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Plays from the United Kingdom
Plays by playwright: B
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.
Plays
are also listed by playwright, by last name.
A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M /
N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W /
X / Y / Z
If you are unsure of the author's name, please to to our search
engine and enter the title of the work you are interested in.
 Waste
Harley Granville Barker
Radical politician Henry Trebell sees his personal and political lives collide as a casual affair with a married woman threatens his power and passionate ideals. Her insistence on a woman's right to choose brings private scandal into the public spotlight. Softcover, 112 pp. $16.50.
 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.
Howard Barker: Plays Four
Howard Barker
Howard Barker is one of the most significant and controversial dramatists of his time. His plays challenge, unsettle and expose. This anthology includes such titles as I Saw Myself, The Dying of Today, Found in the Ground, and, The Road, the House, the Road. Softcover, 270 pp. $35.50.
 The Ecstatic Bible
Howard Barker
Parables without morality and a testament to the millenium, The Ecstatic Bible sweeps through a landscape shaped by the European political and social turmoil of the twentieth century. A series of interlocking narratives charts a strange world inhabited by amoral but passionate characters. Provocative imagery and poetic language are suffused with a rich, dark humour. Hardcover, 332 pp. $49.95.
 The Fence In Its Thousandth Year
Howard Barker
A state attempts to define its character by erecting a fence against outsiders, but it is violated both by strangers and by the transgressive appetite of its ruling class. In the fever of its decadence, the kingdom is revealed to have at its core a scandal which is itself the consequence of the breaking of sacred boundaries. Photo, the sightless protagonist of this latest work, is the most sophisticated of adolescents, and his blindness is abolished by his acute sensibility. But there is one darkness in his life that cannot be revealed... Softcover, 72 pp. $19.95.
 The Seduction of Almighty God
Howard Barker
Set at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the English Reformation, The Seduction of Almighty God describes the spiritual ascendancy of an adolescent priest and the apalling discovery that he possesses the power of life and death over others, both religious and secular. Victimised by his brethren and eventually murdered by his female followers, the youth Loftus argues himself into the belief that God, weary of His own impotence, has developed His powers upon him... Softcover, 64 pp. $22.95.
 Howard Barker: Plays One
Victory - The Europeans - The Possibilities - Scenes
From an Execution
Howard Barker
Exploring the tragic form defined by Barker as Theatre of Catastrophe,
three of the plays speculate on human behavior in moments of historical
crisis. The plays in this collection are among his best-known works,
and their energy, poetic language and imagination have fixed them firmly
in the international repertoire. Softcover, 284 pp. $31.99.
Howard Barker: Plays Two
The Castle - Gertrude - The Cry - Animals
in Paradise - 13 Objects
Howard Barker
The Castle is set at the end of the Crusades and describes the clashes
that occur when returning soldiers bring home with them as a prisoner
an Arab architect. Gertrude - The Cry, is a fascinating re-writing
of the Hamlet story, focusing on the ill-fated Queen of Denmark. Animals in Paradise was commissioned by the Swedish and Danish governments
to
celebrate their connection by bridge. Barker's unexpected treatment
of the theme provoked unrest on its first showing. 13 Objects movingly
reveals the investment we make in inanimate things, their power to
unsettle us, and how their talismanic qualities license new ways
of
seeing the
world. Softcover, 326 pp. $31.99.
 Dead Hands
Howard Barker
Eff arrives too late to witness the death of his father. He becomes preoccupied
with the idea of seducing the dead man's mistress, but Eff's ecstasy is accompanied
and then undermined by a growing suspicion that he is being manipulated from
beyond the grave. Is the woman genuinely drawn to Eff, or is she a sinister
legacy? In Dead Hands, Barker explores the idea that death - instead of oppressing
the spirit, produces a surge of passion for existence that is exaggerated,
bordering on grotesque. A disturbing analysis of death and desire. Softcover,
72 pp. $23.95.
 The Routledge Anthology of Renaissance Drama
Simon Barker and Hilary Hinds
Ten non-Shakespearean Renaissance plays and a masque have been brought together for
the first time in what is a major text for students of English drama of the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Each play is prefaced by an introductory
headnote discussing the thematic focus of the play and its textual history, and is
cross-referenced to other plays of the period that relate thematically and generically.
Softcover, 457 pp. $41.95.
 The 39 Steps
Patrick Barlow
The 39 Steps, adapted from novel by John Buchan (adapted from the Alfred Hitchcock film), is Broadway's longest running comedy! A spy story told with the zaniness of Monty Python, The 39 Steps is packed with non-stop laughs, over 150 characters (to be played by a cast of 4!), an on-stage plane crash, handcuffs, missing fingers, and, of course, some good old-fashioned romance. Softcover, 110 pp. $12.99.
 Vantastic and Lobster
Russell Barr
Two plays by Russell Barr. Vantastic: 3m, 2w; Lobster: 2m, 1w. Softcover, 123 pp. $22.95.
 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.
Mike Bartlett Plays:1
Mike Bartlett
Plays in collection: Not Talking, My Child, Artefacts, Contractions, Cock. Softcover, 341 pp. $29.00.
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.
 England People Very Nice
Richard Bean
A riotous journey through four waves of immigration from the 17th century to today, as the French Huguenots, the Irish, the Jews and the Bangladeshis in turn enter the chaotic world of Bethnal Green. The emerging pattern shows that 'white flights' and anxiety over integration is anything but new. Softcover, 124 pp. $22.95.
 Philaster
Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher
Even though this tragicomic rewrite of Hamlet is notorious for its hero's emotional excesses, one should not ignore the play's potent political content. In addition to a clear and authoritative version of the play, this edition offers detailed scholarship, including a fresh assessment of the play's changing political valences across time and its presentation of deviant sexuality. Softcover, 340 pp. $25.00.
 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.
 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.
Watt
Samuel Beckett
In prose possessed of the radically stripped-down beauty and mordant wit that characterize his work, this early novel by Nobel Prize-winner Samuel Beckett recounts the grotesque and improbable adventures of a fantastically logical Irish servant and his master. Watt is a metaphysical black comedy that, at its core, is rooted in the searing vision that made Beckett one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Softcover, 214 pp. $20.50.
Krapp's Last Tape & Other Dramatic Pieces
Samuel Beckett
The stage play, Krapp's Last Tape, is a shattering drama that emerges through the monologue of a man who, on his sixty-ninth birthday, plays back the autobiographical tape he recorded on his thirty-ninth. Also included are four of Beckett's dramatic pieces, including a one-act stage play, two radio plays, and two mimes. Softcover, 87 pp. $18.95.
 Waiting for Godot/En Attendant Godot
Bilingual Edition
Samuel Beckett
Originally published as En Attendant Godot, Waiting
for Godot has been
a plural, bicultural, international work from its inception. Now it is
possible to enjoy and compare the two versions with this special bilingual
edition. Hardcover, 357 pp. $30.95.
 Endgame
and Act Without Words
Samuel Beckett
Endgame, which Beckett originally wrote in French and later translated into English, is considered by many critics to be his greatest one-act play. A pinnacle of Beckett's characteristic philosophical distillation, it presents an antagonistic scenario of the devastating and comic repetitiousness of life. Act Without Words I, first performed following the premiere of Endgame, speechlessly portrays the frustration of existence in a hostile environment. Softcover, 100 pp. $18.95.
 The Rover
New Mermaids Edition
Aphra Behn, edited by Robyn Bolam
The New Mermaids collection is a modernized and fully annotated series of classic English plays. Each volume includes the playtext, in modern spelling, edited to the highest bibligraphical and textual standards, textual notes recording substantive changes to the copytext and variant readings, glossing notes elucidating obscure words and word-play, critical, contextual and staging notes, photographs of the productions where applicable, a full introduction which provides a critical account of the play, the staging conventions of the time and recent stage history; discussed authorship, date, sources and the text; and gives guidance for further reading. Softcover, 126 pp. $18.00.
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The Habit of Art
The History Boys
The History Boys: Audio Performance
Rolling Home
The Laying on of Hands
The
Lady in the Van
Pure Gold
The Girlfriend Experience
The Grouch: A Modern version of Le Misanthrope
The Sea
Saved
Restoration
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Paul
Terry Pratchett's "Maskerade"
The Meaning of Waiting
Welcome to Thebes
Moira Buffini: Plays 1
Mammals
Black Watch
The Straits
Got to be Happy
Scaramouche Jones
Leo Butler Plays 1
Parlour Song
Nova Scotia
