Osborne here delivers his trademark eloquence, rage and devastating wit. A Sense of Detachment satirises our heartless, profiteering society, while defending timeless human values. The End of Me Old Cigar examines the decadent lives of a collection of leading media figures. The television play Jill and Jack is a comic gem that satirises the conventions of its own genre while also being a close study of sexual warfare. A Place Calling Itself Rome is a powerful reworking of Shakespeare's Coriolanus .
Inside a beautiful state residence on the edge of an Eastern European city, four women wait. They talk – movies, handbags, vodka, anything. For outside, as snow is falling, civil war looms ever nearer. A play about decadence, desire and dictatorship, Splendour brilliantly peels back the cruel veneer of our lives to reveal the beating heart within. Tender takes place in a city full of chance encounters. Al loves Hen, but now there’s a baby on the way everything looks different. Gloria loves Marvin, but one day he walked out and disappeared. And Hen’s mate Tash just loves a laugh and a drink. Particularly a drink. In this world of fast talk and hard sell, how much faith can we put in other people? Splendour was first produced by Paines Plough and won the Barclays TMA Award for Best New Play. Tender was first produced by Birmingham Rep, in a co-production with Hampstead Theatre and Theatre Royal Plymouth.
Set in the Paris apartment of James Joyce and his family, Michael Hasting's new play takes place when a young student named Samuel Beckett arrives, and an unusual love begins.
It is Cambridge, 1915, and Tom, an awkward American graduate, meets Viv. Enchanted with each other, the couple are sucked into a whirlwind romance, but as Tom begins to become successful in the field of literature, Viv's volatility becomes a problem rather than a quirk. Their swift marriage turns into an impossible love story. Tom and Viv explores the complex relationship between T.S Eliot and his wife, Vivienne. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1984, and was made into a major motion picture starring Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson in 1994. A new production opens at the Almeida Theatre, London in September 2006.
England is a country frightened of its young, a country of ASBOs, hoodies and happy slapping. How has our youth got so out of control? In a classroom somewhere a teacher, Tom, is alone with Darryl, an excluded boy, in an effort to teach him where all else has failed. Can Tom save Darryl? Or does Tom need a little saving himself? Can anyone save anyone? Monster won second prize in the Bruntwood Playwriting Competition for the Royal Exchange, part of the Manchester International Festival. It opened at the Royal Exchange, Manchester in June 2007.
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, first produced at Birmingham Rep in 2007
Cherished Disappointments in Love is a brilliantly funny and wildly savage theatrical roller-coaster ride. A woman of a certain age is in love with Finland's youngest philosopher, Pekka Himanen. He is also loved by an army sergeant major who means to make a man of him. From the country who gave us saunas, Nokia and Mika Hakkinen, Cherished Disappointments in Love is a comic fantasia on love, philosophy and theatre. Shot through with an eroticism that engenders chaos, the time-honoured and eternal differences between male and female are played out upon the stage with wild, highly comic intensity.
No other major playwright of the last 50 years has undergone such a reappraisal as Rodney Ackland. Interest in his work has renewed in the 1990s, starting at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, with further revivals at many theatres, including the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Royal National Theatre. In Plays Two , we are reminded once again of Ackland's dangerous gift. Includes the plays Smithereens , Strange Orchestra , Before The Party and The Old Ladies
Rodney Ackland is belatedly acknowledged as a master of the British stage, now captivating new audiences. In The Dark River , set in the late thirties, the flamboyant characters are cocooned in a Thames backwater ignoring the turbulent events of a politically unstable Europe. After October ntroduces us to Clive, a young playwright struggling to make ends meet, find love and complete his masterpiece. Not easy whilst being hounded by bailiffs and a feckless family.
• World premiere in 2014 at Soho Rep (New York, Off-Broadway). Production sold out, extended, and was met with rave reviews. • Shared the 2014 Obie Award for Best New American Play with Appropriate, also written by Jacobs-Jenkins. • Based on An Octoroon, an 1859 melodrama by Irish writer Dion Boucicault. • Should be of interest to academic audiences interested in investigating race, ethnicity, discrimination and stereotypes. • Jacobs-Jenkins, 30 years old, is a rising star among young playwrights. • Appropriate premiered in 2012 at the Humana Festival of New American Plays (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky). It has also been produced at Victory Gardens Theatre (Chicago), Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington DC), and Signature Theatre (New York, Off-Broadway)• Jacobs-Jenkins is one of the Residency Five playwrights at Signature Theatre. As part of the residency, Signature Theatre will mount three full productions of his work.• Upcoming productions of new plays include War at Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, CT (fall 2014) and Gloria; or Ambition at Vineyard Theatre in New York (Off-Broadway, spring 2015).• Past productions also include Neighbors at The Public Theater (2010)