Series: Student Editions

This new Student Edition of Dennis Kelly’s popular play DNA contains introductory commentary and notes by Clare Finburgh Delijani, which provides an in-depth analysis of the play’s context and themes. As well as the complete text of the play, this new Methuen Drama Student Edition includes: An introduction to the playwright and social context of the play Discussion of the...

Australia 1789. A young married lieutenant is directing rehearsals of the first play ever to be staged in that country. With only two copies of the text, a cast of convicts, and one leading lady who may be about to be hanged, conditions are hardly ideal... Winner of the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award in 1988, and many...

Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am. Willy Loman is an ageing travelling salesman haunted, driven, and yet held back by empty dreams of prosperity and success. Justly celebrated as one of the most famous...

Bernarda Alba is a widow, and her five daughters are incarcerated in mourning along with her. One by one, they make a bid for freedom, with tragic consequences. Lorca's tale depicts the repression of women within Catholic Spain in the years before the war. The House of Bernarda Alba is Lorca's last and possibly finest play, completed shortly before he...

Blood Brothers by Willy Russell is a 1983 play with music that tells the compelling story of twin brothers separated at birth because their mother cannot afford to keep them both. One of the twins is given away to the wealthy Mrs Lyons and they grow up as friends, unaware of their true relationship, until an inevitable quarrel unleashes a...

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name! In a small tight-knit community, gossip and rumour...

Three old friends in their mid-twenties. One remarkable day. For Ted, Danny and Charlotte, it’s time to seize control. Make a difference. Change things. This is it.A day trip through the parks and raves and cafes of South London, where life is what you make it. The rapid-fire words of Kate Tempest paint a picture of lives less ordinary in...

This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Bess Rowen, Assistant Professor at Villanova University, US, which looks in particular at the play's treatment of rape, vulnerable people, mental institutions (especially in connection to Williams's own family), sexuality and sexual desire. A Streetcar Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional values in the American South – an old-world graciousness...

The gods never move faster than when punishing men with the consequences of their own actions. Desperate to gain control over a city ravaged by civil war, Creon refuses to bury the body of Antigone's rebellious brother. Outraged, she defies his edict. Creon condemns the young woman, his niece, to be buried alive. The people dare not object, but the...

‘His drama is a piece of expert dramatic construction. Mr. Miller has woven his characters into a tangle of plot that springs naturally out of the circumstances of life today.’NEW YORK TIMES Three years on from the disappearance of his son, successful businessman Joe Keller has made a comfortable life for his family in America’s Midwest. Despite being accused of...

This revised Student Edition of Ibsen’s popular play contains introductory commentary and notes by Sophie Duncan, which offer a contemporary lens on the play's gender politics and consider seminal productions and adaptations of the play into the 21st century. As well as the complete text of the play itself, this new Methuen Drama Student Edition includes a: Chronology of the...

"Anouilh is a poet, but not of words: he is a poet of words-acted, of scenes-set, of players-performing" - Peter Brook. Jean Anouilh, one of the foremost French playwrights of the twentieth century, replaced the mundane realist works of the previous era with his innovative dramas, which exploit fantasy, tragic passion, scenic poetry, and cosmic leaps in time and space....

After all, who has the right to cast a stone against one who has suffered? Cannot repentance wipe out an act of folly? Why should there be one law for me and another for women? Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, a 'trivial play for serious people', is a sparkling comedy of manners that epitomises wit and style. This...

Marlene thinks the eighties are going to be stupendous. Her sister Joyce has her doubts. Her daughter Angie is just frightened. Since its premiere in 1982, Top Girls has become a seminal play of the modern theatre. Set during a period of British politics dominated by the presence of the newly elected Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Churchill’s play prompts us...

Williams’s favourite among his plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is perhaps his most impassioned and articulate statement on human isolation, the wrenching problems of communication between people and the ways in which death defines life. NEW YORK TIMES In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a Southern family meet to celebrate 'Big Daddy' Pollitt's 65th birthday. But as...

The Methuen Drama Student Edition of Twelve Angry Men is the first critical edition of Reginald Rose’s play, providing the play text alongside commentary and notes geared towards student readers. In New York, 1954, a man is dead and the life of another is at stake. A 'guilty' verdict seems a foregone conclusion, but one member of the jury has...

One way of describing Educating Rita would be to say that it is about the meaning of education. Another would be to say that it is about the meaning of life. A third, that it is a cross between Pygmalion and Lucky Jim. A fourth, that it is simply a marvellous play, painfully funny and passionately serious; a hilarious social...

Tennessee Williams's mordantly funny and deeply troubled meditation on the desperate dismay of ageing and the iniquities of racial bigotry. INDEPENDENT It's a wonderfully weird play, starting claustrophobic, losing intensity as it introduces the locals… then regrouping for a devastating second half… This unruly, unforgettable play takes its unpredictable course to something that makes you feel afresh our powerlessness against...

A revised Student Edition of Lorraine Hansberry's iconic 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun - the first play produced on Broadway to be written by a Black woman. Alongside the play text itself, this edition contains commentary and notes by Isaiah Wooden, which consider the play's: • Socio-historical context, including the Jim Crow laws and racial segregation in the...

This new Student Edition, featuring the classic John Willett translation of the play, includes an introduction by Katherine Hollander, which explores the following: Contexts: Thirty Years War (1618-1648); World War II and exile; sources; influential figures such as Brecht, Margarete Steffin, Helene Weigel, and Karin Michaelis. Themes: War, nature, capitalism. Dramatic devices: Epic theatre. Production history and critical reception. Academic...

The Cherry Orchard is a tragi-comedy by Anton Chekhov, and perhaps his most popular play. The Gayev family is torn by powerful forces deeply rooted in history and the society in which they live. Their estate is hopelessly in debt, and they are urged to cut down their beautiful cherry orchard to sell the land for holiday cottages. They struggle...

This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Daniel Ciba, which examines the play in terms of realism or experimentalism, and considers it through the lens of Queer Identity. The introduction includes discussions of recent revivals and adaptations of the play across the world. The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' first major popular success and an autobiographical play about his mother...

'There's more than one way to skin a theatrical cat; and McDonagh's chosen weapons are laughter and gore... Pushing theatre to its limits, McDonagh is making a serious point... a work as subversive as those Synge and O'Casey plays that sparked Dublin riots in the last century' Guardian 'A brave satire... Swiftianly savage and parodic... with explicit brutal action and...

A masterpiece of Russian drama, now in a student edition. Along with Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya is credited as one of Chekhov's masterpieces and a significant precursor of modern drama. Set on a country estate in late nineteenth century Russia, Uncle Vanya is in part a study of the enervation of Russian middle-class provincial life. The...

A Student Edition of Euripides' play, which accessibly unpacks Greek tragedy in its social context, issues of translation and adaptation, and performance approaches over the centuries. Euripides' play Medea was first produced in 431BC and continues to be produced globally to this day. Its power and timeless appeal for audiences rests in its portrait of a woman driven to murder...

Brecht projects an ancient Chinese story onto a realistic setting in Soviet Georgia. In a theme that echoes the Judgment of Solomon, two women argue over the possession of a child. Thanks to the unruly judge, Azdak (one of Brecht's most vivid creations), natural justice is done and the peasant Grusha keeps the child she loves, even though she is...

A Memory of Water was Stephenson's first play, opening in London in 1996, and was awarded the prestigious Olivier Award for Best Comedy. Three sisters meet on the eve of their mother's funeral; as the conflicts of the past converge, everyday lies and tensions reveal the particular patterns and strains of family relationships. This Student Edition features the full text...

A Taste of Honey, Shelagh Delaney's 1958 play, was written when she was only 19 years old. It brought the lives and struggles of northern, working-class people onto the stage. Initially dividing the critics—some of whom regarded it as 'immature'—it went on to become one of the most defining plays of the twentieth century. This Student Edition contains a commentary...

The law is nature. The law is only a word for what has a right to happen. When the law is wrong it's because it's unnatural, but in this case it is natural and a river will drown you if you buck it now. Let her go. And bless her. Set among Italian-Americans on the Brooklyn waterfront, A View from...

Brecht's series of twenty-four interconnected playlets describe events which took place in ordinary German households in the 1930s. They dramatise with clinical precision the suspicion and anxiety experienced by ordinary people, particularly Jewish citizens, as the power of Hitler grew. Written in exile in Denmark and first staged in 1938, it was inspired in part by his recent trip to...

Too frightened of scandal to become involved with a brilliant writer, Hedda Gabler opts instead for a conventional but loveless marriage. But, when her first love returns with a masterpiece that might threaten her husband's career, Hedda decides to take drastic and fatal action. Universally condemned in 1890 when it was written, Hedda Gabler has subsequently become one of Ibsen's...

A student edition of this challenging and popular tragedy with notes and commentary. The most controversial of the Greek tragedians, Euripides is also the most modern in his sympathies, a dramatist who handles the complex emotions of his characters with extraordinary depth and insight. Wronged and discarded by her husband, Medea gradually reveals her revenge in its increasing horror, while...

An eye for an eye. It’s very simple. You choose your homeland like a hyena picking and choosing where he steals his next meal from. Scavenger. Yes, you grovel to the feet of Mengistu and when his people spit at you and kick you from the bowl, you scuttle across the border. Scavenger. As a violent civil war rages back...

This Student Edition of Brecht's classic satire on the rise of Hitler features an extensive introduction and commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes, characters, style and language as well as questions for further study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the perfect edition for students of theatre and literature. Described...

One of Bertolt Brecht's best-loved and most performed plays, The Threepenny Opera was first staged in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin (now the home of the Berliner Ensemble). Based on the eighteenth-century The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, the play is a satire on the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic, but set in a mock-Victorian Soho. With...

Through a series of arresting vignettes and a collection of nameless characters, Alice Birch examines the language, behaviour and forces that shape women in the 21st century. The play asks what is stopping us from doing something truly radical to change them? Written in response to the provocation that well-behaved women seldom make history, the play is an assault on...

A Student Edition of Lucy Prebble's acclaimed 2012 play, which looks at two people on a clinical drugs trial and investigates questions around sanity, neurology, physical attraction and the possibilities of medicine. The edition includes commentary and notes by Paulette Marty, which look at the context around depression and anti-depressant medication. It delves into major questions posed by the play,...

There's no decent way to say an indecent thing An industrial port of a war-torn city. Women survivors wait to be shipped abroad. Officials come and go. A grandmother, once queen, watches as her remaining family are taken from her one by one. The city burns around them. First performed in 415 BC, the play focuses on the human cost...

Alongside Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park, Beneatha's Place imagines a life for Lorraine Hansberry's characters from A Raisin in the Sun beyond the confines of her play. Beneatha moves from 1950s America to Lagos with her Nigerian husband and then, in the second act, set in contemporary America, has become a college Dean of Social Sciences. Through this journey, Beneatha’s Place...

‘A spicy work of biographical conjecture ... It's also a rousing reminder of the countless creative women who have been written out of history or have had to fight relentlessly to make themselves heard.’ EVENING STANDARD ‘The great virtue of Lloyd Malcolm’s speculative history lies in its passion and anger: it ends with a blazing address to the audience that...

'The quality that makes Fo uniquely powerful [is] the ability to wring wild laughter out of insidious corruption' Guardian 'Simon Nye's witty translation updates and relocates the play suitably close to contemporary England. Fo is that rare thing, a far-left playwright with a popular, comic touch. And his stinging attack upon the black arts of government cover-up, manipulation and mendacity...

In 1934, the people of Inishmaan learn that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighbouring island to film his documentary Man of Aran. No one is more excited than Billy, an unloved and crippled boy whose chief occupation has been gazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is...

‘Much like Mr. Miller, Quentin is a witness to alarming public and personal catastrophes: the stock market crash, the Holocaust, the McCarthy witchhunts and the self-destruction of a show business idol to whom he is married.’ NEW YORK TIMES Haunted by past romantic failures, Quentin, a New York City Jewish intellectual, retreats into his mind as he debates marrying for...

It's Cabaret, we've got our heads down and we're dancing and drinking as fast as we can. The enemy is on its way, but this time it doesn't have guns and gas; it has storms and earthquakes, fire and brimstone... You were the glimmer. At the end of the tunnel. And you went out. Earthquakes in London is a fast...

Iphigenia in Splott is a one-woman play, first seen in 2015, loosely adapted from the ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis. The title character, Iphigenia (or "Effie"), finds escape from the harsh reality of her life in drink, drugs, and one-night stands. The ancient Greek play is re-told against the backdrop of a crumbling welfare state and reveals...

This Student Edition of Brecht's classic dramatisation of the conflict between free enquiry and official ideology features an extensive introduction and commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes, characters, style, and language. Additionally, there are questions for further study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the perfect edition for students of...

Since it was first performed in Athens in the 420s BC, Oedipus the King has been widely regarded as Sophocles' greatest tragedy and one of the foundation stones of western drama. Taken as a model by Aristotle in his Poetics, it became a yardstick for future generations. Since the play's rediscovery in the Renaissance, audiences—including Sigmund Freud—have found new interpretations...

Written in 1836, Woyzeck is often considered to be the first truly modern play. The story of a soldier driven mad by inhuman military discipline and acute social deprivation is told in splintered dialogue and jagged episodes, which are as shocking and telling today as they were when first performed, almost a century after the author's death, in Munich 1913....

Yerma (meaning 'Barren') is one of three tragic plays about peasants and rural life that make up Lorca's 'rural trilogy'. It is possibly Lorca's harshest play following a woman's Herculean struggle against the curse of infertility. The woman's barrenness becomes a metaphor for her marriage in a traditional society that denies women sexual or social equality. Her desperate desire for...

Jew is only the name we give to that stranger. Each man has his Jew; it is the other. And the Jews have their Jews. Arthur Miller’s largely forgotten masterpiece, Incident at Vichy, is a prescient examination of the evil that exists in us all. It was inspired by a real-life incident in France in which a Gentile gave a...

Told against the backdrop of Dublin's burgeoning gay rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s and the contemporary LGBTQ+ community of today, Once Before I Go explores the bonds of Irish queer lives across three decades in Dublin, London and Paris. This Student Edition includes commentary and notes by Fintan Walsh, Birkbeck, University of London, UK, which look at the...

Everything human beings do finishes up bad in the end. Everything good human beings ever make is built on something monstrous. Nothing lasts. We certainly won't . . . William Carlisle has the world at his feet, but its weight on his shoulders. He is intelligent, articulate and f*ed. In the library of a grammar school, William and his fellow...

Six people arrive in a theatre during rehearsals for a play. But they are not ordinary people. They are the characters of a play that has not yet been written. Trapped inside a traumatic event from which they long to escape, they desperately need a writer to complete their story and release them. Intrigued by their situation, the director invites...

This revised edition of the play is published alongside commentary and notes by Christopher Collins, Assistant Professor of Drama at the University of Nottingham, UK. It includes information for today's students on the play's context, themes, dramatic devices, production history, critical reception, and academic debate. Additionally, it offers ideas for further study and includes interviews with practitioners involved in major...

Anthony Neilson's 2004 play is half a lark, half deadly serious TIME OUT A profane, madcap, Alice-in-Wonderland trip morphs into something much more profound in Anthony Neilson’s weirdly compelling 2004 study of mental instability EVENING STANDARD Lisa Jones is on a journey. It's a colourful and exciting off-kilter trip in search of one lost hour that has tipped the balance...

A Student Edition of Wedekind's classic 1891 expressionist play about adolescent sexuality. Wedekind's notorious play Spring Awakening influenced a whole trend of modern drama and remains relevant to today's society, exploring the oppression and rebellion of adolescents among draconian parents and morals. This seminal work looks at the conflict between repressive adulthood and teenage sexual longings in a provincial German...

You'd be hard put to find a better script to work with than this translation by Michael Frayn. It sticks rigorously to the inner thrust of the play while giving it a fresh, crisp clarity that makes it not just accessible but compelling to watch. The underlying tragedy is intact. It is made more moving, not less, by the way...

An Oak Tree is a bold, absurdist, comic play for two actors - one of them different at each performance - about loss, suggestion and the power of the mind. This Student Edition is published with a commentary and notes by Seda Ilter, which explore Tim Crouch's notion of audience and their role in theatre; possibilities of transformation and the...

It's 1896 in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Jekesai, a young Shona girl, escapes a forced arranged marriage by converting to Christianity and becoming a protégé to an African Evangelical. As anti-colonial sentiments spread throughout the native population, Jekesai is forced to choose between her family's traditions and her newfound faith. This Student Edition of Danai Gurira's 2012 play The...

This Student Edition is ideal for any teacher coming to Francis Turnly's 2018 play for the first time, or for those who already have some familiarity with it. Spanning 1979 to 2003, The Great Wave looks at the mysterious disappearance of a Japanese schoolgirl and her mother and sister’s tireless search to find her again. The girl, Hanako, is discovered...