Stage & Screen

'Like a Henry James novella; circuitous, ambiguous, enthralling and chilling.'

Financial Times on The Late Middle Classes

Friend to film stars, spies, models, government ministers and aristocrats, Profumo Scandal rise and ultimate disgrace coincided with the increasingly permissive lifestyle of London's elite in the early 1960s. This book charts the rise and fall from grace of the man at the centre of the Profumo Scandal.

Obsessed with his own salvation, the hermit Paulo dedicates himself to ten years of prayerful penance. When his faith wavers, the ever-watchful Devil seizes the moment to convince him that he shares the fate of one Enrico, a notorious Neapolitan gangster destined for damnation.

1945, one afternoon in London - on the floor,
every last undiluted drop of you.

Taking Ibsen's Little Eyolf as the inspiration for a passionate and tragic tale of obsessive love, set in 1950s England, Samuel Adamson's Mrs Affleck opened at the National Theatre, London, in January 2009.

Ramayana
David Farr
A dramatic retelling of the Indian epic

Exiled from the serene palaces of their homeland and plunged into the deep forest of Southern India, the passionate love of Rama and Sita is put to the test as demons, goddesses and an army of monkeys do battle for their hearts.

This series contains what no other study guides can offer - extensive first-hand interviews with the playwrights and their closest collaborators on all of their major work, put together by top academics especially for the modern student market.

An elderly antiquarian bookseller has just died at his home in the country. His two daughters come to attend to things. Isobel, who has been nursing him, is a partner in a small design firm. Marion is in politics - already a junior minister. It is Marion's profession to provide answers, and to back those ...

Celebrated children's writer Hans Christian Andersen arrives, unannounced, for a stay at Gad's Hill Place in the Kent marshes - home to Charles Dickens and his large, charismatic family.

Nothing is more important to a modern political party than fund-raising. But the values of the donors can't always coincide with the professed beliefs of the party. This ensemble play about British public life looks at the way business, media and politics are now intertwined to nobody's advantage.

What is a political playwright? Does theatre have any direct effect on society? Why choose to work in a medium which speaks to so few? Is theatre itself facing oblivion? This work aims to address these and other questions in occasional lectures given both in Britain and abroad.

Berlin/Wall
In two contrasted readings for the stage, David Hare visits a place where a famous wall has come down;

Anxiously awaiting the return of his new wife, Adolph finds solace in the words of a stranger. But comfort soon turns to destruction as old wounds are opened, insecurities are laid bare and former debts are settled.

Regarded as Strindberg's most mature work, Creditors is a darkly comic tale of obsession, honour and revenge.

From his grave in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral, Dallas Sweetman is called to give account. He tells a story of love and death, jealousy and miraculous happenings, of the divided loyalties of Protestants and Catholics in the Elizabethan Age. The lost tradition of staging new plays at Canterbury Cathedral, most famously T.

and it was here, in the intoxicating anticipation and the dashed hopes of the 1848 revolution - when the loss of his political illusions were overshadowed by a series of personal calamities - that Herzen found his greatness, seeking the way forward for Russia, the just society and the good life.

O'Brien digs deep, like elaborate crochet-work where the needles lance to the heart.' Daily Telegraph

'An enchanting exploration of desire and regret.' Observer

Haunted premiered at Manchester's Royal Exchange in 2009 and transfers to the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, in February 2010 before a UK tour.

Three ages of Alice. 1980, in the afternoon murk of her attic, is Alice losing her grip on reality? 1995, she has summoned a lost love to meet her by the gasworks wall. 2005, at the airport: if the worst has happened, why is it bearable? This book is published to coincide with the world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London.

A student edition of Lorca's moving play about fading beauty and thwarted love, presented with parallel English and Spanish texts. A full commentary, notes and questions help students' appreciation of the play.

Simon Louvish, acclaimed biographer of W C Fields, the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, delves into the dynamic start of Hollywood comedy, tracking the life and clowns of one of cinema's foremost pioneers, and uncovering the mystery of one of the screen's legendary relationships - that of Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand.