Three pitch-black comedies from an exciting new writer: A Listening Heaven, Mummies and Daddies and ClockwatchingA Listening Heaven, which focuses on one family’s painful inability to grieve for a dead son, was first produced in 1999 to critical acclaim at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where Betts was the resident dramatist.Mummies and Daddies, developed at the RNT Studio, brutally yet hilariously lays bare the soullessness of consumerism....

From a playwright rated by Alan Ayckbourn and Howard Barker to be the most exciting new voice in British theatre comes a shattering re-imagining of life as we live it now, set in the context of a bloody revolution.Witness to a brutal political assassination, we are introduced to a society fractured by a lack of belief in anything meaningful, in which everyone has something to protest against. This skewed world spins giddily between the surreal, the mundane and a ghastly graphic real...

Includes the plays The Optimist, The Swing of Things and The Company ManIn this third volume of his collected plays Torben Betts portrays a world of floundering, sub-alpha males and suicidally miserable women, of bullying parents, torturous childhoods and failing relationships, characters all baffled by the most basic question: how do we live good lives and be happy in the modern world?Set on Guy Fawke's Night The Optimist (2002) concerns a Government Defen...

At the turn of the sixteenth century the two most powerful people on the planet, Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon are making plans to expand their empire. They are plundering the riches of the New World, removing all Jews and Moors from their territories and waging war on the infidels in the East. At home they seek to assert the dominance of Spain by marrying their daughters to various princes of Europe. One such daughter is Juana, a young woman full of religion and p...

"One day you will say something from the heart, a truth forced raw and screeching from the howling depths of your soul."Powerful poetic language, dark humour and provocative ideas build a fast moving story around a fiercely intelligent young girl and her relentless refusal of the establishment. When suddenly a people’s revolution breaks out and a mercenary soldier intrudes the family home, the conflict between the regime and the unconquered girl is revealed.The Unconquered t...

Includes the plays Incarcerator, Five Visions of the Faithful, Silence and Violence, The Last Days of Desire, The Biggleswades.With an Introduction by David Pownall, and an essay by Peter CrazeA volume of language-rich, theatrically-ambitious tragedies. Betts’ hugely popular verse drama Incarcerator (White Bear and BAC) was a Time Out Critics' Choice, while his Five Visions of the Faithful (White Bear), is a series of uncompromising narratives exploring fre...

Set in the future, this savagely funny poetic drama deals with a city couple who relocate to a remote rural wilderness to escape the rat race and the rising anarchy of city life. But will a desolate house by the sea provide them with The Answer?Lie of the Land premiered at the Pleasance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2008.

Will the Prime Minister give Rupert the political prize he’s been hoping for? How much more can Olivia take of her mother Mary and her withering put-downs? Will Charlie get off her phone for long enough to listen to anyone, let alone her boyfriend?Home truths emerge and a reputation could tumble as Rupert St John-Green MP and three generations of women gather in the family garden to watch a total solar eclipse.A searingly funny contemporary look at one family and at Britain...

One night in January 2010 and an earthquake in Haiti leaves around a hundred thousand people dead and almost two million homeless. Meanwhile, somewhere in a leafy North London suburb, a group of six individuals convene over avocado and prawns, followed by a monkfish stew. They struggle with worries over their mortgages, their mobile phone tariffs, their Facebook friends, their careers, their love lives, their diets, their alcohol intake, their holiday plans and whether or not any of them w...

Monogamy means sharing your life with one person, but what if you shared your kitchen with 5.6 million?Caroline Mortimer, the nation's favourite TV cook, has it all – a sparkling career, a big house in Highgate, a (golf) loving husband, smart kids and the best kitchen money can buy.But beneath the immaculate furnishings, studio lighting and away from the glare of the ever-present cameras – Caroline must face the looming collision of living a private life in the public eye. ...

A moving short story. Set in the grim world of early Sixties Ireland, it tells the harrowing story of a boy making his way to school. Beware - this is not for the fainthearted!

(from the poem The Summer Fires)What will they remember when they wakeThose children who built this for a thrill?sprawled around it one warm night,spread dusty laughter on the sun hardened hillthen rolled away at the first hint of light,left the sun to blind and killall threat and fear of discovery,left the ashes for the wind to rake,and let the memory slip beyond recovery.