PLAYS
THE LATE MIDDLE CLASSES Simon Gray England in the 1950s. Celia, desperate for distraction, fills her time with tennis and gin; Charles, a pathologist is buried in his work among the living and the dead; and their gifted son, Holly, is having his first lessons on the piano and in life. The Late Middle Classes is a darkly funny study of the conflict between emotional needs and family restraints. Its premiere production was directed by Harold Pinter with a cast including Harriet Walter, James Fleet, Nicholas Woodeson and Angela Pleasence. 1 85459 433 8
PERFECT DAYS Liz Lochhead Barbs Marshall is a Celebrity Hairdresser in Glasgow. She is successful, has her own show on local TV, a nice apartment in a trendy part of the city, but she is 39 years old and almost deafened by the ticking of her biological clock. To make matters worse, her mother is a nag, her best friend has been keeping her in the dark, and her ex-husband has a new girlfriend. Then she meets a 26-year old stranger who seems more than ready to oblige .... Premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Perfect Days is a sharp and poignant comedy about the different kinds of love - romantic love, mother love and friendship - affecting one woman as she goes about trying to get what she really, really wants. 1 85459 419 2
JANE EYRE Polly Teale Polly Teale has liberated Jane Eyre in a way that Charlotte Brontë could not ... Her most inspired idea is to fuse the mad woman in the attic with Jane's younger self ... "Seeing this show is like an amazing speed-read....." Observer "Puts the interior life of the book on stage as well as its narrative. Adaptations of this quality can't be dismissed as a poor second to reading the book." Time Out "Polly Teale's fine production (she is also responsible for the adaptation) offers a satisfyingly meaty dramatic experience" ... Daily Telegraph This adaptation of Charlotte Brontè's classic novel was first staged by Shared Experience Theatre Company following its success with Helen Edmundson's versions of Anna Karenina and The Mill On the Floss, which Polly Teale co-directed. Jane Eyre has been widely seen on tour, and in London at the Young Vic. 1 85459 329 3
JUST THE THREE OF US Simon Gray Take one closet writer of romantic fiction, her beloved local vicar, her philandering husband and a girl on the loose - add in a devotion to literature, a fast car and a captivating length of chain - and you have Simon Gray's new play, where love, lust and a smiling refusal to say no can have frightening and exhilarating consequences. Just The Three Of Us stylishly mixes the comic and the macabre to achieve a thoroughly entertaining play that is both tense and surprisingly touching. Its premiere production was directed by Peter Hall with a cast including Prunella Scales and Dinsdale Landen. Simon Gray is the author of over thirty plays and screenplays, including Butley, Otherwise Engaged, Close Of Play, Quartermaine's Terms, The Common Pursuit and The Late Middle Classes. He has also written several novels and books about the theatre, notably Unnatural Pursuit and Fat Chance. 1 85459 434 6
THE CLINK Stephen Jeffreys Elizabeth I is tottering at death's door. Conspirators are everywhere. A politically sensitive International Trade Delegation is on its way to London. Who can be trusted to entertain them? Alternative comedian Lucius Bodkin thinks he'll hit the big time - but he's reckoned without the Tudor backstabbers and the City wide boys Sharing the same anachronistic humour as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Shakespeare In Love, THE CLINK could pass itself off as a long-lost Elizabethan comedy. In fact it is a riotously funny political satire offering many sharp parallels with our own times, when art must be sponsored, but to be sponsored it must be 'safe'. Reissued a decade after its first appearance, THE CLINK was originally produced by Paines Plough at the Riverside Studio in London and on tour in Britain and Holland. Stephen Jeffreys won the Most Promising Playwright Award for VALUED FRIENDS and went on to write THE LIBERTINE for the Royal Court Theatre. 1 85459 444 3
THE JU JU GIRL Aileen Ritchie First performed by the Traverse Theatre Company, Edinburgh, THE JU JU GIRL tells of two women, connected by a blood line, a century apart, each embarking on a journey of self-discovery. 1929, Rhodesia. Catherine, the daughter of a Scottish Missionary, waits at a train station for her future husband. Together they intend to carry on the tradition of her father before her - the conversion of the 'The Dark Continent' and its people to Christianity, banishing their spiritual beliefs and leaving the power of the juju behind. 1999, Zimbabwe. Kate takes a train journey into the country of her grandmother's youth. Leaving a restless life in Scotland, she comes to Africa in search of adventure and meaning, fuelled by her grandmother's stories of the past, the people and their juju. Aileen Ritchie was a co-founder of Clyde Unity Theatre before going to the National Film and Television School. She has written and directed for television and has made a feature film for Fox Searchlight. 1 85459 462 1
THIS IS A CHAIR Caryl Churchill "Churchill, who constantly reinvents dramatic form, has come up with something compelling and strange: an intimate revue about the increasing surreality of modern life." The Guardian "Puts one in mind of the painter Magritte. ... Each brief scene is preceded by a graphic announcing some heavy topical subject - The War in Bosnia, for instance, or the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Then the performers .... play a scene that has nothing to do with its title ... The piece creates a haunting impression of urban alienation, self-obsession and pre-millennial tensions." Daily Telegraph THIS IS A CHAIR was premiered at the Royal Court Theatre as part of the 1997 London International Festival of Theatre. 1 85459 344 7
IPH Colin Teevan after Euripides' "Iphigeneia in Aulis" The Greeks and the Trojans are on the brink of war. Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks, has a stark choice - should he sacrifice his daughter to the gods in return for a fair wind on his fleet, or should he place paternal love over the interests of the state? His wife, Klytaimnestra also has a choice - whether to remain loyal to her husband, or to stand by her daughter. And the daughter herself, Iphigeneia, has the most difficult challenge of all: to die willingly by her father's hand to ensure her nation's freedom. This explosive and passionate new version Euripides' great tragedy was commissioned, and first performed, by the Lyric Theatre, Belfast. Without over-emphasising the relevance of the play's themes to his own community, the Northern Irish writer, Colin Teevan, nonetheless "draws on the contemporary vernacular to ripping, rollicking, rumbustious effect ... and has given us a piece of theatre that is wonderfully robust, resolute and resonant" Paul Muldoon 1 85459 439 7
THE WEIR Conor McPherson A bar in a remote part of Ireland: the local lads are swapping spooky stories to impress a young woman from Dublin newly moved in to the area. But she turns the tables on them ... "A spellbinder that transfixes you ... No praise, in fact, is too high ... The Weir offers the most exciting evening in theatrical London" The Guardian "With bewitching fluency allied to a gift for locating the greatest emotions in the smallest details, and a faultless ear for idiom, McPherson achieves something remarkable ..." TLS "The writing is rich, vivid and often wonderfully funny ... A distinctive talent to cherish. Daily Telegraph For THE WEIR, Conor McPherson won the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award. 1 85459 427 3
FROM BOTH HIPS Mark O'Rowe FROM BOTH HIPS contains two alarming, but blackly comic, plays from the author of Howie and the Rookie. In the title play, Paul has been accidentally shot in the hip by a policeman. Back from hospital, he is bitter and self-pitying. He is also two-timing his wife. Then the policeman appears with an apology, a gun, and an extraordinary suggestion. Brenda and Sonia in THE ASPIDISTRA CODE are head over heels in debt. They fear the arrival of Drongo, a violent and unpredictable loan shark. But Brendan's brother Joe has hired protection in the person of Crazy Horse. Turns out the two hard men are old mates and then crisis seems averted - until Drongo's code of honour is called into question, and violence is threatened once more ... Mark O'Rowe is a young writer from Dublin. He won the prestigious George Devine Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for his London debut, Howie and the Rookie, seen also in Dublin and Edinburgh. 1 85459 445 1
RIDDANCE Linda McLean Is murder ever justified? Even in defence of a child? And if you're never caught, are you always in hiding? And though you may feel safe, is it inevitable that there will be a day of Riddance? This chilling emotional thriller about two men and a woman bound together by the secrets of surviving a childhood in a Glasgow tenement was premiered by Paines Plough at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, after previews at the Chelsea Centre, London. Linda McLean's play is suffused with wit, suspense and truth, a sober reminder that we can never escape the sins of our past. Her earlier one-act, One Good Beating, was part of Family, a trilogy of plays staged by the Traverse Theatre Company in Spring 1999 Published alongside the premiere production, this "Instant Playscript" is intended to reflect the immediacy of the play on stage. It is printed directly from the author's own disk prepared only a few days before opening night. The aim is to give audiences at the theatre and readers all over the world instant access to the best of current new writing as it hits the stage 1 85459 465 6
FOUR PLAYS Conor McPherson A magnificent collection of work by the author of The Weir, the long-running West End and Broadway hit and winner of the Olivier Award for Best Play. THE LIME TREE BOWER features three young men from a small Dublin seaside town telling the overlapping tale of one fateful weekend. "A touching, marvellously entertaining play ... a piece of real richness." Daily Telegraph. ST NICHOLAS was premiered in London and New York with Brian Cox in the solo role of a middle-aged theatre critic who gets caught up with a coven of modern-day vampires. "A delectably droll celebration of storytelling as striptease ... McPherson's ear for detail is devastating." New York Times Also in the volume are two shorter one-man plays: RUM AND VODKA, which is "funny and profound .. an uncomfortable gem" Time Out; and THE GOOD THIEF, which has "dramatic daring ... the writing is terse, lucid and admirably dispassionate." Irish Times. 1 85459 442 7

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