The Pocket Dream. Comedy. Elly Brewer and Sandi Toksvig
M4 F2. Extras. A stage.

The Henry Irving Strolling Players (HISP) Memorial Theatre are to present a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream but when the majority of the cast walk out and the house manager can't refund the audience's money (because it's riding on a dog) desperate measures need to be taken by the stage manager and anyone else she can find to step into the breach! ' ... the audience laughed like mad ... and were happy to help in the gags impressed on them from the stage. It's like a springtime pantomime.' Financial Times
ISBN 0 573 01864 2

Popcorn. Play. Ben Elton
M4 (young, late 30s, middle-age) F5 (teenage, young, late 30s). A lounge-room.

Set in the Beverly Hills home of Tarantino-style, Oscar-winning, movie director Bruce Delamitri, Popcorn is a satirical comedy thriller that took the West End by storm. Notorious killers Wayne and Scout interrupt Bruce and Brooke Daniels (nude model and actress) intending to use Bruce's 'art' as justification for murder. Events are disrupted with the arrival of Karl (Bruce's producer) and Farrah Delamitri (Bruce's soon-to-be-ex-wife) with spoilt daughter, Velvet. But Wayne means to succeed - whatever the cost.
ISBN 0 573 01869 3

The Pope and the Witch. Play. Dario Fo. Edited by Franca Rame. Translated by Ed Emery
M8 F3. Doubling. Extras. A corridor and room in the Vatican, a room.

The Vatican is the target of this fast and furious satire. The Pope is to give his first world televised press conference but is suffering from acute paranoia and nervous paralysis. Enter Elisa, the 'witch' of the title, who alone seems to have the power to cure the Pope. Visiting her drug clinic he is so impressed that he issues a papal encyclical with startling global results.

Portrait of Murder. Drama. Robert Bloomfield
M3 (35, 40, middle-age) F3 (25, 30s). A living-room.

Eliot and his mistress tried to kill Eliot's wife Paula but succeeded only in giving her amnesia. Paula's personality seems changed; now she is charming and considerate. Paula is once again involved in another accident and reverts back to being as unpleasant as she used to be. Are there two Paulas? Gradually a cunning masquerade unfolds.
ISBN 0 573 01351 9

Portraits. Play. William Douglas Home
M6 or M4 (20, 50s, 60s, 80s) F1 (60s). Two artists' studios.

Augustus John's ability as a portrait artist won him the admiration of fellow artists, public recognition and the Order of Merit. This play presents various points in this Bohemian artist's turbulent life from 1944-1961 through a reconstruction f sittings with three of his subjects. 'This charming, literate ... and often touching study of the man who invented Bohemianism ... splendid dialogue from William Douglas Home ... one of the best plays to hit the West End in some time.' Time Out
ISBN 0 573 01672 0

The Positive Hour. Play. April de Angelis
M2 (30s-40s, 51) F4 (30s, 46), 1 girl. Various simple settings.

Miranda is a social worker, with no shortage of problems herself. Her best friend, Emma, is a failed artist having a mid-life crisis; her partner, Roger, is a frustrated academic, desperately trying to finish his book on Hegel. Personal problems are exacerbated by work and, especially, Miranda's relationship with Paula, an unemployed single mother who takes up prostitution to survive. Funny and disturbing, The Positive Hour brings issues of gender and sexuality into a new, modern context.

Post Horn Gallop. Farce. Derek Benfield
M6 (30, middle-age) F6 (20s, 40s, middle-age). A baronial hall.

A sequel to Wild Goose Chase. In the ancestral home the nerve-shattered Chester is again menaced by his old enemies Capone and Wedgwood. In the flower beds Lord Elrood lurks with his shotgun ready to repel attacks by the butcher's boy, the postman and other desperate characters. Through the ancestral living-room wander Maggie and Bert, come for two-and-sixpence-worth of gawp and suitably awe struck by the goings-on of the country-house set.
ISBN 0 573 11341 6

The Potting Shed. Play. Graham Greene
M6 (40s, 58, 60) F5 (13, 36, 70s). A living-room, a lodgings room, a presbytery.

James Callifer, long estranged from his family, returns home to his dying father. He learns there that as a boy he had hanged himself in the potting shed, but had been cut down and 'resurrected'. It transpires his father had lost his agnosticism and as a result James's mother had disowned her son - who was a living proof that a 'miracle' had occurred in his past.

The Power of the Dog. Play. Ellen Dryden
M2 (young, 30s) F4 (17, 40s, 60s, 70s) A cottage interior, an office.

Vivien, an English teacher, is about to become headmistress of another school, thus leaving Lisa, her difficult but bright protegée, stranded without her inspiration. When Lisa takes violent action to express her unhappiness, Vivien is shocked out of her usual detached emotional state into an understanding of the consequences of her actions, which have affected all her relationships, including that with her crippled mother.