Oberon Latest Plays
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Latest Plays - click on covers to see full Publisher's details
by Douglas Maxwell | The Mother Ship |
: | Eliot is 18 and under severe stress. There's no girlfriend in sight, his best mate has stopped swearing and his pregnant step-mum is even more stressed than he is.... and then, having got the call from outer space to say that The Mother Ship is leaving and coming to take him home, his disabled brother Gerry disappears. And it's all Eliot's fault. A riotous chase kicks off involving a love-lorn lifeguard, a policeman who believes in the existence of Klingons and a car that can turn into a boat. |
by Ciaran McConville | Snowbound |
: | 'The dead stay with you...They reach back. When you least expect it. Out of the corner of your eye...You look over your shoulder. And it's love.' Tom has always dreamed of travelling the world, but since his mother died he's been full-time carer to his brother, Alex, while all the opportunities have gone to the youngest, Sally. The gift of a video camera takes the brothers on an unexpected journey, as Alex sets out to make a documentary about love. But a violent strategy pushes Tom to the limits of his own strength. Alex must venture after him, into uncharted territory, where love is all-consuming and obliterates the landscape like a snowstorm. |
by Kelly Stuart | Shadow Language |
: | 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. |
by Dorata Maslowska, translated by Lisa Goldman And Paul Sirett | A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians |
: | A fast-paced road trip on black ice awaits. . .Coming down from a drug-fuelled party, two strangers find themselves hitchhiking and hijacking their way across Poland, as they try to find their way back to reality. |
: | A group of teenagers do something bad, really bad, then panic and cover the whole thing up. But when they find that the cover-up unites them and brings harmony to their otherwise fractious lives, wheres the incentive to put things right? DNA is a poignant and, sometimes, hilarious tale with a very dark heart. |
: | Kat is moving out of the London flat she shares with ex-boyfriend, Ben. Helping her are best friend, Thea, and new man in her life, Josh. Ben (who's not even meant to be there) is hurt and angry, and still in love with Kat. But is it now too late to tell her. . .? |
by Phil Porter | The Cracks In My Skin |
: | 'Do you find it hard? Getting close? I want to get close but I can't stop blowing things apart. Vexing people like a bomb' Janie's a force of nature, like some considerable disaster zone. It's baking hot, her mouth is peeling away and now she's got horns. Been on her head for yonks apparently, growing...Roper can feel his grandson Linden pulling away from him, pushing him away...like his eyes are mini pebbles all suddenly. Like everyone, Josefa needs a bit of a miracle to happen. One summer's night, with the help of a paddling pool, a baby dragon and a bottle of gin, it does. But how long can anything perfect last? Funny, open-hearted, surprising and strange, The Cracks in My Skin is a new kind of love story...a new kind of family. |
by Roy Smiles | Year Of The Rat |
: | 1948: George Orwell is attempting to finish his final novel -Nineteen Eighty Four - before ill-health forces him off the solated Scottish island he has made his home. Holed up with a shotgun and literary-circle bombshell Sonia Brownell for company he's desperately hoping for a last chance at happiness. But George is no womaniser and is sure to make a hash of things particularly after his childhood friend and notorious lecher Cyril Connolly turns up. Will he seduce Sonia or will Cyril scupper his plans? Can he survive his friends, both real and imaginary, and finish his masterpiece before death comes knocking? |
by Jon Haynes and David Woods | Tough time, nice time |
: | 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. With its razor sharp dialogue and lightning pace, Tough time, Nice Time is challenging, vividly imaginative and utterly absorbing |
A modern version of Le Misanthrope by Ranjit Bolt | The Grouch |
: | In this witty cutting version of Le Misanthrope Molières angry hero Alceste becomes Alan - journalist, intellectual and free spirit- who finds himself adrift in a social whirl of false flattery and schmooze. In a world where nobody calls a spade a spade (or even knows what a spade is for), how can the cantankerous but high-minded Alan secure the affections of Celia - a spoiled, feckless, fickle socialite, who happens to be the love of his life? |
by Torben Betts | PLAYS THREE: The Optimist; The Swing of Things; The Company Man |
: | In this third volume of his collected plays Torben Betts portrays a world of floundering, sub-alpha males and suicidally miserable women, of bullying parents, torturous childhoods and failing relationships, characters all baffled by the most basic question: how do we live good lives and be happy in the modern world? Set on Guy Fawke's Night The Optimist (2002) concerns a Government Defence Minister who must face up to the consequences of the choices he has made, both professionally and personally. The Swing of Things (2005) hilariously examines a world where status anxiety and affluenza seem to have corrupted the soul of a whole generation. In The Company Man (2006) a dying woman's last night is marred by the conflict between her accomplished yet emotionally damaged husband and their deeply troubled son. |
edited by Deidre Osborne | Hidden Gems |
: | B IS FOR BLACK by Courttia Newland; MOJ OF THE ANTARCTIC by Mojisola Adebayo; THE SONS OF CHARLIE PAORA by Lennie James; BROWN GIRL IN THE RING by Valerie Mason-John; SOMETHING DARK by Lemn Sissay; 35 CENTS by Paul Anthony Morris. This distinctive new volume of drama by black British playwrights exemplifies how experiments with form, subject-matter and genre can serve to centralise the experiences of black people in local, national and international contexts of culture, politics and performance. each play is critically introduced, to create an anthology of interactions - between the people who have long championed the work through teaching and writing about it and the people who produce, perform and explain their intentions behind it. |
by Christopher Fry | Plays 1 |
: | Christopher Fry's most famous work, The Lady's Not For Burning - 'Spring' in his set of 'Seasonal Plays' - is joined by the 'Summer' play A Yard of Sun, and a previously unpublished early play, Siege, based on the story of Aucassin and Nicolette. |
by Christopher Fry | Plays 2 |
: | Fry's 'Autumn' and 'Winter' plays - Venus Observed and The Dark is Light Enough - are joined by the historical play Curtmantle, about Henry II. All three focus on a compelling central character who dominates those around them. |
by Christopher Fry | Plays 3 |
: | This third volume brings together Fry's only fully-fledged tragedy - The Firstborn, based on the biblical story of the plagues of Egypt - and his six one-act plays: The Boy With a Cart, A Phoenix Too Frequent, Thor with Angels, A Sleep of Prisoners, Caedmon Construed and A Ringing of Bells. |
by Sarah Wooley | They Have Oak Trees in North Carolina |
: | Ray and Eileen's five-year-old son vanishes on a family holiday to Florida. Twenty-two years later, a good-looking American boy arrives in their sleepy English village and claims to be their boy. Can this man really be their missing child, or is he an impostor? And what long buried secrets will have to be revealed to prove his true identity? |
by Peter Oswald | Lucifer Saved |
: | Twenty years after the end of the Second World War, former army chaplain Lucian Willow is living on the country estate of his old comrade, Lord Brook, deep in the slumbering fields of England. The arrival of a circus troupe from across the channel - with its anarchic magic and comedy - forces these wounded men to confront their horrifying and entangled past. An astonishing interweaving of modern story and Christian myth, Written in verse and prose. |
The Good Family and The Khomenko Family Chronicles | The Family Plays: A Double Bill |
: | Two plays, from opposite ends of Europe, each depicting family life: both slyly subversive; both quietly terrifying. In The Good Family by Swedish writer Joakim Pirinen (translated by Gregory Motton), we are comfortably off, sexually satisfied, liberal, liberated and pretty much perfect. Everything is perfect and probably always will be. In The Khomenko Family Chronicles by Ukrainian writer Natalia Vorozhbit (translated by Sasha Dugdale), two parents tell their bedbound son the romantic tale of how they met and married - a light-hearted stroll down memory lane that takes us past Chernobyl and the Twin Towers. |
by Bryony Lavery | Stockholm |
: | Meet the couple every couple wants to be. Attractive and immaculately turned out, they are the perfect team. Tomorrow they will be in Stockholm, a city where, in summer, the sun shines 24/7 and sometimes it's dark all day long. Today it's his birthday and she's going to give him all his presents and treats and surprises. Treading a fine line between tenderness and cruelty, Stockholm reveals a relationship unravelling. It's beautiful, but it's not pretty. Stockholm unites leading physical theatre company Frantic Assembly with award-winning playwright Bryony Lavery and designer Laura Hopkins (Black Watch, Mercury Fur) to deliver an extraordinary perspective on the nature of modern love. |
byHenrik Ibsen in a version by Colin Teevan | Peer Gynt |
: | Peer Gynt is a dreamer, a liar and a serial womaniser. Cast out from his hometown, Peer embarks on a wild and astonishing journey in search of fame and fortune that takes him from Norway to Africa and eventually back home again. An exhiliarating tale of a life lived on the edge. |
by Ron Hutchinson | Moonlight and Magnolias |
: | Hollywood, 1939: semi-independent mogul David O.Selznick has just shut down production on the most eagerly anticipated movie in history - his megabudget version of Margaret Mitchell's bestselling novel Gone with the Wind - scrapping the original script and sacking the director in the process. Determined to produce a rewrite in five days, he engages the reluctant services of ace script doctor Ben Hecht - possibly the only person in America who has not read the novel - and the movie's new director Victor Fleming, poached straight from the set of The Wizard of Oz . His reputation on the line, and with nothing but a stockpile of peanuts and bananas to sustain them, Selznick locks himself in his office with his two collaborators, and a marathon creative session begins. . . |
by Robin Soans | Life After Scandal |
: | Life After Scandal takes you behind the closed curtains and beyond the reach of the telephoto lenses to explore our paparazzi-infested world from the other side, as those implicated in some of the most notorious scandals of recent years talk frankly about the events which transformed their lives. This new verbatim play from the writer of Talking To Terrorists and The Arab-Israeli Cookbook uses the subjects' own words to take an entertaining, compassionate and deeply moving look at the different people, from scorned politicians to powerful PRs, expensive prostitutes to disgraced aristocrats, who find themselves caught up in the modern machinery of scandal. |
by Torben Betts | The Error Of Their Ways |
: | From a playwright rated by Alan Ayckbourn and Howard Barker to be the most exciting new voice in British theatre comes a shattering re-imagining of life as we live it now, set in the context of a bloody revolution. Witness to a brutal political assassination, we are introduced to a society fractured by a lack of belief in anything meaningful, in which everyone has something to protest against. This skewed world spins giddily between the surreal, the mundane and a ghastly graphic reality. Powerful poetic language, raw emotion, dark humour and big uncomfortable ideas build a fast moving story of 'quite shattering impact' (The Guardian). |
by Simon Scama adapted for stage by Caryl Phillips | Rough Crossings |
: | As the American War of Independence reaches its climax, a plantation slave and a British naval officer embark on an epic journey in search of freedom. Divided by barriers of race but united in their ambitions for equality, their convictions will change attitudes towards slavery forever. |
by Miguel de Cervantes adapted by Colin Teevan and Pablo Ley | Don Quixote |
: | Follow the dramatic tale of the ingenious gentleman of La Mancha, Don Quixote and his comic adventures over land, sea and air in the search for an idealised world. Accompanied by his loyal sidekick, Sancho Panza, and inspired by stories of daring deeds, Don Quixote sets out to recreate an imaginary world and to convince his family, friends, and all he meets of its reality. But this is no ordinary journey as he gallops through seventeenth century Spain encountering a host of fantastical characters including star-crossed lovers, an army of giants, a cross-dressing priest, a royal duchess and even the devil himself. |
by Gianina Carbunariu translated by Philip Osment | Kebab |
: | Having moved to Dublin to start a new life, the young Romanina, Madalina finds herself working in a kebab shop...until her boyfriend Voicu suggests a more lucrative, if not altogether savoury, line of work. Her new career brings her into contact - quite literally - with a Romanian art student, Bogdan, and the three of them find a way of living and working together. Their uneasy, messy menage-a-trois persists until Madalina decides to choose between her two men... Kebab explores some of the harsher realities of immigration and what people are willing to give up in the hope of a better life |
two plays by Oliver Emanuel (includes Magie Park) | Man Across The Way |
: | Man Across The Way: Fraser and Dougie are watching a suspect. Sal is learning a new dance. An explosion rips through the city. But you're just getting on with your own life. Aren't you? First performed at the Edinburgh Festival 2007, Man Across the Way is a dazzling, anarchic new play about surveillance, tap-dancing and the new world order. Magpie Park features a Harvey Nics store detective with a dodgy past and a florist with a missing sister. What brings them together in a room at the Queens Hotel? Part mystery, part romance, this tender-hearted thriller follows the two on a trail through Leeds from the bright lights of Briggate to the birds of Hyde Park. Magpie Park was first performed at West Yorkshire Playhouse as part of the Northern Exposure Festival. |
by Hassan Abdulrazzak | Baghdad Wedding |
: | 'In Iraq, a wedding is not a wedding unless shots get fired. It's like in England where a wedding is not a wedding unless someone pukes or tries to fuck one of the bridesmaids. That's the way it goes.' From cosmopolitan London to the chaos of war-ravaged Baghdad, this is the comic tale of three friends, torn between two worlds, and a wedding that goes horribly wrong. Baghdad Wedding premiered at the Soho Theatre in June 2007. |
new version by Simon Bent | Elling |
: | Based on the novel by Ingvar Ambjørnsen, in original stage adaptation by Axel Hellstenius in collaboration with Peter Naess, in a new version by Simon Bent. Mummy's boy Elling and his roommate, the uncouth, reluctant virgin Kjell Bjarne, are the Odd Couple of Oslo: a pair of confused souls taking their first steps in the outside world after years of isolated, institutional life. Given a flat in the city by social services, they must re-assimilate themselves into society or face a return to the asylum. So it's simply a question of convincing their social worker that they really are "normal" - even if it does feel safer sleeping in the wardrobe. . . Based on the award-winning cult film, Elling was first performed at the Bush Theatre in 2007 and transferred to Trafalgar Studios in the West End. |
a play for galleries by Tim Crouch | England |
: | 'The patients like to look at the paintings. It helps them to feel better about their illnesses.' The grateful recipient of a heart transplant travels 4000 miles to thank the widow of the donor and to present her with a very special gift. But much more than a life has been lost. Written and performed in art galleries, ENGLAND tells a compelling story for our times - a disturbing tale of transactions and translations, of culture and commerce, of one thing being placed inside another without thought for the consequences. Presented by two guides, it is a tour to the end of the world. ENGLAND was first performed at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, in August 2007. |
by Malcom McKay | Forgotten Voices |
: | Adapted from 'Forgotten Voices of the Great War' by Max Arthur. Based on the oral testimonies of First World War veterans, collected by the Sound Archive of the Imperial War Museum, Forgotten Voices tells the story of five survivors - four men and one woman - whose memories provide a vivid and moving first-hand account of the Great War. Forgotten Voices was first performed at the Riverside Studios, London in June 2007 and transferred to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Assembly Rooms. |
by Richard Shannon | The Lady of Burma |
: | In her cell in Rangoon's Insein prison, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi - incarcerated by Burma's military dictatorship for almost 20 years - tells her story. Richard Shannon-s powerful and moving one-woman play vividly portrays the life and message of the world-s most famous prisoner of conscience. Aung San Suu Kyi was held under house arrest from 1989-1995, and again from 2000-2002. She was again arrested in May 2003 after the Depayin massacre. She is currently under house arrest in Rangoon. Aung San Suu Kyi-s message is a simple one - that only by 'fighting fear can you truly be free' - a message Burma's military fears and aims to silence. The Lady of Burma is a Red Fighting Peacock Production presented by the Burma Campaign UK and Louise Chantal. The Burma Campaign UK is part of a global movement to promote democracy and human rights in Burma. |
: | "What I'm asking is, can you really erase things? Wipe them completely?" When smart young lawyer Peter's computer malfunctions, he asks his whiz-kid brother to wipe the hard drive. But the real cause of the problem is far darker than Peter has admitted, and soon the world comes crashing down on him. Future me is a devastating study of unlawful desire. With unflinching honesty, it examines the destructive power of illicit deeds and the limits of forgiveness. For someone who has crossed the line, is there really any chance of a 'future me'? |
: | Luke's world is in chaos. His 'mates' want to hurt him, his love-life's a mess, he misses his dad and hates his mum's new boyfriend. He's even lost his passion for piano. When the sound of a child crying starts to haunt him, Luke thinks he's going mad. But the noise soon leads him to an attic room in a creepy house and the strange and secretive people who live there. Can he resolve the complex mysteries of the house before the bullies close in on him? And will the journey free him from his sadness? Adapted from Carnegie medal-winner Tim Bowler's popular book, Starseeker is a thrilling rites-of-passage tale. |
David Foley | A Hole In The Fence |
: | It's 1919 and the US naval base in Newport, Rhode Island, is mired in 'conditions of vice'. Mr Vole has a plan to clean it up. He orders a group of young sailors to infiltrate Newport's dens of depravity, meet other young sailors and have sex with them; then uses their graphic reports to conduct a string of arrests. Only when the investigation snares an Episcopal priest does it explode in a scandal that reaches up to the highest level of government. Based on a real-life sex scandal, A Hole in the Fence is a comic exploration of desire, duplicity, and the slippery terrain of public morality. |
: | "He's got zero empathy. You could be having a conversation and start choking to death and he'd just think, 'Well, this conversation's over.'He'd probably just sit there and finish eating whatever you were choking on." An inexperienced teacher is given the job of saving a disturbed and violent fourteen-year-old boy from permanent exclusion. Alone in the classroom, an intense battle of wills takes place. But what can be done when a child cares for no one and is afraid of nothing? |
Dennis Kelly | Taking Care Of Baby |
: | Tackles the complex case of Donna McAuliffe, a young mother convicted of the murder of her two infant children. In a series of probing interviews the people in this extraordinary story, including Donna herself and her bewildered mother Lynn, reveal how they may have harmed those they sought to protect. |
adapted by Tom Morris and Emma Rice | A Matter of Life and Death |
: | It is 1945. A young airman jumps to certain death from his burning aircraft. Following an angelic blunder, caused by a classic English pea-souper. Peter Carter miraculously survives and finds June in the flesh. But things are not so simple. To stay alive, Peter is forced to take himself, and the heavenlv authorities, to the Universal Court of Appeal. |
Leyla Nazli | Silver Birch House |
: | In a remote mountain village in eastern Turkey, against a backdrop of mounting political turmoil, a father clings to the simple life he has created for himself and his family. As violence creeps ever closer, Haydar refuses to flee from the family home, a home he built with his bare hands. What keeps him here? Why do his silver birch trees seem more precious to him than the lives of his own children? |
Oladipo Agboluaje | The Christ Of Coldharbour Lane |
: | A revolutionary preacher begs the crowds to 'abandon the wilful peace' that keeps them down. He hies to make them believe that things could be different. But when people pray only for a brand new car or a large KFC bucket, the citizens of Brixton need a miracle to happen ... |
Neil d'Souza | Small Miracle |
: | Sadie, her mother, step-father and grandmother are on holiday at a caravan park near a religious shrine in rural Ireland when a series of increasingly weird events take place. Can the family get their relationships and holiday back on track? Can an elderly woman with a dodgy heart find love with the caravan site manager? And why is Sadie so obsessed with her mobile phone? Set against the backdrop of questions about religion and spirituality, Small Miracle is an Indian Irish comedy about a feuding family on a road trip. |
Edmond Rostand translated by Ranjit Bolt | Cyrano de Bergerac |
: | This new version of Edmond Rostands classic play Cyrano de Bergerac is set in thirties India, where Cyrano pursues his love for Roxanne in an Asian setting. |
Tom Morton-Smith | Salt Meets Wound |
: | Dylan Singer needs to leave London. With his alcoholic ex-fiancée he heads to Central Asia, to research the book he's always dreamt of writing. But it's 2002, the height of the 'War on Terror', and Uzbekistan isn't the belly-dancing opium den her is expecting. From 11th century Samarkand, through the Great Fire of London, to a disused weapons facility in the remotest place on earth, Salt Meets Wound is an epic odyssey spanning a thousand years. |
Roger Crane | The Last Confession |
: | The Vatican, 1978: a little-known Cardinal from Venice is elected to succeed Pope Paul VI. A compromise candidate, he takes the name Pope John Paul I, and quickly shows himself to be the liberal the reactionaries within the Catholic Church most feared. Thirty-three days later he is dead. No official investigation is conducted, no autopsy is performed, and the Vatican's press release about the cause of death is found to be largely false. Premiered at the Chichester Festival in April 2007 starring David Suchet, this gripping thriller goes behind the scenes at the Vatican, uncovering the bitter rivalries, the political manoeuvrings and the unspoken crises of faith that surrounded the death of 'the Smiling Pope'. |
: | Late at night, in an isolated house on the Yorkshire moors, a couple await the return of their estranged daughter. But when Charlotte arrives with news of a mysterious encounter on the nearby road, and a gift for the family to share, their happy reunion turns into a disturbing reawakening of the past. Cocoa is a haunting, psychological exploration of broken memories and damaged lives. It premiered at Theatre503, London, in April 2007. |
by Anton Chekhov in a new version by Pam Gems | The Cherry Orchard |
: | Oh, the trees! Nothing but white and green as far as you can see - remember, Lyuba? Oh my lovely childhood. Waking up to happiness, looking out at blossom and trees and there they are - the same trees, the same blossom - after cruel winter, warmth and light and feeling! In his masterpiece The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov maintains an exquisite balance between elegiac celebration of the romance of the past, as embodied in the cherry orchard in full bloom, and the awesome prescience of what is so soon to overwhelm Russia - revolution. The themes are majestic, and yet at the centre of the play is Ranévskaya, a tragic woman who lacks adroitness for survival in a changing world but who has one asset: a capacity for love. It is her solution - and Chekhov's. This new version of The Cherry Orchard by Pam Gems opened at the Crucible, Sheffield in March 2007. |
Four Plays from the inaugral Hightide Festival | Hightide: The Plays |
: | The four plays in this volume formed the centrepiece of the inaugural HighTide Festival in Halesworth, Suffolk, in 2007. Developing plays from the first draft to first performance, HighTide is the first new-writing theatre festival to focus on exclusively on young artists. The volume has a preface by Bill Nibhy. You Were After Poetry by Steven Bloomer - A fast-paced and witty relationship comedy showing a couple's break-up and its after-effects. Lyre by Megan Walsh - A harp takes centre stage in this beautiful tale of an uncomfortably close brother and sister. Ned & Sharon by Sam Holcroft - A story of love and tenderness about a troubled teenager in a care home. Weightless by Sarah Cuddon - An exquisitely imagined account of the first female British astronaut's selection and journey into space. |
: | Suddenly with four new plays opening within 12 months, Richard Bean has become the playwright of the moment and now, in Honeymoon Suite, his most prestigious premiere to date, he has written what seems like the perfect play' - The Financial Times on Honeymoon Suite. 'Toast is as funny, touching, and brilliant an account of men at work as any we have had since David Storey's The Changing Room' - The Spectator on Toast. 'Cunningly effective' - The Times on Mr England. 'A brilliant black satire that plays on an Ortonesque reversal of values. Bean distributes deftly crafted, razor-sharp lines among a cast of characters who would sooner snort them than deliver them. - The Guardian on Smack Family Robinson |
Anton Chekhov adapted by Bryony Lavery | Uncle Vanya |
: | 'Nothing's new. Everything's old. I'm exactly the same as ever. Only more lazy. More aimless. More curmudgeonly...'. One of the high points of world drama, Chekhov's bittersweet tale of frustrated lives and unrequited loves - by turns witty, playful, nostalgic and tragic - is captured in all its complexity by Bryony Lavery's spirited, sharply-written adaptation |
Roger Crane | The Last Confession |
: | The Vatican, 1978: a little-known Cardinal from Venice is elected to succeed Pope Paul VI. A compromise candidate, he takes the name Pope John Paul I, and quickly shows himself to be the liberal the reactionaries within the Catholic Church most feared. Thirty-three days later he is dead. No official investigation is conducted, no autopsy is performed, and the Vatican's press release about the cause of death is found to be largely false. Premiered at the Chichester Festival in April 2007 starring David Suchet, this gripping thriller goes behind the scenes at the Vatican, uncovering the bitter rivalries, the political manoeuvrings and the unspoken crises of faith that surrounded the death of 'the Smiling Pope'. |
Two Plays by Marivaux | The Triumph of Love & The Game of Love and Chance |
: | Two tales of multiple misunderstanding by the eighteenth-century master of complex, witty comedies. In the tightly-structured, erotically-charged fable The Triumph of Love, a young princess, conscious that her claim to the throne is less than honourable, disguises herself as a man in order to dupe her enemies and persuade the rightful ruler to return. This faithful and vivid translation by Braham Muray and Katherine Sand was first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester in 2007. In The Game of Love and Chance, a pair of prospective lovers each swap places with their servants, while their relatives, fully apprised of both deceptions, look on in amusement. Neil Bartlett's adaptation, first performed at the Lyric Hammersmith, finds inventive modern equivalents for Marivaux's ludic theatricality and its roots in the Commedia dell'Arte. |
Chris O'Connell | Hang Lenny Pope; also includes cloud:burst |
: | Can a family find hope for the future? Chris O'Connell's compelling new play explores the possibility that love might return, and redemption be found, for a couple whose lives have been battered by the experience of parenting a violent son. Both touching and funny, Hang Lenny Pope is an urban love story with a truly macabre twist. An inspiring, hard-edged and enthralling production by Theatre Absolute, Hang Lenny Pope began a national tour in March 2007. |
Michael McLean | The Electric Hills |
: | "Still does a bit me dad. Not often. Does discos and that and singing when he can. Hard for him. You know... 'showbiz." Kelisha's dad was Top of the Pops. The Electric Hills. One hit wonder. 80s floor filler. Now he's over the hill, sleeping all day and running dead discos at night. An offbeat comedy drama about ambition, family and keeping the dream alive, The Electric Hills opened at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre in March 2007. |
Georgia Fitch | I Like Mine With A Kiss |
: | "I know this is the last bus now, isn't it...the night bus to motherhood, and my only chance to get on it. Nothing else is going in that direction..." Celebrating her 39th birthday with a night on the tiles, Louise and best friend Annie realise that, despite their best intentions, they're still nowhere near to being like those enviable 'modern women who have it all' - something their friends, family and even their lovers seem all too happy to remind them of. With a few home truths to face up to, and their friendships teetering on the edge, will the morning after be too tough a pill to swallow? I Like Mine with a Kiss opened at the Bush Theatre, London in February 2007. |
by Charles Dickens adapted by Neil Bartlett | Great Expectations |
: | Using only Charles Dickens' extraordinary words and a chameleon ensemble of eight actors, Neil Bartlett's powerful stage version of this much-loved story brings its settings and characters to thrilling theatrical life. From its opening image of little Pip, alone on the windswept marshes, to the haunted darkness of mad Miss Haversham's cobweb-strewn lair, this brand-new adaptation especially commissioned by Aberystwyth Arts Centre takes its audience on a journey right to the heart of Dickens' great exploration of childhood terrors and hopes - and of adult dreams and regrets. Opens at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre in March 2007 followed by a national tour. |
by Geraldine McCaughrean adapted by Simon Reade | Not The End Of The World |
: | Forty days below the decks of a ship in relentless storms. Squalid conditions, a cargo of animals, and the man in charge claims he is acting on God's orders. Written for an ensemble cast, Not the End of the World tells the exhilarating and gripping story of the world's first natural disaster, and the making of the world's first Middle Eastern religious fanatic. Geraldine McCughrean's novel Not the End of the World was a winner of the Whitbread Award 2004. This stage adaptation by Simon Reade opened at the Bristol Old Vic in March 2007. |