‘I came to the city. I saw the people were filthy. And those who were not filthy were still filthy…’Sodom. The day before the city’s total annihilation. Among the grimy tables of a run-down café, an angel tells Lot that God wants him to flee, before the city is obliterated. However, Lot’s irresistible wife has other ideas… As the angel and Lot’s wife embark on a dangerous game of seduction, cruelty and desire, we are drawn ever deeper into the dark and impenetrable forest that is the marriage between Lot and the bewitching woman he worships…‘I must learn to keep my mouth shut when there are angels in the room…’
Includes the plays Rattle , Mother Adam and Staircase 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 is more beautifully written, with an imagination at once exotic and desperately familiar; it has a profounder pity, and a more exquisite falling Close.’The eminent American journalist Walter Winchell wrote of Dyer’s ‘Profound thoughts and emotions expressed with humour… People in the shadows discovering sunshine in each other.’
A riveting new stage adaptation from award-winning writer and director Yael Farber. In this new publication, Farber (inspired by contemporary retellings) adapts the ancient tale of The Ramayana , attributed to the Hindu sage Valmiki. The original Ramayana forms a significant part of the Hindu canon, dating to approximately the 5th-4th century BC – with the oldest surviving manuscripts from the 11th century BC. Farber’s potent revisioning of this age-old text is a raw and probing contemporary work which places the loss of the Feminine Divine, and thus our lack of spiritual and moral equilibrium, at its visceral core. This is a Ramayana for a new world.
HEROIN by Grace Dyas, Trade by Mark O’Halloran, The Art of Swimming by Lynda Radley, Pineapple by Phillip McMahon, I ? Alice ? I by Amy Conroy, The Big Deal edited by Una McKevitt, Oedipus Loves You by Simon Doyle & Gavin Quinn, The Year of Magical Wanking by Neil WatkinsEdited and introduced by Thomas Conway.This anthology comprises eight new plays by Irish playwrights premièred between the years 2006 and 2011.These playwrights ride, however, in no slipstream of the identifiably Irish play. Here, the enterprise of playwriting itself is being re-imagined. Here, above all else, is a commitment to becoming in the theatre.For all that, each play is concerned with what is unfinished business in Ireland. How astonishing, then, that these plays should revolve for the most part around identity and, in particular, sexual identity. How identity comes into play, how we open up the field of play, how we raise into collective experience the exercise of that play – the urgency in the playwriting would appear to lie precisely here.We can read from the historical moment – from a narrative emphasizing an economic bubble and its hangover – into these plays. Or we can take these playwrights at their word and observe lives lived at the contour of identities in the making. It is for us as readers, just as we have as theatre-goers – frequently scandalized, enthralled, shamed, appalled, unburdened, tickled pink – to decide.
One of the most famous comedies in world theatre, Gogol's masterpiece has lost none of its bite. In a small town corruption is rife, and the Mayor and his cronies have got it made. So when they learn they are going to be subject to an undercover government inspection they panic. Mistaking a penniless nobody for the inspector they swiftly fall victims to their own stupidity and greed.A dazzling blend of preposterous characters and familiar situations, Nabokov called The Government Inspector the greatest play in the Russian language. A production of this version of the play opened at the Chichester Festival in June 2005 starring the comedian Alistair McGowan.
‘What a verbatim play does is flash your research nakedly. It’s like cooking a meal but the meat is left raw.’MAX STAFFORD-CLARKPlays which use people’s actual words as the basis for their drama are not a new phenomenon. But from the stages of national theatres to fringe venues and universities everywhere, ‘verbatim’ theatre, as it has come to be known, is currently enjoying unprecedented attention and success. It has also attracted high-profile criticism and impassioned debate.In these wide-ranging essays and interviews, six leading dramatists describe their varying approaches to verbatim, examine the strengths and weaknesses of its techniques and explore the reasons for its current popularity. They discuss frankly the unique opportunities and ethical dilemmas that arise when portraying real people on stage, and consider some of the criticisms levelled at this controversial documentary form.‘The intention is always to arrive at the truth.’ NICOLAS KENTContributors: Writer / Director Alecky Blythe; Writer David Hare;Director Nicolas Kent; Writer / Journalist Richard Norton-Taylor;Director Max Stafford-Clark; Writer / Actor Robin SoansEditors: Will Hammond and Dan Steward
Khadija is 18 is a story from the frontline of multicultural Britain, and explores the lives of two teenage refugee girls in London’s East End. Liza needs Khadija and Khadija needs Liza. When Khadija links up with Ade, things begin to unravel. Does Khadija care about Liza anymore? And what is Ade doin’ having sex with a ref girl? All the while the immigration clock is ticking down. Raising the voice of the dispossessed and capturing the hopes and heartbreak of our young, Shamser Sinha is an exciting new voice in playwriting.
‘You might at least say thank you, Jenny. I’ve been out digging a hole for your boyfriend all night. Not to mention severing his legs. Have you ever severed a leg? It’s not as easy as it looks. Not with a blunt spade.’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, Kwesi Abalo… A visceral, smart, brutally hilarious play about prejudice, arms dealing, and what it means to be English.
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.
A Royal encounter. An enduring love. A bungalow in Penge. For 60 years Helena has been Queen of Maurice's heart. But his Great Love is another Queen. The Queen Helena says he's never met. Maurice's Jubilee , a new play by award-winning actress and writer Nichola McAuliffe, is a funny and poignant exploration of one man's enduring commitment to a dream. And an eternal love triangle fallen on hard times…