Series: Contemporary Dramatists

When Blasted was first produced at the Royal Court in 1995, it was hailed jointly as a masterpiece and a "disgusting piece of filth" (Daily Mail). Subsequently, that play, and the others that followed, have been produced all over the world. This anthology includes Kane's never-before-published Channel 4 screenplay, Skin.

Fo Plays: 1 by Dario Fo is a captivating collection that showcases the playwright's unique style and poignant commentary on societal issues. Mistero Buffo, or The Comic Mysteries, is based on research into mediaeval mystery plays. It offers a rich exploration of traditional narratives, revealing their enduring relevance. The Accidental Death of an Anarchist tackles the controversial incident involving the...

Martin McDonagh's plays have been produced in Galway, Dublin, London, and New York. They have created excitement and have won numerous awards. In individual editions, the plays have been among Methuen's most popular sellers. Martin McDonagh's The Leenane Trilogy is hailed as "one of the great events of the contemporary Irish theatre" (Irish Times). This volume contains: The Beauty Queen...

ALISTAIR MCDOWALL uses language with virtuosity. He folds it, unfolds it, dirties it, mishandles it, and in doing so, he celebrates it. It is as a poet that he uses writing to honour its promises: to excite the imagination, to stimulate play, to provoke staging and to elevate the theatre. Le Monde McDowall’s plays are portals to the extraordinary. Guardian...

Lucy Prebble is one of Britain's foremost writers for the stage and screen. This eagerly anticipated play collection brings together her landmark plays for the first time, showcasing her work from 2003 to 2019. Beginning with her George Devine Award-winning play The Sugar Syndrome, it continues through her explosive look at the biggest financial scandal in history, concluding with her...

"The finest American playwright of his generation" (Sunday Times) Glen Garry Glen Ross (also made into a film starring Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino) is "his superb play about real estate salesmen in a cut-throat sales competition" (New Society). In Prairie du Chien, a railway carriage speeding through the Wisconsin night is the setting for a violent story of obsessive...

A selection of plays by one of the most original and biting comic writers working in Britain (The Times). The Ruling Class is a scorching and savage tragedy, yet its jokes are innumerable... they throw wide open the windows of your mind, they enlarge your field of vision and they blow away the accumulated dust of ages (Sunday Times). Leonardo's...

In Traps, a set of characters meet themselves and their pasts to create "plenty of sinewy lines and joyous juxtapositions" (Plays and Players). Vinegar Tom "is set in the world of seventeenth-century witchcraft, but it speaks, through its striking images and its plethora of ironic contradictions, of and to this century" (Tribune). Light Shining in Buckinghamshire is set during the...

Churchill Plays: 2 includes four groundbreaking plays by Caryl Churchill, each offering a unique and compelling theatrical experience. Softcops transforms the philosophy of Foucault into a music-hall performance and Victorian freakshow. As noted by the Times Literary Supplement, "theatre and history combine to give such intelligent fun." Top Girls gathers five remarkable and not-so-remarkable women from history for a dinner...

'Playwright David Ireland challenges people to draw lines between what they find funny and what they find outrageous' (Sydney Morning Herald). This first collection of plays by David Ireland brings together three of his most successful hits that have enjoyed numerous productions around the world, alongside two previously unpublished plays: Half a Glass of Water: 'The dialogue is brutal and...

The first collection of plays from Olivier-nominated playwright Isley Lynn, whose award-winning work uplifts their deeply human characters through stories that are unexpected, radically intimate, and profoundly theatrical. Lean (2013): "It's not just powerful but it's incandescent. There is a profound intensity... that truly keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole way through. Sensitively written... Exemplary theatre...

____________________ THE FIRST COLLECTION OF PLAYS BY ONE OF BRITAIN'S LEADING WRITERS ____________________ This stunning collection of plays from the talented Deborah Levy includes Pax; Clam; The B File; Pushing the Prince into Denmark; Honey, Baby; and Macbeth: False Memories. '[Levy] does not deal with realism, she does not deal with magic realism, rather she draws out a new territory,...

Duck Variations: "A brilliant little play...about two old men sitting on a park bench discussing ducks" (Guardian). Sexual Perversity in Chicago revolves around bar-room banter and sexual exploits in Mamet's home town, "sweet sad understanding and utterly believable" (Chicago Daily News). Squirrels is a sequence of philosophising between a younger writer, an older writer and a cleaning lady which "memorably...

The finest American playwright of his generation (Sunday Times) Reunion shows the meeting between a father and daughter after nearly twenty years of separation: "It would be hard to over-praise the way Mr Mamet suggests behind the probing, joshing family chat, an extraordinary sense of pain and loss...although the play has a strong social comment about the destructively cyclical effect...

Marber Plays: 1 brings together three of this award-winning playwright's first plays produced at the National Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse, London. Dealer's Choice premiered at the Royal National Theatre, London, in 1995 and subsequently transferred to the West End. It won the 1995 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy and the Writers' Guild for Best West End Play. 'An...

In her first collection of plays, Olivier award-winning playwright and screenwriter Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's talent for writing complex female characters is on dazzling display. Belongings (2011): "Malcolm’s writing is sharp and witty but also very powerful in places. Her use of humour can be shocking but it helps to balance out the weighty issues being explored: guilt, gender and family...

Six masterful works by the Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian playwright. Death and the King's Horseman: 'A transfixing work of modern world drama' - Independent Madmen and Specialists: 'A luminous play, examining the way in which war exposes and clarifies human conduct' - Observer Opera Wonyosi, adapted from Gay's The Beggar's Opera: 'Swaggering and scabrous, at once a verbal spree and a...

First collection from the 2004 Pearson Award-winning playwright. Simon Stephens Plays: 1 brings together four of the early plays from the winner of the 2002 Pearson Best New Play Award. Since Bluebird in 1998, Stephens has gained recognition for humane plays that display a sharp observation and compassionate response to the lives of ordinary people in urban locations. Bluebird: Cabbie...