachers, lawyers, community leaders, as well as victims and on-lookers, it will analyse what happened, why it happened, and what we should do towards making a better future for ourselves and our city.

"The four Tim Crouch plays contained in this volume make up one of the most important bodies of English-language playwriting to have emerged so far in the twenty-first century. Of course, were less than a dozen years into it, so the statement is still a little on the cautious side, but I can think of no other contemporary playwright who has asked such a compelling set of questions about theatrical form, narrative content, and spectatorial engagement." - Stephen Bottoms, University of Leeds. Includes the plays The Author, England, An Oak Tree and My Arm.

The beautiful Marquise has been left a widow tragically young. . .The handsome chevalier has been deserted by the love of his life who has decided to take holy orders. . .Both have sworn never to lose their hearts again. . .Neither had reckoned with the surprise of love.

Who do you think I am? Another clueless white woman turned up in Africa with her conscience-stricken hat on to save The African from famine, disease, earthquake, wind and fire whilst secretly revelling in her ability to retreat to the nearest luxury lodge when the going gets tough or the dysentery kicks in? "Yah. Pretty much." Inspired by a real-life Amnesty International report, Fanta Orange is a playful and unexpected tale that gets under the skin of modern Africa. Regina is a Kenyan house servant. Roger is her white farmer boss. The two share a curious bond. Enter Ronnie, a privileged young English girl whom Roger discovers holed up in the bush, studying the bizarre practice of dirt-eating among local tribes. Soon both women are pregnant by Roger and a saga unfolds which turns every racial and sexual preconception on its head.

In Benin City, a young girl struggles to support her family. A world away, in an Edinburgh tenement, 'aunty' Martha arranges a job and flight for her. Based on the experiences of young women trafficked to Scotland, Cora Bissett's explosive production, combining direct, chilling performances with video,animation and music, thrusts you into the brutal, complex and hidden world behind the newspaper headlines on sex-trafficking.

In 1930s Berlin - an intriguing city of jazz and underground cabaret overpowered by the rise of Hitler and World War II - the daughter of a Jewish family falls in love with their black shabbes goy (a term used for those who assist Jews on the Sabbath with tasks forbidden to Jews within Jewish law). Fast-forward to the tale of a mixed-race couple in seemingly unprejudiced modern-day Brooklyn, where the same family is coping with a number of calamities. Shalom Baby is a touching and very funny exploration of love, family and friendship.

27 is a new play from acclaimed writer Abi Morgan about loneliness, ageing, science and the loss of our sense of self. Dr Richard Garfield has given Ursula a difficult choice. She is the Mother Superior in waiting of a convent that has been given the opportunity to take part in his revolutionary scientific study. This American study would require that the nuns donate their brains after death to potentially unlock the mysteries of Alzheimer's and dementia. Ursula must weigh up the value of preserving her faith, versus embracing science.The study is agreed and Richard and his team come to the convent every year to test the nuns who are willing to take part. This union will change their lives forever. For Ursula, with the impending pressure of taking over the ailing convent, the study brings more challenges than she could ever have imagined and rocks her faith and her hitherto cloistered existence to its core. Drawing on research contained within the book and study Aging with Grace, 27 is an extraordinary examination of a lifestyle in decline, but it could hold the key to the issues of our times - our ageing population and the decline of our minds.

Set in the midst of the Cold War, Lee Blessing's powerful and startling play dramatises a stand-off between U.S. and Soviet arms negotiators as they battle for supremacy. Full of tension and humour A Walk in the Woods shows how the relationship between the two experts evolves as they stroll in the woods above Geneva, away from the glare of the negotiating table. But will this escape lead to a true breakthrough or just more posturing? In this revised version of the play, originally performed at Northern Stage, Vermont, and directed by Nicholas Kent, a woman plays the role of the U.S. negotiator

'I could fly to New York and back every day for seven years and still not leave a carbon footprint as big as if I have a child. Ten thousand tonnes of CO2. That's the weight of the Eiffel Tower. I'd be giving birth to the Eiffel Tower.' In a time of global anxiety, terrorism, erratic weather and political unrest, a young couple want a child but are running out of time. If they over think it, they'll never do it. But if they rush, it could be a disaster.They want to have a child for the right reasons. Except, what exactly are the right reasons? And what will be the first to destruct - the planet or the relationship?

Anne Elliot fell deeply in love with a handsome young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, at the age of nineteen. But because he had neither fortune nor rank to recommend him, Anne's mentor and friend, Lady Russell, persuaded her to break off the engagement. Eight years later, Anne has lived to regret her decision. She never stopped loving Frederick  and when he returns from sea a Captain, she can only watch as every eligible young woman falls at his feet. Can the pair rekindle a love that was lost but not forgotten?

Just Adrian is a patchwork tour of a legendary playwright, poet and activists life in the theatre. It is a fascinating first-hand account of groundbreaking productions featuring figures like Kenneth Tynan, Peter Brook and Peter Hall as well as adventures in alternative theatre. These writings explore Adrians many interests, from drama for children to musical theatre, in a voice that combines playful irreverence with compassion and insight. Taken together, they are a funny, moving testament to a great theatre lover.

Do you know your mirror scrims from your mirror balls? Or your get-outs from your get-ins? Or indeed your get-offs? The Oberon Glossary of Theatrical Terms includes explanations of over 1,300 technical, backstage, acting, musical, dance and showbusiness terms in common usage. Completely revised and updated, this concise glossary explains all theatre jargon. From amateur dramatics fans to West End directors, this new edition is a must have addition to the bookshelves of all theatre and performing arts aficionados.

'The last thing I want is all these total strangers, who live literally inches away from me, knowing every last detail of my life.' When a young woman buys her first flat it seems that all her dreams are coming true. Then she meets him. Overbearing, brash, and prone to spectacular gaffs, her across-the-hall neighbour is definitely strange  yet strangely attractive. But when an innocent prank goes horribly wrong the newly-formed friendship is pushed to breaking point. Only then do the neighbours realise they don't know as much about each other as they thought they did. A vertical thriller for a time when a stranger is only one wall away.

The King James Version of the Bible (KJV) is a foundation stone of the English language. The KJV was composed as a collective project and written to be spoken. Sixty-Six Books has been created, in the spirit of the original, in the same way. Pulpit to print; stage to page; mediated through many forms oral and written, the KJV has, since its inception, been a fundamental part of written and spoken English.This is a work that has travelled to every continent of the globe. It has been shared as a melodic instrument of inspiration, illumination and mutual understanding; and it has also been wielded as a tool of colonial oppression.

Why does everyone steal from the twelfth man? Casey is back home. Shes here to sort her club out and they have some problems to solve. The solution is obvious. Money. And Casey knows where to get it. Inspired by real footballing events, Fit and Proper People exposes dealings that manufacture our national heroes, asking serious questions about who is running our social and cultural institutions, and how they are doing it.

This powerful version of Chekhovs famous drama reflects the South African phenomenon of the 1990s. With the hindsight of the new millennium we can look back and see that the miracle did happen. The new order did take over from the old. The fruitless cherry orchard was chopped down. The old men who couldn't move with the times have been left behind and forgotten. Chekhov's great pre-revolutionary drama, dreaming of youthful energy replacing the worn-out inertia of a dying world, lends itself vividly to this new setting in post-revolutionary South Africa.

They have a picture, a picture which could spell the destruction of civilised society, a plan so devastating it would change the world as we know it. They must put a stop to it. They have a suspect, tied to a chair, a hood covering his face. The only problem is the suspect claims the picture was drawn by his four year old son. They have the suspect's wife, but she claims her son couldn't have made the picture. Who's telling the truth? What is the truth? And does the truth really matter any more? Are we paranoid? Or are they really out to get us? What effect have the politics of fear had on our society? How much we will believe and what will we do to save ourselves when we feel we're under threat? Are we under threat? And if so what is justifiable? Can the myth of terror be more dangerous than the truth and could the biggest threat to our way of life be our own paranoia?

This is a provocative new play about Mikhail Kalashnikov - the Russian inventor of the AK47 assault rifle, and a decorated Soviet hero. Set in Kalashnikov's dacha amidst the dark woods and waters of a fairy tale Russian landscape, a young journalist, Volkov, comes to interview the elderly Kalashnikov about his time on the front line and his subsequent invention of the AK-47 assault rifle. With the help of his daughter and grand-daughter, Kalashnikov initially welcomes Volkov into his home but as the questions harden and ambiguities appear in Kalashnikov's recollections, some painful and extremely uncomfortable truths begin to emerge. . .

Some people are frightened of small spaces. . . Some people are frightened of sharks. . . Dennis is terrified of flies. In a kill-or-be-killed fight for sanity, one man is determined to conquer his fear of flies, but as darkness falls, what is that ominous hum behind the door?

Retired entrepreneur William invites his four grown-up children to visit his beautiful converted barn in the Welsh Borders to celebrate his birthday. They all join with Williams carer Solomon to toast another year, but each of them has their own business in mind...Warm, intelligent, witty and moving, Family Business is the world premiere production of Julian Mitchells new play, looking at the complex relationships that underpin family life.

'That is the story of our beginning. And this is the story of. . .the end' Lovesong is the story of one couple, told from two different points in their lives  as young lovers in their 20s and as worldly companions looking back on their relationship. Their past and present selves collide in this haunting and beautiful tale of togetherness. All relationships have their ups and downs; the optimism of youth becomes the wisdom of experience. Love is a leap of faith.

The Greek fleet bound for Troy is becalmed. For the sake of a wind, Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces, is persuaded that he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. But as the priest raises his knife to slit the child's throat, the goddess Diana spirits her away. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, believing her beloved daughter to be dead, slays her husband in revenge on is return from the Trojan wars. Their son, Orestes, avenges his father's death by killing his mother. Now, years later, as Iphigenia, a prisoner of the temple of Diana, looks across the sea to Athens, longing to return home, her brother Orestes arrives to rescue her. . .

Sensation Nation is a vocal group founded and led by the unstoppable DD. Her grand plan is for the group to storm next year's Britain's Got Talent. But first they need a gig, and more importantly a heartbreaking back-story that will win them votes later on down the line. So she's booked them in to sing at a funeral. And not just any funeral either. Sensation Nation is to sing at the funeral of Ali Monroe, an older girl from their school who was killed in a car crash. Too Fast is an ensemble comedy with a strong emotional heart and a huge theatrical reveal in the final scene.

Beneath a scorching Florida sun, Boss Godfrey watches the chain gang. Keeps his eye on Cool Hand Luke. War hero, trouble-maker, inspiration to his fellow inmates. And just the man Boss wants to crush...Cool Hand Luke is the hard-hitting story of a true original. He'll play it real cool in the face of brutality. He'll always get back up after a beating. He'll eat fifty eggs in an hour, to win a bet. A man who won't conform no matter what it costs.

Kerrie sets about her daily task of preparing Mums heroin. . . Jakey has just about had enough of life in a gang. . . Cameron is too scared to step outside the front door. . . One morning, the three teenagers discover a note in the Frosties. Mum has abandoned them: they have been left home alone& Blackberry Trout Face is a bold, gritty and funny play, which explores the universal themes of family, loyalty and ambition. With sharply-drawn characters, crackling dialogue, and plenty of humour, we follow three young people as they struggle to cope in exceptional circumstances.

Should some secrets never be kept no matter what the cost? Five women come together to help clear out a run-down cottage a week before the wedding of its new owner, Una. Joining her on this hen night of sorts are her two best friends, Kelly and Triona, her soon to be mother-in-law, Olive, and Olives best friend, Anta. But Una is keeping a secret that, if revealed, will destroy all hopes of her dream wedding and living happily ever after with the love ofher life. As the play unfolds we see the women, one by one, forced to confront awkward truths of their own.

First performed in 1967, this is an early, yet startling, brilliant work by the internationally acclaimed Argentine playwright Griselda Gambaro. In this absurd and forceful play, two brothers carry out a primal scene of envy, cruelty and torture. Ignacio wants to break free of his brother and move out of their shared house, but Lorenzo has other plans. Through a series of dark comedic scenes the absurd becomes a harrowing metaphor of the most pure and raw reality.

Ambivalences: A Portrait of Arnold Wesker from A to W is a document of Arnold Wesker in conversation with the Italian academic Chiara Montenero. In their wide-ranging discussions, Wesker and Montenero address his ideas on art and drama with a particular focus on some of his most enduring characters. Betraying his reputation as theatres perennial outsider, Ambivalences finds Wesker in generous and engaging form, offering a rich and unique insight into the mind of one of the key figures in 20th-century drama.

The 2011/12 Royal Ballet Yearbook is the perfect companion to The Royal Ballet, its history, repertory, dancers and staff. Featuring the best photographs of all the ballets performed in the 2010/11 Season and a summary of the current one, this Yearbook also contains special features about the Companys Director, Monica Mason, the making of The Royal Ballets Alices Adventures in Wonderland and rare archive photographs by Zoë Dominic. With the annual Company news, listings and a chronology of The Royal Ballet, this is an essential Yearbook for anyone who loves ballet

'My preoccupation,' says Arnold Wesker in his interview/portrait Ambivalences (published by Oberon Books) 'with-violence-stemming from-perceived-intimidation-by-the-bright-ones who dare to be cleve ror simply different, began with an incident at school. While queuing for a school meal, one of the other boys wanted me to try his liquorice stick .I didn't want to. This other pupil insisted. I continued to decline. I didn'tlike liquorice! That I didn't want to share what he liked, what he thought was good, enraged the other boy who couldn't bear my indifference to his taste, and he hit me. I've never lost this image of violence induced by the outsider, the one who dissents, the one who doesn't share in what others like or believe. One day', Wesker vowed, 'I may write a play beginning with that image  of the boy who wants another boy to share his taste in liquorice and hits him because he doesn't. It'll be an exploration of the nature of violence.' In late 2010 he wrote just such a play, Joy and Tyranny, but the playwright doesn't describe it as a play, rather as: Arias and variations on the theme of violence. In fact it is a patchwork quilt knitting together many extracts from other of his works, as though throughout his career he was infusing those works, ghost-like, with a hidden play waiting the right time to emerge.

Set in the basement kitchen of a large restaurant, thirty chefs, waitresses, and kitchen porters, slowly begin the day preparing to serve lunch. The central story tells of a frustrated love affair between a high-spirited, young, German chef, PETER, and a married English waitress, MONIQUE. PART ONE slowly builds to a frenzy of serving. PART TWO is a lyrical period -the kitchen porters and chefs linger after serving lunch, and talk about their dreams of a better life. In PART THREE everyone returns for the slower evening service during which PETER, finally turned down by MONIQUE, goes berserk and smashes the gas leads to the ovens. The proprietor, bewildered by PETER'S violence, the nature of which he cannot understand, asks his workers what more is there to life than work, money and food.

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Shirley is a teenage boy, a bit of a loner, who is hopelessly in love with a classmate at school who barely knows he exists. Then, one night, a mysterious figure moves into his ordinary suburban street. Wound Man is an unconventional superhero, who happens to have a vacancy for a teenage side-kick.

Les Enfants Terribles: Collected Plays presents a thematic trilogy of plays from one of Britains most innovative theatre companies. As a document of the companys progress over its ten-year history, the collection also features production photos, design sketches and introductions to each play. The Terrible Infants (2007) blends puppetry, live music, performance and storytelling to present a series of twisted tales for children and adults. Inspired by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock. Ernest and the Pale Moon (2009) is a noir horror based upon a tale of murderous envy. The Vaudevillains (2010) is a dark miniature musical whodunnit&when the owner of The Empire music hall is murdered, everyones a suspect&

Mary Swanson just moved to Middletown. About to have her first child, she is eager to enjoy the neighbourly bonds a small town promises. But life in Middletown is complicated: neighbors are near strangers and moments of connection are fleeting. Middletown is a playful, poignant portrait of a town with two lives, one ordinary and visible, the other epic and mysterious.

National Theatre Wales and Told by an Idiot bring their critically acclaimed celebration of Gwyn Thomas  one of the most distinctive Welsh voices of the last century  and an outstanding Welsh cast to the Edinburgh Festival. Taking as its inspiration Thomas ink-black comic tales, The Dark Philosophers is a funny, violent and passionate depiction of a community teetering on the brink of humanity. Using Told by an Idiots trademark anarchic physicality and inventive storytelling, this adaptation brings out the bleak, wild humour in tales laced with sex, murder and Thomas devastating Valleys wit

Keith just wants to say hes sorry. A lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse has given him a lot to apologise for  particularly to the two people who raised from a child. But as the memories of violence, betrayal, lies and recriminations are raked to the surface, it becomes clear that past actions can have shocking repercussions in the present. Forgiving is easy, forgetting is a different story.

Champagne is flowing in Sloane Square while cash and coke change hands in the back alleys of Soho. City trader Jonny slinks effortlessly through the city's dark underbelly, on the prowl for new and dangerous experiences. Desired, depraved and dragging his reluctant intern behind him, he leaves a trail of broken hearts and barristers' blood in his wake. Sung in a new English translation and set in the pre-credit crunch days of the early noughties, this heady mix of sex, violence and beautiful music is a collaboration between Soho Theatre and the UK's hottest opera company, OperaUpClose

Based loosely on the testimonies of more than one hundred Gulf of Mexico residents, Were Gonna Make You Whole is a passionate magical-real political drama that follows the livesof five people brought together by environmental tragedy. Set in Louisiana, the play examines how the petrochemical industries have forever altered the lives and livelihoods of the people of the Gulf of Mexico.

"Henry, are you awake?" Henry lives each day like the last. Exactly like the last. Every day, he tries to make sense of the world around him; the girl sitting on the lawn outside his window, the pages of a book filled with the same sentence, the 80 year old man looking at him in the mirror. In 2009 Patient H.M.'s brain is dissected live on the internet to a global audience of 400,000 people, cut into carefully preserved slices: manuscripts of tissue like the pages of a book. In 1953 Henry Molaison emerges from experimental brain surgery without any recollection of the last two years of his life or the ability to form new memories. In 1935 nine-year old Henry is knocked over by a bike, leaving him unconscious for five minutes. Following Analogue's critically acclaimed Mile End and Beachy Head and inspired by the world's most important neuroscientific case-study, 2401 Objects tells the remarkable story of a man who could no longer remember, but who has proven impossible to forget.

In Loreto there is a Holy House, a divine and wondrously flitting house. A vessel for the holy. But now its in Sams house. And Sam cant figure it out. But Sam knows he must. Its not every day a miracle happens and your house becomes the vessel that contains the vessel that contained Mary and Mary is the vessel that contained our Lord. This symbol of faith and transformation comes crashing into a contemporary city as Sam races through 24 hours dealing with trapped parents, girlfriends and dentists to find meaning in this darkly comic odyssey.

A young rebel. A brutal victory. A devastating defeat. Aged 25, the charismatic Bonnie Prince Charlie laid claim to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in a series of stunning military victories. By the time he was 26, his dreams lay in ruins and he was fleeing for his life. Amidst the chaos of war, the Young Pretender is forced to decide how far he is willing to go for the cause The flawed prince is brought to life vividly in this unflinching look at the nature of rebellion.

Keswick, 1940 - Britain is at war with Germany. Maggies life is under invasion too: Gran knitting for England, evacuee lodgers, helping with the war effort  and now a fund-raising concert party! Husband Rob is due home on RAF leave and best friend Peg has just learnt that shes pregnant  but no such luck for Maggie and Rob. . .Nostalgia, romance, laughter and tears all feature full of live music, songs and dance from the war years.

Ninette de Valois was an extraordinary woman. Not only did she create The Royal Ballet, The Royal Ballet School and the company that has become Birmingham Royal Ballet - in themselves great achievements - but she was a gifted choreographer, dancer, teacher, administrator, speaker and writer. She also identified and developed so many of the talented dancers, choreographers and teachers who went onto make Britain a world leader in ballet and dance. During the 50th Anniversary Celebrations of The Royal Ballet in 1981, Ninette de Valois accepted an invitation tospeak to the Yorkshire Ballet Seminars. In that illuminating talk, printed here for the first time, she focuses on what 'English Ballet' is. Combined with her 1955 article, Some Problems of Ballet Today, and Sir Peter Wright's fascinating Madam's Memorial Address, this volume raises questions as meaningful today as they were when de Valois first addressed them. In an increasingly connected dance world, what does it mean to have a national style? Why is a national style important? How might a national style be identified, developed and nurtured? This volume provides thought-provoking and fascinating reading for all lovers of ballet, dance and art.

I felt I should say congratulations on winning the election but I couldn't find the words. . .There were suddenly three of us in our relationship. In the weeks leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the pressure on the UK government to commit to joining the American cause was escalating. And in one Stockwell household the pressure had completely erased the line between the political and the personal  the home of Laura and her husband Nick. . .TonyBlair's Chief of Staff. With the crisis coming to a head, Nick and Laura struggle to protect their relationship as Nick attempts to guide Tony Blair through one of the greatest controversies of our time.

Four plays. Five murderers. Five victims. Based on the true stories of five of Broadmoor's most notorious inmates from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and the people they murdered. The closely linked plays of Lullabies of Broadmoor weave together a rich, dark, Gothic tragicomedy about murder, love, madness, personal responsibility and redemption

Alan loves his work. He doesn't love his wife, his mother or his only child, so he aims to break free and live for himself. Alan's going to sort this mess out - this huge, horrific mess that is his life. He's got a plan. He's going to stop playing the husband, the father, the son and find himself. He's going to sort it out once and for all.

Sir Harold Hobson (Sunday Times) coined the phrase The Lonely Trilogy to include Rattle (Garrick Theatre, 1962-3), Mother Adam (Arts Theatre, 1971) and Staircase (RSC, 1966-67), plays which have been in constant production throughout the years. Of the middle duologue, Hobson wrote: In Mother Adam Dyer has written one of the few real tragedies of our time... It is more disturbing; it has deeper resonances; it ismore beautifully written, with an imagination at once exotic and desperately familiar; it has a profounder pity, and a more exquisite falling Close.

Jane is a housewife. James sells guns. They live in one of the larger cities in our country and are both terrified of ethnic youths who might well be wearing hoods and carrying knives, or something. All is well in the Jones household, until their sexually frustrated eighteen year old daughter Jenny brings home her new boyfriend, Kwese Abalo. . .A visceral, smart, brutally hilarious play about prejudice, arms dealing, and what it means to be English.

When does a twosome become a threesome? A very confused Los Angeles therapist finds out when one beautiful woman and two alpha males meet for couples therapy in Straussers frenetic new comedy.

Three men. One gym. A disaster waiting to happen. Steve has been stalking Dan. Terry has also been stalking Dan. Steve and Terry are best friends. Steve wants a fight. Terry wants to get laid. Dan just wants to do some reps. Its not going to work out like that. Muscle: a wrong-com about pumping iron, loving thy brother, and battling with the man in the mirror.

Seven angels have fallen through space and time for so long, they have forgotten why. Coming to rest on a desert landscape, they imagine the creation of a legendary garden that once flourished there and its destruction from greed and neglect. Inspired by Paradise Lost, Seven Angels interprets the themes of John Miltons masterpiece for a modern audience facing up to the urgent challenges of a changing climate and ever-depleting resources

Eddie is a youthful dreamer and wannabe ladies' man who works day and night in his father's Chinese take-away. In fact, he's never happier than when he wanders into daydreams of escaping the everyday and being like his idol Tom Jones. But with two girlfriends, a full-time job, and a whole host of other problems, will he ever achieve his dream?

Howard Barker's theatre is characterized by its tragic scale and its distinctive way of exposing the unconscious resistances that underlie apparent social unanimity, both in the sexual and political spheres. Barker's play, BLOK/EKO, is a large-scale drama about death and its status in the world. Eko, an ageing despot, seemingly on a whim liquidates the entire medical profession, asserting that consolation - in the form of song - is a better way with sickness than drugs or surgery. A connoisseur herself, she knows great song is itself the distillation of suffering and so deliberately exposes her greatest poet Tot to a life of crime, poverty and humiliation in order to extract from him his finest work.

Funny People is Roy Smiles whimsical account of his life incomedy; from his childhood growing up with the star actorsand comedians on television, stand-up and film in the 1960s and 1970s, through to his own work, writing hit plays that pay tribute to those legends of comedy who had a vital influenceon both him and British popular culture of the post-war years.From Sunday Night at the Palladium and The Dean Martin Show through Monty Python to The Simpsons and When Harry Met Sally and from Laurel and Hardy and Danny Kaye through Les Dawson to Jon Stewart and Chris Rock, Funny People is a compelling celebration of comedy and its value in our lives.

Drawing is perhaps the most immediate medium through which an idea can be articulated. Illustration takes drawing into the narrative realm. The illustrations that we see as children stay with us forever; they play a seminal role in the development of our imagination. On Illustration argues that this unassuming artistic discipline can enrich a person's experience of cultural life provided the illustrator's talent is matched by the courage and intelligence of the client. The book is an insight into Andrzej Klimowski's practice, and will help define the role and status of the illustrator in today's creative industries.

To all intents and purposes Vernon has fulfilled his ambitions.He has a good job and a suburban lifestyle with his wife and teenage son. But things change when austerity measures put his job under threat and soon Vernon begins to neglect his family whilst fighting redundancy. When a tragedy at work forces him to look closer to home, he discovers that communicating with loved ones in a postmodern technological age is not as easy as he thinks.

On 14 September 2003, at the Haitham Hotel in Basra, Iraq, Baha Mousa and nine others were arrested by the British Army as suspected insurgents. Two days later Baha Mousa was dead. A post-mortem examination revealed that he had suffered from asphyxiation, and had received at least 93 injuries to his body whilst in the Army's custody. In 2008 the Secretary of State for Defence announced a PublicInquiry into Baha Mousa's death and the treatment of those detained with him. Tactical Questioning brings together scenes from the Public Inquiry which examined the shocking events that took placeover those two days of detention, and the British Army's policies towards the treatment of detainees.This production coincides with the publishing of the Inquiry's findings in Summer 2011.

A collection of self contained one-man shows which brilliantly re-imagine four of Shakespeare's well known plays through the eyes of the bit parts. I, Malvolio re-imagines Twelfth Night from the point of view of Shakespeare's pent-up "notoriously wronged' steward. A story of lost dignity, prudery, practical, jokes and bullying that draws us deep into the madness of Shakespeare's classic comedy. I, Banquo: A blood-shot, story-telling journey into the heart of Shakespeare's Macbeth, told through the eyes of his murdered best friend. Classic theatre and modern story-telling combined, accompanied by a heavy-metal-guitar-playing 13 year old Fleance, a severed head and 32 litres of blood. I, Caliban: Events on Prospero's island as viewed by Caliban, a puppy-headed monster alone on the island at the end of The Tempest, alone with his memories, his magic tricks and one last bottle of wine. I, Caliban is a sweet and sorry tale about injustice, inebriation and missing your mum. I, Peaseblossom: The story of A Midsummer Night's Dream as re-lived through the fevered nightmares of Shakespeare's most neglected fairy. Funny, heart-breaking and ever-so-slightly crazed, I Peaseblossom is a gloriously anarchic dream of a "dream', perfect for children and adults alike

Football systems, changing room banter and a couple of mops solve the big questions of life - immortality, happiness and why England always lose, in a new play tackling the beautiful game. After several years of embedded research in the football darklands, a failed attempt to create a UK football team for the 2012 games and pathetic efforts at understanding the offside rule, Ridiculusmus is patching up its metatarsals to examine the melting pot of what it means to be British today.

Fired from his skiffle band, Francis Henshall becomes minder to Roscoe Crabbe, a small time East End hood, now in Brighton to collect £6,000 from his fiancees dad. But Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her own dead brother, whos been killed by her boyfriend Stanley Stubbers. Holed up at The Cricketers Arms, the permanently ravenous Francis spots the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with one Stanley Stubbers, who is hiding from the police and waiting to be re-united with Rachel. To prevent discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart. Simple. Based on Carlo Goldonis classic Italian comedy The Servant of Two Masters, in this new English version by prizewinning playwright Richard Bean, sex, food and money are high on the agenda

Juniper is looking for love, Robert is trying to avoid it, Ollie doesnt know what it is and Meg has resigned herself to never having it. As these four people move through a July day in London, they orbit each other, unaware that they are hurtling towards one moment that could devastate them all.

Mowgli was still a toddler when he was lost in the jungle - his parents feeing the tiger, Shere Khan. There, Mowgli was brought up by wolves, and educated by the bear Baloo and the panther Bagheera.He was happy while growing up and learning the ways of the jungle -and his name was soon known amongst all the animals. But Mowgli'sgrowing fame provoked resentment and envy, and his life was soon threatened from all sides. . . First published in the late 1890s, Rudyard Kipling's two Jungle Books have enchanted generations of children and adults. Often describedas an allegory for the society and politics of the time, The Jungle Book has now been adapted by critically-acclaimed South African playwright, Craig Higginson. The play asks: Who is your family? Those who look the same as you or those who love and nurture you? Here, the tales become a powerful examination of an emerging democracy, and the forces that threaten it. Based on a version by the celebrated director Tim Supple, this adaptation was first staged at Johannesburg's Market Theatre in 2008. This powerful and magical version of a much-loved classic is as resonant now as it was when it first appeared - both within South Africa and beyond its borders.

Dana, Ruth and Jess down shots to console the heart-broken, to comfort the anxious and just pass the time. Kicked out from the family home Jess's Dad, Jim, invades the party with just as much recklessness as the girls. As the night passes and vodka bottles are emptied, Friday night in becomes high drama. An unruly new comedy asking if age equals maturity

Number 6: Thai soup with chicken, coconut milk, Thai ginger, tomatoes, button mushrooms, lemon grass and lemon leaves (hot). On a typical evening, anywhere in Europe, you walk into your local Thai/Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant, and the whole world is there. Everyone connected to everyone else, through this one place. . . The Golden Dragon is a funny and theatrical fable of modern life and migration, whisking you from your local takeaway to East Asia and back, revealing what really goes into that bowl of spicy soup. Are you hungry yet?

Across the UK thousands of people are involved in protests and debates, sparked into action by the largest cuts to publicspending since WWII  cuts which are the turning point of a generation, undermining the welfare state, higher education and the arts in one fell swoop. Theatre Uncut is a national theatre event in response to these cuts, bringing together some of the UKs leading dramatists.

The verbatim monologues in Deep Heat are drawn from conversations Robin Soans has had or overheard, or are edited versions of interviews he has conducted in the course of research for his plays. Subjects range from people who have held high office to those who have blown them up; from those who live in large country houses to others whose home is two blankets and a pile of leaves in the corner of a disused garage. So much of what is passed on as historical fact is the version of events that those with an ulterior motive choose to project. This book doesnt seek to judge, nor provide solutions; it seeks to redress the balance by giving a fair hearing even to those who may not share the same views as ours. Useful as audition pieces for actors, but equally of interest to the historian and sociologist in all of us. We are after all human, full of contradictions, and we can never inch our way towards greater self-knowledge if we dont see more of the picture than is traditionally the case.

Irish Blood, English Heart is an exploration of how memories, real and imagined, can shape our lives. Ray is a charming, enigmatic and successful comedian turned author. His brother Con is a London taxi driver struggling to keep his family together and bruised by his brother's success. When the two meet in a mysterious lockup following their estranged father's death, raw memories and unspoken truths come spilling out.

Crane and Williams' sensational Master and Margarita (Satan's Ball) marked the beginning of a golden period when their company BrightonTheatre premiered a succession of ground-breaking new plays, which took festivals by storm and toured the world. Out of the spectacular Bulgakov, came the minimalist Gogol, a chilling evocation of Gogol's whirling world, distilled into a nightmare for today. Then Vanity, a glittering diamond of a play', reclaimed Pushkin's Eugene Onegin as a intimate reflection on a love mistimed and shattered by social convention. From these successes, Brighton Theatre moved onto the main Edinburgh programme with Brothers Karamazov: a leap into the dark world of epilepsy, orthodoxy and murder in the family, which won triumphant reviews and international acclaim. Published now for the first time, these four plays flourished out of a unique collaboration of author and director, which saw them progressing from fringe to mainstream, West End and Off-Broadway without changing their style, and becoming an acknowledged inspiration for many of today's theatre artists.

In their different ways, these plays are existential suspense stories, centred around a common concept of time. The past is recreated through present moments, the future hinted at through shared memories, yet experienced from different perspectives. Fosses drama explores life lived in unexpected ways, with a sense of otherness pervading the present and colouring the characters relationships.

Bee and Em have been best friends for thirty years: they're on holiday in rural France, away from the demands of work and family. But just as they're setting the clocks forward, in steps Chris, a blast from their school days past. As the evening wears on, the three women joke and fight with one another just like the old times. But time plays tricks with memory and some wounds are just too deep to heal. This provocative and hilarious play takes a scalpel to childhood friendships and asks whether we ever get over them.

This collection of plays from Perry Pontac includes Fatal Loins, Hamlet Part II and Prince Lear. 'To be or not to be?' may be The Question, but it is not the only one. Hamlet, Part II answers a question about Hamlet that has plagued scholars, readers and play-goers for over four hundred years: What happened next? Prince Lear tackles yet another conundrum: What happened just before the start of King Lear, setting in motion the improbable events of Act I, scene 1? And in Fatal Loins, the question answered by the play is directly posed in the prologue: 'If Juliet and Romeo survive / Will their eternal passion stay alive?'

Two men on a fragile boat, a trip to sea  a few drinks, a bite to eat  when one of them decides to push on to the open ocean. Suddenly there they are: among the distant islands, the threatening fog and gathering swell of the sea, bound together on an odyssey into the unknown

When Jon Fosse had his playwright début with And We Shall Never Part at the National Theatre in Bergen in 1994, he was already an established author of several novels, collections of poetry and childrens books. Since his breakthrough in 1996 with the world premiere of Someone Will Arrive at the Norwegian Theatre he has written over twenty more plays and has become the worlds most performed contemporary European playwright. Oberon Books publishes Nightsongs, The Girl on the Sofa and I Am the Wind, together with his other plays in five collections. Fosse was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France in 2007 and received The International Ibsen Award in 2010.

Dead frogs and domestic savagery. . .Deep in the English countryside a son returns home after an eight-year absence. An arsonist teenager, a small village, and a thatcher who hates Thatcher collide under the looming presence of a defunct currency-paper mill. Bud writes a twisted love song to an impoverished rural Britain. A darkly comic new drama by one of the UKs most exciting new writing talents.

When young Electra's father is murdered by her mother, her world changes irrevocably. Ten years on, bound by grief and unwilling to forgive, Electra surrenders to an all-consuming desire for revenge that propels her toward a bloody and terrifying conclusion.

Fanghorn is a darkly-surrealistic comedy, which pokes fun at the Theatre of Cruelty. Fanghorn is a lesbian vampire, who invades the household of Joseph King, who may, or may not, be the First Secretary to the Minister of Defence, and hilarious emasculation and murderous mayhem follow in her wake. Edred, the Vampyre is a thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon bisexual vampire, who slept with Shakespeare, but never bit him. Breaking all Bram Stoker's vampire laws, Edred loves garlic and crucifixes, so he lives in the village church where he is confronted by two students who Googled him. But soon the students wish they hadn't. Lucifer's Fair is the family Hallowe'en musical play, about a fair run by the Devil to entrap unwary children. Lucifer is aided by Fangs, who is a bovver boy by day, but an incompetent vampire by night. Simultaneously scary and funny, Lucifer's Fair, with its comic spills, thrills and chills, highlights the unreliability of grownups, both the living and the undead.

The concept of craftsmanship has never been as relevant and timely as it is today. Assailed on all sides by  among many other tendencies - flexible working, short-termism, portfolio careers, quick-fix training and the cult of celebrity, it has recently re-entered public debate with a new sense of urgency. Why? This series of linked essays by the man who ran the Royal College of Art for many years explores the crafts in education, in history and literature, in the contemporary arts landscape, in the language, in the digital age, and takes an unsentimental, hard-headed look at craftsmanship today. Only when the romantic cobwebs have been blown away, it argues, can the key importance of the crafts be fully understood.

A murder-suicide forces two orphaned twins out of the rural wilderness they know and into a bleak, brutal London that they dont. But even as they plan their escape, they find themselves locked in a grisly battle with a grieving stranger over their dead fathers legacy. Woven with pitch black humour A BUTCHER OF DISTINCTION combines Joe Ortons wickedest imaginings and Harold Pinters cynicism on society operating at its most entrepreneurial. Hayes ability to push the darker side of the imagination to the extreme comes to the fore in this new and provocative piece of theatre.

This celebration of George Orwell is made up of material drawn from his novel Coming Up for Air, two essays based on his experience as a colonial police officer in Burma and the Ministry of Love interrogation episode in 1984.

Balletboyz was founded in 2001 by Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, previous lead dancers with The Royal Ballet. This innovative new company has made a dramatic mark on the British dance scene thrilling audiences and dance critics alike with its exhilarating mix of award winning repertoire, performance style and high artistic standards mixing multimedia with contemporary dance. These are the rebels of ballet appealing to a wider audience than ever before, a Balletboyz show is more like a rock concert than a traditional ballet performance.
This beautiful new book is packed full of exclusive behind the scenes photographs, interviews and insights into this unique and attention grabbing dance company. Telling the story of the Balletboyz company over the last 10 years, this exciting book is a joy to behold, and a must have for every dance lover, young or old, male or female. Due in part to their high mass media profile following numerous Channel 4 television documentaries, the Ballet Boyz have a massive fanbase which will surely only be bolstered by the upcoming 2011 national tour.
With more demi-gods than demi-pliés, the Balletboyz know how to rock the dance world and turn everything you ever thought about ballet on its head.

The Latvians who fought for the Third Reich and halted the Red Army parade as heroes every year through the streets of Riga. As a growing number of young Russians campaign to halt the fascist march, their Latvian counterparts join the veterans in commemoration. When teenager Anya becomes a political activist, her fathers attempts to calm the situation stirs up a storm of extremist patriotism.

As big-hearted patriarch David clings to a deal that could save both his ailing catering firm and his cherished standing in the Edgware Jewish community, his children are at loggerheads. While eldest son Danny fights for the Israelis in Gaza, his sister investigates war crimes in that same conflict. Their brother drinks and brawls and refuses to join their father's business. But when tragedy strikes, each family member is forced to confront head-on the clash between individual identity and the demands and expectations of community. The Holy Rosenbergs explores tribal loyalties, the culpability of family and the consequences of standing up for what you believe to be right

David Pownall's Sound Theatre is an expert's to the art of writing drama for the radio. This book is sure to become the essential read for anyone wishing to write for a listening audience. However this is not merely a book about authorship, it is also a thoughtful meditation on the nature of sound and how it shapes and colours our daily experiences. Presented as a series of short missives, both whimsical and profound, that collectively form an intimate portrait of the author and his artistic philosophy. Forming part of the Oberon Masters series, this new book provides a great insight into writing for a unique and much cherished media.

Lorca's beautiful and savage play is transplanted from the suffocating heat of Spain to a barren landscape much closer to home, bringing Yerma's anguish at her childlessness into heart-breaking focus. Suffocating in a life void of passion, Yerma turns to unconventional sources for answers. Her innocent yet controversial actions send shockwaves through a tiny and stagnant community. Desperate and unbearably lonely, Yerma commits the ultimate act of rebellion, setting her free yet sealing her unhappy fate forever.

Troy is in ruins- the men dead and the women taken into captivity. The victorious Greeks prepare to sail home. An epic tale of love, loss, song and sarcasm in the smoking ruins of Troy. Award-winning poet and playwright, Glyn Maxwell rips up two Greek tragedies and makes a witty, passionate play from the fragments. A contemporary retelling of Euripides' Women Of Troy and Hecuba, After Troy exposes the cruelties of war both then and now.

Meet Samuel Johnson - poet, essayist, compiler of the first English dictionary. This evening of anecdotes and witty conversation brings to life one of the most colourful figures of the eighteenth century: irritable, generous, depressive yet hilarious. Meet characters from his life, from biographer James Boswell and painter Joshua Reynolds, to a society hostess who was Johnson's final, unrequited, love.

The Dickens epic classic is re-imagined for the stage in a unique adaptation by leading playwright Tanika Gupta, relocating Pip's extraordinary journey to nineteenth century India. Pip, a poor village boy, finds two chance meetings set his life on an unexpected course. At the water's edge, he has a terrifying encounter with an escaped convict. In the decaying grandeur of Miss Havisham's house, he falls hopelessly in love with the heartless Estella. When an anonymous benefactor helps him move to Calcutta, the heart of the British Raj, Pip pursues his great expectations and his dream of winning Estella's heart. Our production of this coming of age story, evoking some of Dickens' most colourful characters, is faithful to the period of the book and the richness of Dickens' language - a vivid theatrical retelling of a universally loved masterpiece

Things are about to get a whole lot crazy! Created by three of Scotland's most dynamic writers, Smalltown tells the unexpected tale of what happens when a polluted water supply turns its residents crazy: from zombies in the frozen food aisle, to oversexed teenagers releasing the animal within, to a dangerous game of Russian roulette on Girvan beach. Smalltown is the story of nature wreaking her revenge and unleashing all sorts of comedic carnage. Find yourself trapped in three separate stories of Smalltown life before you decide how the story ends!

An innocent evening of ice-cream and DVDs derails quickly into dangerous territory. This is a story of a father who loved too deeply.

A new black comedy of twisted morality set in modern Colombia. When a rumour spreads like wildfire through a Colombian village, a respectable family start to wither in the heat. As long- buried secrets begin to surface, their efforts to discern truth from slander become fused with a desire for justice.

Its been a month since Stephen stepped over the edge. There was no sign - no warning. Amy collects her husbands effects, the things he had with him gathered in a single box. As memories of their last night together rewind, replay and unravel, she is desperate to find out why. Joe and Matt are making a documentary. Whilst reviewing their footage they make a startling discovery that will take their film in an unexpected direction - the blurred image of a man jumping from the cliffs. Beachy Head is a powerful look at the ripple effects of one mans decision. Mixing text, 3D animation and a dynamic physicality,

The study of climate science is the cool degree at the university where Dr Diane Cassell is a lead academic in Earth Sciences. At odds with the orthodoxy over man-made climate change, she finds herself increasingly vilified and is forced to ask if the issue is political as well as personal. Could the belief in anthropogenic global warming be the most attractive religion of the 21st century?

Crossing the state border in a stolen Ford V-8, with a trunk full of shotguns and bootleg whiskey, Bonnie and Clyde have found one last place to hide. Time is ticking...they're on the run from the law and reality, but which will catch them first?

Frighteningly prescient, and tragically current, Oh, To Be In England is a dark comedy examining what it means to live in an ex-empire in economic free-fall, and the political and personal extremism that results when all other belief is lost. A middle-aged Englishman, bred to believe in his innate superiority as a birthright of class, race, and gender, loses his job in the City. Left floundering impotently in a world that is no longer cricket, his family, security, and sanity follow close behind.

In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an innocent Jewish Officer in the French Army, was convicted on false evidence for a crime of high treason. He was stripped of his rank, publicly degraded and deported to the penal colony of Devil's Island to serve a sentence of life imprisonment in total isolation and under inhumane conditions. The fight to prove his innocence was to last 12 years. This trilogy of plays are a dramatic adaptation of this episode in 19th century European history. Also includes an introduction, a chronology of the Dreyfus Affair and an epilogue by the author, My Burning Protest by George Whyte after Emile Zola. The Dreyfus trilogy includes the dramatisations The Dreyfus Affair (premiered at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, 8 May 1994), Dreyfus - J'Accuse (premiered at the Oper der Stadt Bonn, 8 September 1999) and Rage and Outrage (premiered by Franco/German TV Channel Arte 18 May 1995).

Bea is lively, naughty and full of life. When she asks something of her mother that no parent would want to be asked, and of Not Gay Ray' something far beyond the call of duty, they are both forced to challenge the boundaries of their own compassion.

Complications come fast and furious as the wife of a noble lord misinterprets a note.

Looking for relief from boredom and a chance to get off the wing, seven young fathers in prison sign-up for an education programme. They try to use the workshops to settle scores and to rise up the prison pecking order. But theyre confronted with more than theyd bargained for, as they face up to their relationships with their children and their own fathers.

Lila longs to become a firework-maker, just like her father. In order to become a true firework-maker, she sets off alone on a perilous journey to reach the terrifying Fire-Fiend. She travels through jungles alive with crocodiles, snakes, monkeys and pirates, and climbs up the scolding volcano. On finding the Fire-Fiend, she realises more is at stake than she ever imagined. Will Lila survive? Lilas is the kind of magical adventure that all children dream of and the gripping story of the fleet-footed heroine will live long in the memory of anyone who enters her world.

At the turn of the 20th Century, the great cruise liner Virginia shuttles back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, transporting passengers from old Europe to the New World. When an abandoned baby is found on board the sailors christen Novecento  1900. The child is destined to a strange fate. Novecento will never leave the ship as long as he lives, yet he becomes the greatest jazz musician the world would never know. He only knows his music, which has a magical effect on everyone who hears. For six years before World War II, Tim Tooney played trumpet with him and Novecento gave him his story...

Blackthorn ; Kate and Tom with their troubled daughter Evie decide to leave the London rat race and start afresh in the peace of the countryside. They buy a farmhouse in Wales& Watch the drama unfold. Blackthorn is a darkly comic new play by Gary Owen about the clash between the newcomers with their expectations and the way of life a Welsh farmer holds dear . . .In the Pipeline: A massive liquid gas line tears through the countryside of west Wales. Gary Owen opens the doors to three of the residents in the port of Milford Haven, Andrew, Dai and Joan, who are caught in the path of this terrifying phenomenon.

In the heart of Northern England, three respectable couples, married on the same day, at the same church, and by the same vicar, join to celebrate 25 years of blissful matrimony. Or so they think& The happy celebrations are brought to a sudden halt by a shocking revelation  these pillars of the community arent quite as respectably married as they thought they were. As the home truths fly like confetti and conjugal rites turn to farcical fights, an evening of sparkling comic mayhem erupts. With a photographer from the local paper due to arrive any second, a missing housekeeper and a doorbell that wont stop ringing, can the three couples keep a lid on their embarrassing secret? Penned in 1938, this is a classic comedy that is a blessed union of laughs and surprises

No scripts of Reckords impressive body of work have been made readily available previously, many incomplete manuscripts exist but this is the first complete volume of Reckord plays. Here we present three, each from a different decade. These are Della, Skyvers, and The White Witch, each with an introduction by a prominent authority on the subject or author.

While staying as the guest of a factory owner in pre-First World War France, Stephen Wraysford embarks on a passionate affair with Isabelle, the wife of his host. The affair changes them both for ever. A few years later Stephen finds himself back in the same part of France, but this time as a soldier at the Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest encounter in British military history. As his men die around him, Stephen turns to his enduring love for Isabelle for the strength to continue and to save something for future generations.

A play about the stupid things you do when you're f*cked. A night out. Friends, alcohol, a shit club, a strop - the usual. But tonight is different. Tonight will change things forever. With Love Steals us from Loneliness, Gary Owen, one of Wales's foremost playwrights, returns to his hometown of Bridgend. The media have told us their Bridgend story, but what will a writer who spent his own teenage years here have to say?

In the winter of 2036, in a shabby apartment in Port Elizabeth, two old men search for a way to say goodbye after a lifetime spent together. In the perfect summer of 1971, in a very different South Africa, their handsome younger selves search for the courage to fall in love. And poised halfway between these two stories - one imagined, one remembered - their real-life counterparts bear witness to both the beginning and ending of an incredible journey.

In a world ever more focused upon global warming, climate change and the increased scarcity of resources Ugly is a dark comedy set in a future where food and water are dangerously scarce. A tale of four people who may have to kill their angels and become more like their devils if they are going to survive. Emotional, intense and visceral, this play breaks rules. It will also break your heart. . .Ugly is not pretty, a timely reminder of what we are doing to our planet.....reading it might just change your life.

Eight women tell their stories  using their own words  stories of the unseen fallout of the war on terror in Britain. These are stories of real women, from cultures as varied as Palestine, Senegal , Jordan, Libya, St John's Wood, and the English Midlands. They all came to the UK as refugees, or married refugees here. After 9/11 the world they loved here vanished almost overnight. One after another they were engulfed by isolation and private terror.

It's summer 2005. Maya Marsalis takes you by the hand - sometimes the throat -and leads you through her landscape on the day Hurricane Katrina came, the levees broke, the world watched and the US Government did nothing. Go with her as she shows you how her world and that of thousands of black American citizens changed forever on the day the waters came.

Set in the notorious 18th Century lunatic asylum that gives the play its name, Bedlam is the story of how a cruel and unusual institution starts to crumble, after the arrival of an unassuming country girl. Nell Leyshon's new play is an anarchic tale of madness and sanity, authority and incarceration and the arbitrary lines that separate them.

Richard Beans latest is a controversial and hilarious play set amongst the expatriate Irish community of New York as they try to raise money for NORAID, the charitable organisation often accused of being an IRA front. New York fire-fighters of Irish descent give money to NORAID, along comes 9/11 and several die at the hands of a terrorist group. Spot the irony.

Everyone's ever so polite and terribly obliging at Fairview Vale. But what on earth is Mr Price doing there? And what's he getting so het up about? All anyone's trying to do is help... All becomes terrifyingly clear in this mysteriously funny, intriguing new play from award winning writer Paul Sellar, recently described by The Spectator as "A writer we can cherish". Opening at Edinburgh Festival in 2010, A Man Who Fell Out of Bed is part conspiracy thriller, part dystopian drama, a nightmarishly sinister vision of a world to come.

South African writer Craig Higginsons powerful new play is a dark, witty and sexually-charged psychological drama told through the eyes of a beautiful English teacher and her French-Congolese pupil. A state of the nation exploration of the tensions between the first and third worlds the play explores issues around language, power, identity, sex, past trauma, class, exile and refugees.

a story of hope, violence and exploitation" and concerns "about the abuse carried out in the name of the spectator

Tell me, please - is this a dream?'The night before he leads his troops into battle, the prince of Homburg strips off his uniform and goes sleepwalking. Moonstruck, his mind races with a young man's fantasies - love, ambition and victory. But when the morning comes, a single reckless act of disobediance sets in motion a chain of events that leads inexorable to the one thing he never dreamt would happen; his own death.

FIT is a bold and groundbreaking new play for young people written and directed by acclaimed writer/director Rikki Beadle-Blair. The play was developed to address the growing problem of homophobic bullying in Britain's schools and was especially created for Key Stage 3 (KS3) students (Year 7-9), specifically complementing various learning objectives from the National Curriculum, particularly PHSE and Citizenship.

With a childhood surrounded by alcoholism and petty cruelties, an adolescence of rebellion and punkish anarchy and an adulthood peppered with heroin addiction, voluntary crucifixion, failed suicide and a penchant for sex with prostitutes, Sebastian Horsley's life was always destined to become a work of art. An artist, dandy and author who was perhaps best known for having undergone a voluntary crucifixion in the Philippines before beginning a regular column in The Erotic Review Horsley's memoirs focused on his dysfunctional family, his drug addictions, sex, and his love of prostitutes, and unsurprisingly became a cult literary sensation. Soho Theatre's theatrical version, has been adapted from Horsley's no-holds-barred memoir and directed by fellow moral delinquent Tim Fountain.

After the apparent murder of his father the likely lad erupts into an isolated bar room - but this time in 1950's Trinidad.

The Good Soldier, a tale of deceit, delusion, and disintegrating marriage in pre-war Britain. Two seemingly upstanding couples find their friendships enveloped by scandal and tragedy, as the façade of wealth and privilege falls away and details of their indiscretions emerge.A fasinating new stage adaptation from an award winning writer.

tells the story of Jamal an African refugee who is on the run and hiding in a burnt out attic. But as fate would have it he finds himself sharing his 'precious' space with Tony a 17-year-old racist who is also on the run after stabbing a young black boy.

A new set of bohemians take over Soho Theatre and bar in this electric new English translation of La Bohème, a tale of love and tragedy, indulgence and excess. Having wowed audiences at Kilburns Cock Tavern in a record-breaking, sell-out six-month run, Soho Theatre takes on opera for the very first time as Puccinis La Bohème is retold for contemporary Soho with a talented, classically trained young cast.

Pre-teen Delilah enjoys High School Musical, swim parties and ogling the lodger. Whilst her parents throw verbal grenades at one another, they barely notice their 21 year old tenant starting to notice her.

A dazzling, tragicomic love story of adolescence based on the astonishing debut novel by Richard Milward. Shameless, ruthless and intensely poetic, Apples articulates what it is like to be young.

Lagos, 1989. Political hysteria and social change are sweeping Nigeria. Chief Adeyemi's wife Toyin is turning forty and, behind the mansion walls, the household is preparing for her party. Their troublesome sons, back from college, are more interested in seduction and starting revolutions that their parents' disintegrating marriage. Meanwhile Helen, the ambitious housegirl, is waiting for her chance&Prequel to 'The Estate'.

A study of a poet compelled to sacrifice friends and lovers to fulfil the demands of his imagination in obsessive pursuit of creating the perfect masterpiece.

As barbarians approach the palace of an ancient culture, four princesses must decide if they will witness the destruction of all they know or conform to expectation and commit suicide. For some, the possibility of life is all too compelling.

Tobias lives in a nuclear bunker with his grandmother. He has never been out of it. He has two pet lobsters but longs for a friend. Grandmother has found one - the Boy With No Name.

Doddie is a depressed gay man who shoplifts. Scratchitt has early menopause. Pam has an incontinent dead dog. Peter has erectile problems. They are all on holiday together when a mysterious young man called Stuck turns up

Dion Boucicault, the Irish genius of London theatre in the age of Dickens, wrote the brilliantly funny London Assurance in 1841 and thereby created  in Sir Harcourt and Lady Spanker  two of the great comic roles of the English stage, played at the NT by Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw. This stage revival has been brilliantly adapted by the prolific and award-winning playwright Richard Bean.

Inspired by the John Lahr biography of the late British playwright Joe orton and the diaries of Orton himself

Why would anyone want to see a play about two children killing a smaller child? That is a question this play asks its audience at the outset. Just why is each of us there? "Do you think it is useful to watch two children killing a third?" - though that is the expectation rather than what the play presents. One might also ask why should a Swedish dramatist want to write a play about this British incident? The subject, as you may have guessed, is the murder of two-year old James Bulger by 10-year-olds, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, in 1993. It was a case which gained media attention the world over. Again why? Because the age of the killers makes it so exceptional? Not so, as a catalogue of recorded precedents since 1748 included in this play makes clear. But they were not put in the spotlight by contemporary international news media and was also the fact that the child's abduction took place under the public gaze in a shopping mall, watched by closed circuit television cameras.
- Howard Loxton, British Theatre Guide.

Tell me, please - is this a dream?'The night before he leads his troops into battle, the prince of Homburg strips off his uniform and goes sleepwalking. Moonstruck, his mind races with a young man's fantasies - love, ambition and victory. But when the morning comes, a single reckless act of disobediance sets in motion a chain of events that leads inexorable to the one thing he never dreamt would happen; his own death.

Rain. Spain. An epic movie on location. Two actors. Two egos. One leaking trailer.

A group of schoolchildren, Jewish and Catholic, declare their ambitions: one to be a fireman, one a film star, one a pilot, another a doctor. They are learning the ABC. This is Poland, 1925. As the children grow up, their country is torn apart by invading armies, first Soviet and then Nazi. Internal grievances deepen as fervent nationalism develops; friends betray each other; violence escalates: until these ordinary people carry out an extraordinary and monstrous act that darkly resonates to this day.

asks questions about whether honesty is the best policy where infidelity is concerned and muse about the relative efficacy of rekigous consolation and its secular counter-part, psychotherapy
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times

Motherland is a powerful and moving dramatisation of conversations with wives, girlfriends and mothers of military personnel serving in Iraq and Afganistan. These North East women share their incredibly moving and hard-hitting stories with warmth, humour and candour.

Maverick theatre-makers On Theatre join forces with legendary singer-songwriter Billy Bragg to explore English identity and loyalty. 'Pressure Drop' takes us to the heart of one family's struggle to define home. Part play, part gig, part installation, it is a passionate account of what it is to be English today.

In the battle between heaven and earth which ensues, the innocent quickly fall and David's challenge to God assumes cataclysmic proportions... King David, Man of Blood re-spins a classic biblical tale to devastating moral effect, fetching up on a very modern shore, where horror, tragedy, comedy and a terrible beauty co-exist.

S-27 asks if survival meant complicity with a brutal regime, what would you sacrifice for someone you love? May's revolutionary idealism has earned her a job as prison photographer for the Organisation. But as the faces of the regime's enemies pass her unflinching lens, will they shake May's belief in the world she helped create?

Foreplay looks at a South Africa seemingly obsessed with sex and violence, where AIDS is still taking far too many lives.

Grose sets his macabre scenes within the Parision theatre from which grand guignol takes its name, and populates his play with real - in a loose sense of the term - human beings; including Maxa "the most assinated woman in the world".br / - Susannah Clapp, Observer.

The story is set in and around a secondary school after the summer holidays and explores the consequences of one girl's decision to wear the Hijab.

sexual jelousy told from the viewpoint of the wronged husband rather than the wife or her lover

Set on a remote farm in kwaZulu-Natal, "Dream of the Dog" explores the terrible secrets that lie between Patricia, a sixty-year-old farmer's wife, and Look Smart, a thirty-year-old land developer who grew up there. In the background is Richard, suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease, and Beauty, sister to the girl Look Smart once loved. . . Filled with extraordinary tension, revelation and dark humour, this brilliant and always surprising new South African play challenges some of our deepest assumptions about ourselves and each other. Higginson's subtle questioning of the memory as a fiction-maker makes this play of central relevance to South Africa's continued negotiation with its past and its struggle to find a workable identity for the future.

inspired by Operation Mincemeat, a grotesque scam devised by British Intelligence to divert the Germans from the planned Allied landfall in Sicily

a darkly comic tale of a newsreader engaged in a fierce powerplay with his publicist as the paparazzi bay at the door. Minor Irritations ran at the Pleasance Theatre Edinburgh, The White Bear Theatre, Guidlford's Yvonne Arnaud and at the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival

DeoxyriboNucleic Acid. DNA. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. When a high school "it" gang takes a joke too far, a lonely and terrified boy is lost. . . isn't he? 'I am trying to keep everyone together. Ever since I came to this school haven't I been trying to keep everyone together? Aren't things better? For us? I mean not for them, not out there, but for us? Doesn't everyone want to be us, come here in the woods? Isn't that worth keeping hold of?' LyT return to the Traverse for the fifth year with a shadowy story played to a hard-core soundtrack in their trademark cutting-edge style. Calling up contemporary media obsessions with 'real life stories' and dodgy old men with rotten teeth, DeoxyriboNucleic Acid is a poignant and, sometimes, hilarious tale with a very, very dark heart.

A successful CEO finds himself in the niddle of a power struggle that reveals the corruption and unstoppable forces at work in a world where corporate greed and national security frightenly overlap

Helen and Danny keep themselves to themselves. But the outside world comes crashing into their lives one day when Helen's brother turns up. Covered in blood. Dennis Kelly's play is a thrilling contemporary suspense story which takes its audience on a chilling journey into a world just outside the front door.

Two plays for young people by one distinctive voice. Diary of An Action Man and Whiter Than Snow reveal an imagination that has raised the writer Mike Kenny onto the international stage. Renowned for producing multi-layered, stimulating children's plays, his work often also appeals to adults. Refreshingly bold, adeptly sculpted and highly original, these texts draw audiences into the real myths of childhood and challenge our perceptions of normality.

Meet Frieda and the Frantz family, the world-famous travelling performers of the best Snow White story you'll ever see. But there's a problem, Snow Whites done a bunk with the Prince! Just when it looks like the final curtain's about to fall, the perfect leading lady turns up hiding amongst the mothballs. The show will go on - however, perfection is not always what it seems. . . This witty, insightful re-telling of the Snow White story, by award-winning playwright Mike Kenny (Diary of an Action Man), takes you on a journey through dangerous and shifting landscapes, daring you to go beyond the fairytale. Suitable for 7 - 13 year olds and their families. Accessible to all.

Abi is married to Marcus. Marcus is a successful businessman in biometric technology. Abigail doesn't get along with technology. Lisa works in National Identity Agency Customer Services. Enoch used to be a simple accountant. Fisher is in charge of security around Coventry. Coventry is where no one wants to go. . .All hope hangs on a biometric thread, a tiny fusion where human being meets numeric algorithm. You think it can't happen to you?

The 2012 Olympics spells eviction for the generations of Romany Gypsies living in East London. 17 year old Pearl Penfold is one of them. As the bulldozers close in, Pearl falls in love with Joe, a boy from the local estate. Can Joe prove himself to Pearl and her family before they are gone forever?

A submarine is on patrol in the arctic. The crew sleep, eat, drill, long for word from home, and silently shadow their target. Their lives, at once extraordinary and mundane, are shattered by a global crisis from which uniquely personal stories emerge. Inspired by the Russian submarine disaster of August 2000, in collaboration with Sound&Fury, Bryony Lavery's play imagines the life of submariners, deep below the icy seas on the fraying front line of the cold war.

This is a stage adaptation of the original novel The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Magdalen King-Hall . . . Lady Barbara Skelton is beautiful, wild and truly wicked. Forced into a respectable marriage with a man she can't love, she soon becomes bored and embarks on a secret life of gambling, highway robbery and murder. But she's playing a dangerous game - shadowed by betrayal, threatened by revenge, can Barbara escape her wicked life? Or will she be abandoned to her terrible fate?

Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant and the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting.

Set in Long Kesh, the fog-shrouded Long Meadow of the title which evolved from RAF base to insurgents prison, it borrows Smokey Robinsons Motown anthems to replace Broadways tinsels and musical halls plangent chauvinisms as the shows leitmotif. Sung powerfully by Marty Maguires Oscar, a Republican whose seemingly boundless charisma will be dulled to dust by the dying of the hunger strikers, the melodies emotive punch deflects, temporarily, any audience questions as to whether they really should be laughing with, or even at, the plight of mass murderers.
- Ian Hill, British Theatre Guide

Holding on to your virginity, getting a ring for your pains and something to believe in, that's what Dawn, Rob and Fawziya want. Ozzy, their loser PE teacher needs to believe in something too. It will all be fine when the Miracle Man gets here. Won't it? It's a play written in Arial rather than Times New Roman if you know what we mean. The characters are bright, fizzy and fast and on a journey heading for a great big unabashed, get-it-right-up-ye finale. 'I was thinking of going out into the playground, walking up to Fiona Grant, shoving my ring right into her wee pig-cow face and saying "Get this up ye ya hacket wee dog! The Miracle Man's coming and now everyone hates you cos you're a slag and we're not." Spread that about ya minging bitch!'

Maggie Brodie thought she'd left teaching behind her. Retired twice, once with a dishonourable discharge, she's been drafted back for a day's cover at her local primary school in London. It's going to be a tough shift. A day of battles with her thirst for booze; with the soft soap headmaster and lastly with Rosie. Rosie is six and a new intake. Tough enough. But made tougher by the fact that Rosie is from Somalia and refusing to speak. She will not speak. But to Maggie's surprise silent Rosie stirs something in her long forgotten. Something about her past, her family, her ego. There's a connection here that Maggie can't quite get a grip on. In some political bargain the school are allowing community leaders into the classroom today to help with Rosie's treatment. They believe her silence comes from the fact that she is a witch. Well, they're wrong. And Maggie is forced to take action. Drastic action.

Developed by the award-winning The Opera Group, The Lions Face is a new opera which explores the issues surrounding dementia. Featuring four characters  a patient, his wife, his carer and the carers daughter  the piece documents and reflects on the patients loss of perception and language and the way this impacts on the other characters. It premieres at the Royal Opera House in 2010 followed by a UK tour.

Mirza Tahir Hussain, a British subject, spent 18 years on Rawlapindi Central Jail's death row for the murder of a taxi driver. The Daily Mirror's Don Mackay was the only journalist to visit him in that time . . .

a project that has been twelve years in the making: Juliet and Her Romeo, the story of a flourishing love affair in one generation, crushed by the financial and political concerns of another.

Whitbread prize-winning writer Patrick Neate collaborates with choreographic mavericks Liam Steel and Robert Tannion to produce a provocative new work. The show combines explosive choreography with words of mass destruction to create the ultimate act of dance terrorism. Violent but beautifully choreographed polemics collapse our safe ivory towers of political correctness, and the audience are compelled to sift through the wreckage to uncover the truth of their downfall in the shards of sound-bites, celebrity and brand recognition.

twin tale of a moose that came to a tiny impoverished village oin the Karoo region of South Africa, and the 15 year old girl presented by her father in part payment for his unpaid debts to the bad hats who are harassing him.
- Benedict Nightingale, The Times

Thomas Bernhard is widely considered to be one of the most important German playwrights in the post-war era. Highly acclaimed, he has written over twenty plays and novels and gained a reputation as one of Austrias most controversial authors. He wrote Heldenplatz in 1988 as a response to the fiftieth anniversary of the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Hitlers Germany. Highly controversial in Austria, the play concerns a Jewish professor who returns to Vienna after the Second World War and discovers that his fellow Austrians are as anti-semitic as ever. Heldenplatz is the square in Vienna where the Austrian-born Hitler made his first speech after the Anschluss.

A story of a flourishing love affair in one generation, crushed by the financial and political concerns of another. What family has not wrestled with the question of how we care for our parents as they become older and frailer? Who will love them? Who will support them? Who will pay for their care? And with that care, what controls should we apply? If we have taken power of attorney, what about the freedom to fall in love, to give gifts, to marry unwisely?

There are just too many old people. As a government research body seeks to deal with the problems of a maturing population, a family addresses its own. Lyn's memory starts to go, Alice takes a fall and even Robbie has to face the signs of ageing. Relations are put to the test across three generations. As are those who enter the increasingly sinister world of State Care. Tamsin Oglesby's furious comedy confronts head-on our embarrassment and fear about old age. It exposes a society in which compassion vies with pragmatism and, by asking unequivocal questions, it comes up with some extraordinary answers.

Multi-culturalism, racism, sectarianism, Judo-Islamic conflict, faith, sexuality and nationhood are explored with insightful hilarity

Mrs Reynolds, is a "little old lady" and Jay, a troubled youth caught vandalising her garden. As 'community payback' Jay is sent back to help Mrs Reynolds fix the damage he caused. At first glance this is a simple tale of two generations locked in battle, Mrs Reynolds standing up for traditional values with her "nice little house, nice little garden and nice little life" vs Jay, the textbook chain-smoking hoodie prowling the urban jungle demanding respect but offering little in return. But there is more to these characters than the other suspects. Just as they think they have the measure of each other something is revealed and they are shocked by what they find out Mrs Reynolds and the Ruffian explores human nature and friendship alongside the social climate of modern Britain giving a warm, funny and wise glimpse into the way we live now.

Dawn, Coronation Day 1953. The artist Francis Bacon works on his portrait of Pope Innocent X, inspired by Velazquez' masterpiece and his own deep absorption in human carnality. The chaotic studio is populated by characters possessing the power of change, who come to life in a satirical interplay of art, history, sex and politics.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. . .The ultimate romantic comedy, Jane Austen's story of the five Bennet sisters and their relentless pursuit of suitable husbands is one of the best-loved novels ever written. When feisty Elizabeth Bennet meets handsome bachelor Mr Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited. When she later discovers that he has scuppered the relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, the family's lives are turned upside down as Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and pokes gentle fun at the affectations and etiquette of provincial middle-class life.

Daniel, an artist who survives a catastrophic bus crash unscathed, is an arresting mix of vulnerability and confusion as he attempts to deal with the aftermath of the accident. The accident brings him in contact with two other complicated characters, LJ the accident's only other survivor and Gerry, a psychiatrist with a murky past. Daniel heads to Gerry to solve his problems, but Gerry just creates more. LJ, who has lost her lower legs in the accident, is actually more help to Daniel and also the most entertaining of the characters.
- Seth Ewin, British Theatre Guide

inspired by Operation Mincemeat, a grotesque scam devised by British Intelligence to divert the Germans from the planned Allied landfall in Sicily

In 1994 Kurt Cobain, lead singer and songwriter with Nirvana, worn down by heroin addiction and overwhelmed by the extremity of his success, decides to end his life. Alone in the attic extension of his Seattle mansion he faces his last moments on earth. He is only 27 years old. Into this scenario wanders Sid Vicious, the long dead English punk rocker. . .in the course of the next 75 minutes Kurt and Sid argue the futility of rock and roll self-destruction, the sordid glamour of addiction and the terrible price of fame. As Sid tries to prevent Kurt's gristly end and give Cobain something he has never really known: peace.

A surreal comedy telling the story of the Monty Python team. For a cast of four (Gilliam & Idle, Jones & Palin doubling up).

A Burnley youth group are about to rehearse a show on mixed relationships. But the star walks out and instead the company convene a Q & A session. A portrait emerges of Burnley since the 2001 riots.

"Esteemed members of the Academy! You have done me the great honour of inviting me to give you an account of my former life as an ape." Imprisoned in a cage and desperate to escape, Kafka's monkey reveals his journey to become a walking, talking, spitting, smoking, hard-drinking man of the stage.

Thomas Bernhard is widely considered to be one of the most important German playwrights in the post-war era. Highly acclaimed, he has written over twenty plays and novels and gained a reputation as one of Austrias most controversial authors. He wrote Heldenplatz in 1988 as a response to the fiftieth anniversary of the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Hitlers Germany. Highly controversial in Austria, the play concerns a Jewish professor who returns to Vienna after the Second World War and discovers that his fellow Austrians are as anti-semitic as ever. Heldenplatz is the square in Vienna where the Austrian-born Hitler made his first speech after the Anschluss.

Wonderland as you've never seen it before! While retaining the magic of Lewis Carroll's classic tale, this adaptation breathes fresh life into the much-loved story about rabbit holes, pocket watches and talking caterpillars. The new adaptation follows Alice as she escapes her bedroom to find adventure in a topsy-turvy world. The White Rabbit is still late for the Duchess. The Cheshire Cat still won't stop grinning. And the Hatter is, well, still mad. But in the middle of it all is a very modern Alice, a young girl with a vivid imagination and a family life that's far from perfect.

In an oak-panelled room in Oxford, ten young bloods with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule. Members of an elite student dining society, the boys are bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery, decadence and bloody good wine. But this isnt the last huzzah: theyre planning a takeover. Welcome to the Riot Club.

musical reworking of the play bristling with sassy riffs and layered rhythms

Two couples, one Danish one English, share a warm Whitsun holiday in the Cambridgeshire countryside. KARL-OLAF, a historian, is spending a post-graduate year in Cambridge with his wife, JANIKA, a social worker, and their two children. RAPHAEL, professor of history of art, (and one time senior lecturer to KARL-OLAF), together with his wife, MADEAU, are visiting the Danes. Balmy days are spent eating, cycling, lazing in the sun, listening to music, and conversing. KARL-OLAF and JANIKA are having matrimonial problems. RAPHAEL is going through a crisis of political belief, with MADEAU anxiously looking on. The calm and balmy days contrast with tensions of heart and mind.

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In its time Dick Barton: Special Agent made radio history. It began as a weekday 15-minute serial on the BBC Light Programme in 1947, depicting the adventures of the prototype action hero and his two trusty sidekicks, Snowy and Jock. It appealed to young and old alike, always ended with a clifthanger situation, and a feature of the programme was the announcer who endeavoured to whip up audience interest. It ran until 1951 when the same scriptwriters were commissioned to write The Archers which replaced the serial as a sort of farming Dick Barton. On radio Dick Barton was always played tongue in cheek. For the stage, author Phil Willmott has taken this to the n-th degree and sent it up rotten. This presents the audience with every possible opportunity of indulging in nostalgia because, like the radio serial, everybody hams like mad, not least the announcer and his occasional fit of the giggles. The plot is ersatz-007 about arch-villain Baron Scarheart, head of EFIL or Evil Foreigners in London, and his beautiful but treacherous agent Maria Heartburn, who try to rule the UK by poisoning the country's tea. Enter Dick Barton, Snowy and Jock to foil this dastardly plan. The plot takes a back seat because it's the jokes that matter and, with a hero with a name like Dick, the possibilities are endless.
Michael Darvell, What's On

Gaberdine collar up, trilby at rakish angle, intrepid sleuth Dick Barton faces arch enemies Baron Scarheart and Marta Heartburn in a series of exotic, action-packed adventures, aiming to rid the world of evil in the name of decency and patriotism. Based on the 1940s BBC radio serial, these critically acclaimed and hugely successful plays are a mixture of homage and camp spoof.

follows the day-to-day lives of a group of outcasts living in a provincial dosshouse on the eve of the 1905 Russian Revolution

Two young suburban couples, friends of long standing, are suddenly aware of strains and pressures that have inexorably come into their lives. Adultery is one of these-a fact for one of the wives, an imminent possibility for one of the husbands-but ambitions, frustrated and potential, and a crying out for more meaningful personal involvement within their marriages are others. As they come together to examine their plight and to probe the genesis of their unhappiness the play moves deftly in and out of the frame of reality-with the characters talking sometimes to each other and sometimes directly to the audience. Ultimately, out of the fascinating mosaic of conversations, confessions and reminiscences, a sense of deeper understanding begins to emerge, and, with it, the liberating knowledge of the loneliness that must exist within marriage and of the crucial commitment that individuals must make if they are truly and effectively to share their lives with others.

set in an isolated house in a forgotten valley where a flash of lightning and a freak car crash leave three runaways stranded

Meet Frieda and the Frantz family, the world-famous travelling performers of the best Snow White story you'll ever see. But there's a problem, Snow Whites done a bunk with the Prince! Just when it looks like the final curtain's about to fall, the perfect leading lady turns up hiding amongst the mothballs. The show will go on - however, perfection is not always what it seems. . . This witty, insightful re-telling of the Snow White story, by award-winning playwright Mike Kenny (Diary of an Action Man), takes you on a journey through dangerous and shifting landscapes, daring you to go beyond the fairytale. Suitable for 7 - 13 year olds and their families. Accessible to all.

Two dead dentists covered in lipstick - quite a week for the bumbling Detective Edwards. He gathers together a crack team of police minds to help him solve a case that seems to strike at the very heart of Middle England. But as more and more bodies show up in ever more bizarre circumstances, it's not too long before the crack team begins to, well. . .crack.

Berlin, in the Autumn of 1942. Inside the Irish consulate, officials and diplomats try to carry on their routine business. Outside, RAF bombing of the capital of the Third Reich intensifies. As the security services start to uncover the true origins of the consulate's German cook, should the staff step into protect her or will their neutrality render them powerless in preventing the crimes unfolding around them? As the secrets of the Nazi regime are uncovered, can a country remain neutral in a time of war?

Outrageously zany and filed with non-stop surprises, Simon Reade's theatrical adaptation of The Scarecrow and His Servant, renowned author Philip Pullman's fictional children's tale, is an enchanting play for young readers and performers. Delve into the magical world of Scarecrow as you accompany him as Jack, his trusty help-mate, and together you can embark on adventures that will make your head spin. From dodging dangerous bandits and surviving terrifying shipwrecks, to soaring through the skies with wild birds, this play is a roller-coaster ride of never-ending escapades. But when the river-polluting Buffaloni tyrants catch up with you for a final showdown, who will come to your rescue and save the day?

4 May 1969, the body of David Oluwale is pulled from the River Aire in Leeds. Eighteen months later, the investigation into his death ripped apart the police force, exposing the dark side of the shiny, new city in which he died. As police broke ranks to expose the two officers eventually prosecuted for involvement in Oluwales death, the horrific details emerged; of how an optimistic, ambitious Nigerian had arrived in the UK, only to become the destitute victim of police brutality.

A riotous journey through four waves of immigration from the 17th century to today. As the French Huguenots, the Irish, the Jews and the Bangladeshis in turn enter the chaotic world of Bethnal Green, each new influx provokes a surge of violent protest over housing, jobs, religion and culture. And the emerging pattern shows that white flight and anxiety over integration are anything but new. Richard Bean's comedy follows a pair of star-crossed lovers amid cutters' mobs, Papists, Jewish anarchists and radical Islamists across four tempestuous centuries.

PLAYS THREE: Harvest; In the Club; The English Game; Up on the Roof

After their parent's death, siblings Han and Miso are forced into destitution and life upon the streets of Korea. However, Miso is rescued from poverty at the age of ten by an English family, and leaving her younger brother in Korea to fend for himself, she escapes to England and a life of prosperity. Set in modern day Korea, This Isn't Romance opens with the first meeting between the estranged siblings after their separation as children. Miso, driven by guilt over the abandonment, returns to Korea to seek out Han and make amends for the past but in doing so rekindles the dangerous passions within their relationship. What ensues is a provocative and controversial drama incorporating themes of violence, tempestuous incest and self-brutality. However, despite the traumas which haunt the drama and siblings lives, the play closes upon a sense of resolution and hope, presenting the reconciled pair looking forward to their new future together.

Two people and their two chairs seek to find meaning and direction in life, seek to find just the tiniest shred of certainty, consistency. A stranger arrives -- though he doesn't do what strangers always do, when strangers arrive. If you were ever born, and expect to ever die, this might be a play for you.

This version of Macbeth, adapted and originally directed by Carl Heap, preserves the core of Shakespeare's plot, retains the original langauge, yet is presented very much with the target age group in mind. Carl Heap's introduction will help readers, teachers and practitioners alike to imagine or produce their own version.

This version of A Midsummer Night's Dream adapted and originally directed by Carl Heap, preserves the core of Shakespeare's plot, retains the original langauge, yet is presented very much with the target age group in mind. Carl Heap's introduction will help readers, teachers and practitioners alike to imagine or produce their own version.

This version of Pericles, adapted and originally directed by Carl Heap, preserves the core of Shakespeare's plot, retains the original langauge, yet is presented very much with the target age group in mind. Carl Heap's introduction will help readers, teachers and practitioners alike to imagine or produce their own version.

This version of Romeo and Juliet, adapted and originally directed by Carl Heap, preserves the core of Shakespeare's plot, retains the original langauge, yet is presented very much with the target age group in mind. Carl Heap's introduction will help readers, teachers and practitioners alike to imagine or produce their own version.

A secret, a spa in Bangkok and two naked Germans. . .In a world where anything can be indulged in and everything is permissible, Martin, a disturbed ex-pat, offers to share his tales of misfortune with Stefan, a jaded hack writer on a junket. Together they engage in an intricate exchange of complicated stories, weaving through movies, sex, celebrity and genocide in the hope that they will transform themselves, and, possibly the world.

The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes charts the revolution in philosophical thinking that took place during the seventeenth century. The play celebrates the growth of public scientific demonstrations at a time when, under Cromwell (and less than thirty years after Shakespeare's death) the theatres were closed. Against this backdrop of civil war and social upheaval, science became the new theatre and philosophy a new faith

An American woman who has never left Nashville searches Turkey for a deported Kurdish man who has disappeared. A darkly comic journey through a land where a language is illegal, history is drowned and illusions have to die if you want to survive.

The village of Todos Os Santos is under threat from developers who want to clear the village and the forest for farmland. Meanwhile, the village bull won't dance the traditional bumba meu boi and the pregnant Catarina has developed a taste for impossible foods that her husband Francisco must get for her. Can the spirits of the forest help our heroes save their environment, their way of life, and themselves? Fantasy and reality dance through this spectacular Amazonian adventure, inspired by the life and politics of Brazilian folk hero Chico Mendes.

The Oberon Book of Modern Monologues for Men collects over fifty speeches from some of the finest plays of the last twenty years, and from the unique roster of the UKs leading independent drama publisher.

The Oberon Book of Modern Monologues for Women collects over fifty speeches from some of the finest plays of the last twenty years, and from the unique roster of the UKs leading independent drama publisher.