Replay: Classic Modern Drama Reimagined spans over a century of great theatre to explore how iconic plays have been adapted and versioned by later writers to reflect or dissect the contemporary zeitgeist.Starting with A Doll's House, Ibsen's much-reprised masterpiece of marital relations from 1879, Toby Zinman explores what made the play so controversial and shocking in its day before tracing how later reimaginings have reworked Ibsen's original. The spine of play...

Unrivalled in its coverage of recent work and writers, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights surveys and analyses the breadth, vitality and development of theatrical work to emerge from America over the last fifty years.This authoritative guide leads you through the work of 25 major contemporary American playwrights, discussing more than 140 plays in detail. Written by a team of 25 eminent international scholars, each chapter provides:· a biogr...

A Student Handbook to the Plays of Arthur Miller provides the essential guide to Miller's most studied and revived dramas. Authored by a team of leading scholars, it offers students a clear analysis and detailed commentary on five of Miller's plays: All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge and Broken Glass. A consistent framework of analysis ensures that whether readers want a summary of the play, a comment...

"A play of depth as well as dazzle, intensely moving as well as thought-provoking and funny." — The Daily TelegraphIn The History Boys, Alan Bennett evokes the special period and place that the sixth form represents in an English boy's life. In doing so, he raises—with gentle wit and pitch-perfect command of character—not only universal questions about the nature of history and how it is taught but also questions...

"So engrossing, clearheaded, and lucid that its arrival is not just welcome but cause for celebration." —Dan Cryer, NewsdayStephen Greenblatt, the charismatic Harvard professor who "knows more about Shakespeare than Ben Jonson or the Dark Lady did" (John Leonard, Harper's), has written a biography that enables us to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life; full of drama and pageantry, and a...

Anyone who's never watched someone die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.Look Back in Anger premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1956.'John Osborne didn't contribute to British theatre: he set off a landmine called Look Back in Anger and blew most of it up.' Alan Sillitoe'A story of youthful insecurity inflamed by lack of opportunity and the terrifying, destabilizing force of love . . . Jimmy Porter could...

It's 1922 and Fleur Forsyte is now married to Michael Mont. Fleur throws herself into the roaring 20s with the rest of London, taking life as it comes. But the marriage is haunted by the ghost of a past love affair, and however vibrant Fleur appears, those closest to her sense her unhappiness.Michael, devoted to Fleur but not blind to her faults, is determined to stand by her through anything. He also finds himself caught up in the tragic and poignant story of a young couple strugg...

In 1953, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others—shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understan...

The American classic—as you’ve never experienced it before. This multimedia edition, edited by William Davies King, offers an interactive guide to O’Neill’s masterpiece.Hear rare archival recordings of Eugene O’Neill reading key scenes.Discover O’Neill’s creative process through the tiny pencil notes in his original manuscripts and outlines.Watch actors wrestle with the play in exclusive rehearsal footage.Experience clips from a full production o...

The purpose of theater, like magic, like religion . . . is to inspire cleansing awe. What makes good drama? And why does drama matter in an age that is awash in information and entertainment? David Mamet, one of our greatest living playwrights, tackles these questions with bracing directness and aphoristic authority. He believes that the tendency to dramatize is essential to human nature, that we create drama out of everything from today’s weather to next year’s elections. But the...

The only difference between me and the people judging me is they weren't smart enough to do what we did.One of the most infamous scandals in financial history becomes a theatrical epic. At once a case study and an allegory, the play charts the notorious rise and fall of Enron and its founding partners Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who became 'the most vilified figure from the financial scandal of the century.'This Student Edition features expert and helpful annotat...