Agnes of God. Play. John Pielmeier F3 (21, middle-age). An open stage. . For further details of the music apply to Samuel French Ltd Dr Livingstone, a court-appointed psychiatrist, is asked to determine the sanity of a nun accused of murdering her own baby. The Mother Superior seems bent on protecting Sister Agnes from Livingstone whose suspicions are immediately aroused. In searching for solutions to various mysteries Livingstone forces all of them to face some harsh realities in their own lives. This powerful drama was an outstanding success on Broadway and was filmed with Jane Fonda and Anne Bancroft. ISBN 0 573 63022 4 Alarms and Excursions. Eight short plays. Michael Frayn M16 F14 can be played by M2 (35, 45) F2 (35, 45). Various simple settings. These eight plays examine the difficulties modern technology has added to life - with hilarious results. Alarms. Two couples embark on a dinner party which is doomed to failure as labour-saving devices and furniture become hostile. Doubles. Two couples in adjacent hotel rooms have similar problems to those in Alarms. Leavings. The dinner-party is revisited. Look Away Now. Passengers ignore their airliner's safety lecture. Heart to Heart. Deals with the impossibility of communication at a noisy drinks party. Glassnost. Presents us with a political speech sabotaged by a harassed autocue operator. Toasters. Shows the problems of trying to eat and work standing up at a function. Immobiles. This is acted out entirely over the phone, as a couple try to decide where they should be meeting their German guest. ISBN 0 573 01808 1 Albert Make Us Laugh. Play. Jimmie Chinn M6 F8 or M4 F5 (with doubling). Various simple interior and exterior settings. Some would say Albert Nuttall, aged eleven, is backward - but he is special. He is a poet and a visionary who, as he grows into manhood, inspires unexpected depths of emotion in other people, notably his classmate Primrose, whose glorious future as an actress fails to materialise, and the lost and lonely young schoolteacher, Janet Partington. This strange, touching and uplifting story - written to be enacted entirely by adults - is engaging and theatrically innovative. Period 1940s-1950s. ISBN 0 573 01761 1 Albertine In Five Times (in The Guid Sisters) : Michel Tremblay. Trans. van Burek & Glassco 6f One-act drama. Flexible staging.  Five actresses portray Albertine at different times of her life whilst conversing freely with each other and with their sister Madeleine. Albertine at 30 is recuperating in the country after viciously beating her I I-year-old daughter; Albertine at 40 is a virago at war with the world; at 50 she has rejected her past by reinventing it; at 60 she has given in to depression; at 70 she's found a kind of peace. First performed in London in 1986 at the Donmar Warehouse. ISBN 1854591185 The Alchemist: Ben Jonson 10m 2f, townsfolk. Classic farcical comedy. Simple set.  Face, Subtle and Dol Common are three rogues intent on conning the gullible out of their money. Simon Callow, Tim Pigott-Smith and Josie Lawrence played the three conmen in the 1996 National Theatre production. First performed in 1610. ISBN 1854592629 Alfie. Play. Bill Naughton M9 (30s, 40s, 65) F9 (20s, 30s, 50). Composite setting. With sublime amorality Alfie swaggers and philosophises his way through the play, chattily allowing the audience to eavesdrop as he goes from one 'bird' to another, trying hard to communicate his own brand of determined hedonism and carefully rejecting anyone or anything that might touch him too deeply. Premiered at London's Duchess Theatre, the stage play was later successfully filmed with Michael Caine in the role of the ebullient Cockney Alfie. ISBN 0 573 01008 0 All For Love : John Dryden 6m 4f, 2 children, extras. Classic tragedy. Flexible staging. A Drama Classic - the most affordable edition of this classic drama Dryden's version of the Antony and Cleopatra story told as heroic tragedy. First performed in 1677. ISBN 1854593722 All in Good Time. Comedy. Bill Naughton M7 (20x, 40s, 50s) F4 (20x-50). Three interiors, one exterior. This robustly humorous play centres on the sensitive Arthur and his new bride forced by economic circumstances to live with his good-hearted but rough-tongued father. The lack of privacy is so inhibiting that Arthur is unable to consummate the marriage, and gradually word gets around. But fortunately Arthur becomes so humiliated and enraged - he loses his inhibitions ...! Filmed as The Family Way with Hywel Bennett and Hayley Mills. ISBN 0 573 01011 0 All Things Bright and Beautiful. Comedy. Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall M6 (20s-40s, 70) F3 (19, 40x). A kitchen/living-room, a yard. An exuberant and racy comedy which is yet a sad commentary on twentieth-century bureaucracy. The Hesseltines are living in property well overdue for demolition and are looking forward to being rehoused in more beautiful and salubrious surroundings. The crisis comes when they find that, far from a house with a little bit of garden, they are to live in a warrenous block of flats. ISBN 0 573 11012 3 All Things Considered. Play. Ben Brown M4 (49, middle-age) F3 (young, late 20s, 40s). A living-room. David Freeman, a Professor of Philosophy about to reach fifty, is tired of life. His only desire now is to control the timing and manner of his death. His plans for 'self-deliverance', however, are disrupted by the earthly demands of people around him. Alone at last he carries out his plan, but is saved by the college electrician. Returning from hospital, David hears news that may change his mind - yet ultimately the vagaries of chance would have it otherwise. ISBN 0 573 01720 4 All's Fair. Play. Frank Vickery M2 (20x) F4 (14, 20s, middle-age). A living-room. This poignant comedy is set in the wartime Rhondda and captures perfectly the claustrophobic yet protective and supportive atmosphere of life in the Welsh Valleys in 1942. The two central characters - Dilys, in love with an American GI and Sophie, frustrated at being unmarried and happy to settle for Dilys's dull brother- are contrasted and astutely observed, as are the other members of the household - Mother, nearing the end of her years and precocious Brenda, trembling on the brink of adolescence. ISBN 0 573 01675 5 Alphabetical Order. Play. Michael Frayn M4 (30s-60s) F3 (20s, 30s, 50s). A library. The library office of a provincial newspaper is a scene of utter confusion - the cluttered chaos of the room matching the lives of its staff. It is also a scene of warmth and light-heartedness. In comes Leslie, a new young assistant with a passion for organisation who transforms the office and the lives of its inhabitants into something orderly and neat - and also arid and colourless. An announcement that the paper is to close leads to a struggle between chaos and order. ISBN 0 573 01600 3 Amadeus. Play. Peter Shaffer M12 (30s-70) F3 (20s, 30s). Extras. Interior and exterior settings. In old age, Salieri recalls his successful career as Court Composer, his hatred of Mozart, and how he contrived the brilliant young composer's demise. A musical genius, Mozart died neglected and impoverished while the mediocre Salieri lived in a blaze of fame and praise. Period 1823 Vienna and in recall, 1781-1791. First presented at the Royal National Theatre. ISBN 0 573 11015 8 Ambrosio. Drama. Romulus Linney, 5 men, 2 women; unit. Freely adapted from Matthew Lewis's eighteenth-century gothic novel, The Monk, AMBROSIO, the play, deftly transposes our own contemporary concerns about sexuality, desire and abstinence on to the original novel's voluptuous setting and atmosphere. As the monk Ambrosio confronts temptation, first in the form of a seductive young male novice, and then, in a young woman who begs Ambrosio to be her confessor, a mysterious fisherman named Don Pedro looks on. Is he, as Ambrosio suspects, really the devil, offering up inducements for Ambrosio to renounce his vows? Is this vision of the devil simply a case of delirium brought on by Ambrosio's life of denial? Is either answer part of a plot by the Inquisition to shore up their own power? Ultimately, the crux of Ambrosio's dilemma lies in the realm of spirituality, where what distinguishes fantasy from reality has yet to be decided. American Buffalo. Drama. David Mamet M3 (young, 40s). A junk shop. In a Chicago junk shop three small-time crooks plot to rob a man of his coin collection which came to light when the collector found a valuable 'buffalo nickel' in the shop. The three plotters fancy themselves as businessmen pursuing the genuine concerns of free enterprise. In reality, they are Donny, the stupid junk shop owner; Bobby, a spaced-out young junkie Donny has befriended; and Teacher, a violent, paranoid braggart. But their plans come to naught and are futile, vulgar verbal exercises. The Amorous Ambassador. American farce. Michael Parker M4 (20-30, 25-45, 50+, 45-65) F4 (20-25, 25-40, 50+). A living-room. When Harry Douglas, the new American Ambassador to Great Britain, tells his family he is going to Scotland to play golf, his wife Lois and daughter Debbie announce plans of their own. Their newly hired butler, Perkins, watches stoically as each leaves and secretly returns for a romantic rendezvous in the empty house. In the wake of a bomb threat, the Embassy is sealed off - with hilarious results. ISBN 0 573 67040 4 Amphibious Spangulatos, or Newt on Your Nellie! Farce. Paul Doust M 13 F21. Doubling possible. A sports changing-room in a village hall. Cherry Hellingsworth is fulfilling her Community Service stint by working at a Village Hall as the Functions Manager. But she's not terribly good at it. On one evening she manages to to hire out the hall to the Village Drama Society, the Cricket team, a Singing Telegram and a Country and Western group called the Southern Fried Chickens. A frenzied, door-slamming farce, suitable for adults or youth groups. ISBN 0 573 01717 4 Amy's View. Play. David Hare M3 (20s, early 50s) F3 (23-39, 49-66, late 70s, mid 80s). A living-room, a dressing-room. 1979. Esme Allen is a well-known West End actress at just the moment when the West End is ceasing to offer actors a regular way of life. The visit of her daughter, Amy, with a new boyfriend sets in train a series of events which only find their shape sixteen years later. David Hare mixes love, death and the theatre in a heady and original way. Period: 1979, 1995.