Here is a selection of our new plays. More can be found upstairs on the New Plays Stand:
Nick Payne’s Constellations is a play about free will and friendship; it’s about quantum multiverse theory, love and honey. Constellations premiered at the Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in January 2012.
His first dramatic work since 2007, Haunted Child marks the return to the stage of multi-award winning playwright and screenwriter Joe Penhall. With his trademark dark humour and sly observation, he poignantly explores the gulf between childhood and adulthood and asks disturbing questions about the lure of spiritual release in increasingly difficult times.
Jumpy is April de Angelis’ new play about parental anxieties and life after fifty. A frank and funny family drama, it centres on Hilary, once a protester at Greenham Common – now her protests focus on persuading her teenage daughter to go out fully clothed!
Morna works as a cleaner in Edinburgh; her elder brother, Athol, lives near Glasgow airport with his wife. They have differing memories of their upbringing and their parents and definite opinions about each other. But these are left unsaid because Morna and Athol haven’t spoken a word to each other in fourteen years . . .When Morna’s son Joshua travels to see his uncle, he sets off a remarkable and life-changing series of events. A Slow Air by David Harrower premiered at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, in April 2011, and transferred to the Traverse Theatre as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Mrs Alving is preparing for the opening of an orphanage, built in memory of her late husband. Her beloved artist son Oswald has returned from Paris to honour the occasion. But his long awaited homecoming rapidly descends into tragedy as his presence triggers the exposure of a dark story of hypocrisy and betrayed love. This is a new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts by Frank McGuinness.
Edna O’Brien’s wonderful, wild and moving novel shocked the nation on its publication in 1960. Adapted for the stage by the author, The Country Girls, the play, is a highly theatrical and free-flowing telling of this classic coming of age story.
Gethin is 23, just finished a film course and reckons he’s the next Scorsese. His Mum is on at him to do her friend’s wedding video and before they get divorced. But Gethin is interested in a much more daring project one that will test his friendships, enrage his sister, question his idealism and turn his life and that of his family upside down. Perve is an irreverent and unsettling play from a rising new voice in theatre, Stacey Gregg, that interrogates paranoia, ambiguity and innocence in our highly sexualised world. It premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 2011.
Travelling Light is Nicholas Wright’s new play about the Eastern European immigrants who became the major players in Hollywood. Forty years on Motl, now a famous film director, looks back on his early life and confronts the cost of fulfilling his dreams - now showing at the National Theatre.
The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov is a labour of love by translator Laurence Senelick. For the first time all Chekhov’s plays are available in one edition, including work never previously translated such as the newly discovered farce The Power of Hypnotism, and first versions of several of his plays.
Family life is under the microscope in Tom Wells’ The Kitchen Sink, a gentle and amusing play about ‘big dreams and small changes.’
The RSC premiered David Edgar’s new historical drama, Written on the Heart, in 2011 to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. It tells the story of the translation of God’s word into English with dramatically different consequences for those involved.
Herding Cats is Lucinda Coxon’s chillingly funny play about the demands of twenty-first century living – ‘a cool gaze on the disconnectedness of contemporary life.’
Alexi Kaye Campbell’s The Pride alternates between 1958 and 2008 and looks at ‘changing attitudes to sexuality…intimacy, identity and the courage it takes to be who you really are.’
Paragon Springs(6M, 4W)by Steven Dietz is based on Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. Set in 1926 in America’s heartland this re-imagining examines capitalism and greed in small town America with passion, truth and humour.
Mike Bartlett’s topical play, 13, asks if there is an alternative to free market capitalism and military interventionism. With a large cast and set in a ‘dark and magical landscape, it depicts a London both familiar and strange, a London staring into the void.’ A christ-like figure, John, arrives on the scene and questions the prevailing worship of money, materialism and success.
The Kneehigh Anthology: Volume 1 contains four plays by Kneehigh, one of the UK’s most exciting theatre companies – Tristan & Yseult, The Bacchae, The Wooden Frock and The Red Shoes. Their shows have been described as ‘distinctively different’ and ‘exquisitely dark, sexy and mischievous.’
In truth and reconciliation Debbie Tucker Green takes us from Rwanda to Bosnia, from Zimbabwe to Northern Ireland in a ’kaleidoscope of suffering’. What emerges is that ‘women, as well as being victims of violence, are tireless in pursuit of truth.’
Lovesong is ‘the story of one couple, told from two points in their lives – as young lovers in their 20s and as wordly companions looking back on their lives.’ Written by talented and popular playwright, Abi Morgan, she creates a haunting and beautiful portrait of a relationship.
We Are Three Sisters examines the lives of the three Bronte sisters – Anne, Charlotte and Emily. Poet and playwright, Blake Morrison, draws parallels between themes in their lives and those of Chekhov’s Three Sisters – work, marriage, the role of women, the dangers of addiction and the rival claims of city and country.
Mirror Teeth is Nick Gill’s brutally hilarious play about ‘prejudice, arms dealing, and what it means to be English.’ When eighteen year old Jenny brings home her boyfriend, the peace in the Jones household is disrupted with extreme consequences!
My Best Friend by Tamsin Oglesby takes an hilarious look at childhood friendships. Bee, Em and Chris have been best friends for thirty years – on holiday in rural France they joke and reminisce about the past, but are some wounds just too deep to heal..?
The Man Who Fell Out of Bed tells the story of a man who has no idea who he is. Paul Sellar’s thriller explores the horror of Britain’s detention centres and presents a ‘nightmarishly sinister vision of the world to come…’
Cool Hand Luke, currently playing at the Aldwych, is Emma Reeves’s stage adaptation of Donn Pearce’s acclaimed novel about jailbird and war veteran Luke Jackson. ‘The hard hitting story of a true original…he’ll play it real cool in the face of brutality. He’ll always get up after a beating. He’ll eat fifty eggs in an hour, to win a bet. A man that won’t conform no matter what it costs.’
The Veil is Conor McPherson’s new play at the National. Set in rural Ireland in 1822, it tells the story of 17 year old Hannah, who is haunted by strange voices. In an attempt to pay off the family debts, she is to be married off to an English marquis. Her guardian, Reverend Berkeley, proposes a seance to make contact with the spirit world with disastrous consequences.
No Naughty Bits is inspired by the contoversy surrounding Monty Python’s first broadcast in the USA in 1975, when major cuts were made to all the naughty bits! Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam flew to New York to find themselves embroiled in a landmark court case ‘concerning freedom of expression and the protection of artistic integrity.’ Steve Thompson’s hilarious new play investigates the nature of comedy, the operation of censorship and the complex Anglo-American relationship.
Middletown - talented American playwright, Will Eno, examines life in small town America – ‘a playful, poignant portrait of a town with two lives, one ordinary and visible, the other epic and mysterious’.
The Acid Test is a new comedy by winner of the Evening Standard and Critic’s Circle Most Promising Playwright award, Anya Reiss. An examination of unruly, reckless family life, it asks if age equals maturity?
Beachy Head and 2401 Objects are two pieces of devised theatre by visceral new theatre company ‘Analogue’. They specialise in a multidisciplinary approach to theatre ‘fusing high tech with low tech, bringing together contemporary technologies with ancient theatrical traditions.’
Bang bang bang is Stella Feehily’s latest play to be produced by Out of Joint. Set in the Republic of Congo, it goes behind the public face of charities, journalists and NGO’s using information drawn directly from interviews with aid workers, doctors, human rights organisers, government advisers, journalists and photographers.
Rattigan’s Nijinsky by Nicholas Wright is based on a screenplay by Terence Rattigan about the relationship between Nijinsky and Diaghilev, which was never produced. Wright re-imagines the the events and investigates the reasons why.
House of Games is based on David Mamet’s screenplay – a fast paced thriller set in the seedy underworld of a poker club. Psychotherapist, Margaret Ford, finds herself seduced by the charismatic hustler, Mike, as she attempts to help one of her patients settle his gambling debts. This stage version is by Richard Bean.
