Plays from the United Kingdom

New & Featured

TheatreBooks stocks plays in English from around the world and, of course, all plays published in Canada. We stock and sell plays from Samuel French Ltd., Dramatists Play Service and Dramatic Publishing Co., and the leading play publishers in Great Britain. We carry books on all aspects of theatre production, as well as opera and dance. If you don't find the title or playwright you are looking for, please stop by the store and ask, or contact us at action@theatrebooks.com, by phone at 416.922.7175, toll-free at 1.800.361.3414 or by fax at 416.922.0739.

• New & Featured Plays from the UK
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Plays are also listed by playwright, by last name.

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In Basildon
David Eldridge
An epid family drama exploring inheritance and the myth of place. In Basildon was first presented at the Royal Court Theatre in February 2012. Softcover, $21.99.

Hurts Given and Received / Slowly
Howard Barker
Hurts: An epic adventure of the creative life, threaded with dark comedy and a host of characters whose all too human weaknesses, dreams and desires we readily recognize. Slowly: As barbarians approach the palace of a decaying culture, four princesses debate their fate. Decorum demands suicide, but, for some, the possibility of life is all too compelling.

Little Eagles
Rona Munro
Rona Munro's gripping play illuminates the life and work of a brilliant engineer who struggled to meet the military demands of his ruthless political masters, whilst devoting as much time as possible to his real passion, exploring outer space. Softcover, 124 pp. $24.95.

Ecstasy
Mike Leigh
1979. The winter of discontent is over and Margaret Thatcher's regime is about to transform the country. Old friends come together in a Kilburn bedsit for a drunken celebration of their mutual affection. Softcover, 112 pp. $24.95.

Enda Walsh Plays: One
Enda Walsh
Bursting onto the theatre scene in 1996 with Disco Pigs, Enda Walsh has delivered a sustained fusillade of strikingly original plays ever since. This volume collects his first eight plays, including: The Ginger Ale Boy, Disco Pigs, misterman, bedbound, How These Desperate Men Talk, The Small Things, Lynndie's Gotta Gun, and Chatroom. Softcover, 242 pp. $37.95.

Arnold Wesker Plays: 1
Arnold Wesker
Chicken Soup with Barley - Roots - I'm Talking About Jerusalem
Softcover, 233 pp. $34.00.

The Meaning of Waiting
Victoria Brittain
Eight women tell their stories usuing their own words, stories of the unseen fallout of the war on terror in Britain. Softcover, 61 pp. $21.50.

Juliet and Her Romeo
Tom Morris & Sean O'Connor
In this adapation of Shakespeare's tragedy, Juliet and Her Romeo tells the story of a flourishing love affair in one generation, crushed by the financial and political concerns of another. Softcover, 79 pp. $21.50.

Or You Could Kiss Me
Neil Bartlett & Handspring Puppet Company
In the winter of 2036, two old men search for a way to say goodbye after a lifetime spent together. In the perfect summer of 1971, their handsome younger selves search for the courage to fall in love. And poised halfway between these two stories, their real-life counterparts bear witness to both the beginning and the ending of an incredible journey. Softcover, 89 pp. $21.50.

Mike Bartlett Plays:1
Mike Bartlett
Plays in collection: Not Talking, My Child, Artefacts, Contractions, Cock. Softcover, 341 pp. $29.00.

The Railway Children
Mike Kenny & E. Nesbit
Mike Kenny's stage adaptation of E. Nesbit's much-loved children's classic. A perfect play for schools, youth theatres, and drama groups as well as community and professional companies. It captures the imagination and lifts the spirit. 5M 5F. Softcover, 80 pp. $22.95.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Howard Brenton & Robert Tressell
Rober Tresell's pre-First World War account of the working lives of a group of housepainters and decorators is a literary classic. Howard Brenton's vivd stage adaptation lays bare the many social injustices perpetrated on these men whilst capturing their individual characters with touching truth to life. 10M 2F. Softcover, 96 pp. $22.95.

If I Were You
Alan Ayckbourn
A classic body-swapping comedy, but this time it's an upper middle class husband and wife who switch bodies with one another, and get to see their failing marriage and estranged kids from a different perspective. 3M 2F. Softcover, 92 pp. $11.99.

Happy Now?
Linda Coxon
A young woman struggles to balance family life, fidelity, and a testing job in this painfully truthful, darkly comic take on contemporary life. 4M 3F. Softcover, 70 pp. $11.99.

Pieces
John Hywel
After their parents' deaths twins Jack and Beatrice are left in the care of their godmother Sophie. In their remote rural home their collective grieg triggers a tragic attempt to remember, repair and recreate the past. 1M 3F. Softcover, 76 pp. $11.99.

My Wonderful Day
Alan Ayckbourn
The story of a philandering TV personality, his vengeful wife, his ditzy mistress and others as witnessed by the nine year old daughter of their home cleaner, as she prepares an essay for school titled "My Wonderful Day". 2M 4F. Softcover, 69 pp. $11.99.

Blasted
Sarah Kane
Premiering in 1995, Sarah Kane's first play took Britain by storm. The poetic depths of violence and horror told with unparalleled clarity and imagination were unlike anything on stage before. Her bold, terrifying, beautiful plays remain at the vanguard of contemporary playwriting, and Blasted is no exception. 2M 1F. Softcover, 120 pp. $18.00.

The Author
Tim Crouch
In this play the story unfolds for you. With you. Of you. It is the story of another play; a violent, shocking and abusive play written by a playwright called Tim Crouch. It charts the effect that play had on the two actors who acted in it, the playwright who wrote it and an audience member who watched it. 2M 2F. Softcover, 60 pp. $22.95.

The Last Witch
Rona Munro
Dornoch, northern Scotland, 1727. In the claustrophobic heat of summer, a woman's apparent ability to manipulate the power of land and sea stirs suspicion. Janet Horne can cure beasts, call the wind and charm fish out of the sea. Or can she? Her refusal to deny the charge of witchcraft puts her in dangerous opposition to the new sheriff. Her defiance threatens not only her own life but that of her daughter. 5m, 3f. Softcover, 87 pp. $22.95.

Kwame Kwei-Armah: Plays 1
Kwame Kwei-Armah
Kwame Kwei Armah's astonishing, and dramatic writings about the black experience in Britain, and the human experience in general, are fearless and extraordinary. Collected here are the plays Elmina's Kitchen, Fix Up, Statement of Regret, and Let There Be Love. Softcover, 335 pp. $29.00.

Punk Rock
Simon Stephens
Young, disillusioned, privileged, and deeply troubled, the sixth formers of a fee-paying grammar school in Stockport struggle to find their way through a world they neither understand nor fully trust. Punk Rock is an aggressive, startling look at the dislocation of youth. Softcover, 102 pp. $18.00.

Katrina
Jonathan Holmes
The flooding of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the following abandonment of the non-white, non-wealthy inhabitants by the government, has become rightuflly infamous. In Katrina, Jonathan Holmes uses survivor testimonies and traditional New Orleans performance styles to tell the sotry of the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. Softcover, 47 pp. $18.00.

Parlour Song
Jez Butterworth
Ned is living a perfectly normal middle-class existence -- but why hasn't he slept a wink in six months? Why is he so terrified of his attractive wife Joy? And why is it every time he leaves on business, something else goes missing from his home? Parlour Song is a blackly hilarious exploration of deceit, paranoia and murderous desire, as the spirit fo the Blues lands in leafy suburbia. 2m, 1w. Softcover, 63 pp. $22.95.

It Felt Empty ... When the Heart Went at First But it is Alright Now
Lucy Kirkwood
This is a luminous journey exploring the life of Dijana Polancec: professional romantic, eternal optimist and accidental prostitute. 2w. Softcover, 53 pp. $22.95.

Love the Sinner
Drew Pautz
Michael, a married man running a small business, accompanies a squabbling delegation of bishops to Africa as a lay volunteer. There, an unsettling encounter with a hotel porter leads to a series of agonising moral dilemmas that compromise his work, his marriage -- and his faith. 10m, 2w. Softcover, 116 pp. $22.95.

The Methuen Drama Book of Royal Court Plays 2000-2010
Edited by Ruth Little
This anthology presents five landmark plays from the new millennium produced by the Royal Court Theatre, London. Spanning a decade of cataclysmic events, these ground-breaking plays provide a powerful and urgent exploration of some of the most important issues of our time and represent a high-water mark in contemporary British playwriting. Included are 9 by David Eldridge, Fallout by Roy Williams, Motortown by Simon Stephens, and My Child by Mike Bartlett. Softcover, 452 pp. $34.00.

The Methuen Drama Book of Twenty-First Century British Plays
Aleks Sierz
This anthology brings together five of the best new British plays from the first decade of the twenty-first century. Included are Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall, Elmina's Kitchen by Kwame Kwei-Armah, Realism by Anthony Neilson, Gone Too Far by Bola Agbaje, and Pornography by Simon Stephens. A perfect reminder of the relevance, vitality and innovation of British theatre, this book represents some of the most exciting plays to emerge in recent years. Softcover, 442 pp. $29.00.

Little Gem
Elaine Murphy
Amber has fierce bad indigestion and the sambucas aren't getting rid of it. Lorraine attacks a customer and her boss wants her to see a psychiatrist. Kay's got an itch 'down there' that Gem can't scratch. And if all that wasn't bad enough, Little Gem makes his presence felt and -- well -- life is never the same again. 3w. Softcover, 49 pp. $22.95.

Over There
Mark Ravenhill
When Franz's mother escaped to the West with one of her identical twin boys, she left the other behind. Now, twenty-five years later, Karl crosses the border in search of his other half. As history takes an unexpected turn, the brothers must struggle to reconnect. 2m. Softcover, 49 pp. $18.00.

Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off
Liz Lochhead
Here is the familiar tale of the enmity between Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots, retold with ferocious iconoclasm and boundless wit by Scotland's most popular playwright. 4m, 4w. Softcover, 78 pp. $22.95.

The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant
Tom Murphy
An epic family drama, shot through with dark humour, The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant tells the tragic story of a family disintegrating, having lost its moral values. 11m, 7w. Softcover, 85 pp. $20.00.

Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett
Subtitled 'a tragicomedy in two acts', and famously described by the Irish critic Vivien Mercier as a play in which 'nothing happens, twice,' En attendant Godot was first performed at the Theatre de Babylone in Paris in 1953. It was translated into English by Samuel Beckett, and opened as Waiting for Godot at the Arts Theatre in London in 1955. Softcover, 91 pp. $20.00.

Vantastic and Lobster
Russell Barr
Two plays by Russell Barr. Vantastic: 3m, 2w; Lobster: 2m, 1w. Softcover, 123 pp. $22.95.

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Simon Stephens Plays: 2
Simon Stephens
Includes: One Minute, Country Music, Motortown, Pornography, Sea Wall. Softcover, 297 pp. $29.00.

Blood and Ice
Liz Lochead
Summer 1816. A house party on the shores of Lake Geneva. Eighteen-year-old Mary and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, along with Mary's half-sister Claire and the infamous Lord Byron, take part in a challenge to see who can write the most horrifying story. Mary's contribution is to become one of the most celebrated Gothic novels of all time. 2m, 3w. Softcover, 64 pp. $21.95.

Posh
Laura Wade
In an oak-panelled room in Oxford, ten young bloods with cut-glass vowels and deep pockets are meeting, intent on restoring their right to rule. Members of an elite student dining society, the boys are bunkering down for a wild night of debauchery and bloody good wine. But this isn't the last huzzah: they're planning a takeover. Welcome to the riot club. Softcover, 184 pp. $22.95.

New Welsh Drama
A collection of three exciting plays reflecting the range and quality of new work which is currently emerging on the theatre scene in Wales. Includes Safar by Afshan Malik, Gulp by Roger Williams, and My Piece of Happiness by Lewis Davies. Softcover, 336 pp. $11.95.

New Welsh Drama II
Jeff Teare
Includes Little Sister by Sian Evans, Giant Steps by Othniel Smith, and Killing Kangaroos by Roger Williams. Softcover, 416 pp. $6.95.

New Welsh Drama III
Edited by Chris Morgan
Two plays: Inside Out by Lesley Ross, and Sex and Power at the Beau Rivage by Lewis Davies. Softcover, 199 pp. $13.95.

Welcome to Thebes
Moira Buffini
Set in the present day but inspired by ancient myth, Welcome to Thebes offers a passionate exploration of an encounter between the world's richest and the world's poorest countries in the aftermath of a brutal war. Softcover, 115 pp. $20.00.

Michael Frayn Plays: 4
Includes Copenhagen, Democracy, and Afterlife. Softcover, 410 pp. $29.00.

Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett
Subtitled 'a tragicomedy in two acts', and famously described by the Irish critic Vivien Mercier as a play in which 'nothing happens, twice', En attendant Godot was first performed at the Theatre de Babylone in Paris in 1953. It was translated into English by Samuel Beckett, and opened as Waiting for Godot at the Arts Theatre in London in 1955. Softcover, 91 pp. $20.00.

Salome
Oscar Wilde
Salome, stepdaughter of King Herod, agrees to perform the mysterious and erotic Dance of the Seven Veils, but demands in return the head of the King's most famous prisoner, Iokanaan (John the Baptist). The savage power of ancient myth collides with twentieth-century decadence in Oscar Wilde's astonishing tragedy. Softcover, 38 pp. $22.95.

The Collected Shorter Plays
Samuel Beckett
This complete and definitive collection of twenty-five plays and "playlets" includes Beckett's celebrated Krapp's Last Tape, Embers, Cascando, Play, Eh Joe, Not I, and Footfalls, as well as his mimes, all his radio and television plays, his screenplay for Film, his adaptation of Robert Pinget's The Old Tune, and shorter dramatic works written later in his life, Castastrophe, What Where, Quad, and Nacht und Traume (Night and Dreams). Softcover, 318 pp. $18.50.

The Red Balloon
Albert Lamorisse, adapted by Anthony Clark
Anthony Clark's award-winning adaptation of Albert Lamorisse's fifties French film, The Red Balloon, follows the adventures of a lonely Parisian boy and a stray balloon which befriends him. It enjoyed a successful run at the Royal National Theatre in 1996. Softcover, 111 pp. $23.00.

Orwell: A Celebration|
Dominic Cavendish
This acclaimed monologue adaptation of George Orwell's Coming Up For Air forms the first half of this unprecedented theatrical homage to Orwell created to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the novel and the 60th anniversary of his masterwork Nineteen Eighty-Four. This volume also includes two of Orwell's best loved essays -- "Shooting an Elephant" and "A Hanging" -- in a theatrical context. Softcover, 80 pp. $22.99.

Burnt by the Sun
Peter Flannery
General Kotov, decorated hero of the Russian Revolution, is spending an idyllic summer in the country with his beloved young wife and family. But on one glorious sunny morning in 1936, his wife's former lover returns from a long and unexplained absence. Amidst a tangle of sexual jealousy, retribution and remorseless political backstabbing, Kotov feels the full, horrifying reach of Stalin's rule. Softcover, 92 pp. $22.95.

Strandline
Abbie Spallen
Following the death of her husband, Mairin, an artist and an outsider living in a small coastal village in Northern Ireland, gathers three local women to her house. Each of the women has a reason for being there and a bloody good reason not to be. These women have secrets. This community has secrets. And, as the evening passes, Mairin learns more than she bargained for about the man she loved. f-5. Softcover, 98 pp. $22.00.

Tales of Ballycumber
Sebastian Barry
In search of advice, young Evans Stafford calls at the home of friend and strong-minded traditionalist Nicholas Farquhar. The following day, as Farquhar learns the devastating consequences of this meeting, he discovers that his memories and words are governed by a buried history, a force far greater than himself. m2, f3. Softcover, 50 pp. $22.00.

Another Door Closed
Peter Gill
Two elderly sisters get an unexpected visit from a younger man. It appears, many years ago, the sisters' mother had been very kind to him ... m1, f2. Softcover, 63 pp. $22.00.

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Last modified July 18, 2012.
Please note that all prices are in Canadian dollars. All prices are subject to change without notice.