Nick Hern Books, 2013

playtext

Scenes: 7, Roles: Total (8), Female (0), Male (8), Unassigned (0)

...Howard Brenton's #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei is about the detainment and interrogation of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei by the Chinese authorities in 2011. The play, which is based on Ai Weiwei’s own account in Barnaby Martin’s book Hanging...

Nick Hern Books, 2012

playtext

Acts: 2, Scenes: 23, Roles: Total (21), Female (2), Male (19), Unassigned (0)

...Howard Brenton's 55 Days is a historical drama set at the culmination of the English Civil War when the future, not only of the King, but of the nation itself is decided. The play was first performed at Hampstead Theatre, London, on 18...

Nick Hern Books, 2010

playtext

Acts: 2, Scenes: 28, Roles: Total (19), Female (5), Male (14), Unassigned (0)

...Howard Brenton's Anne Boleyn is a dramatisation of the life and legacy of the notorious second wife of Henry VIII. It was first performed at Shakespeare's Globe, London, on 24 July 2010. King James I, rummaging through...

Nick Hern Books, 1995

playtext

Acts: 3, Scenes: 9, Roles: Total (5), Female (3), Male (2), Unassigned (0)

...An intimate and at times savagely funny psychological study of two sisters, one of who has made her home in East Berlin and one who has stayed on in their native London. Fleeing from an encounter that has destroyed her...

Methuen Drama, 1990

Contemporary Dramatists

playtext

Acts: 2, Scenes: 19, Roles: Total (6), Female (3), Male (2), Unassigned (1)

...An elegiac and fiery play about poetry and failed utopias, Bloody Poetry follows Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, and their lovers Mary Shelley and Claire Clairemont, into exile. This strange family, vilified for their private lives...

Nick Hern Books, 2022

NHB Modern Plays

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Scenes: 4, Roles: Total (6), Female (2), Male (4), Unassigned (0)

...Howard Brenton's play Cancelling Socrates is a drama about an uncompromising voice in dangerous times, drawing parallels between ancient Greece and our own times, in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic. It was premiered at Jermyn Street...

Methuen Drama, 2004

Modern Plays

playtext

Scenes: 11, Roles: Total (3), Female (0), Male (3), Unassigned (0)

...Christie in Love is a distressing investigation into the mind of the infamous serial killer, John Reginald Halliday Christie, who strangled eight women in his flat in Notting Hill in the 1940s and ’50s. It is part of Brenton’s group...

Nick Hern Books, 2013

NHB Classic Plays

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Scenes: 7, Roles: Total (6), Female (2), Male (4), Unassigned (0)

...Howard Brenton's play Dances of Death is an adaptation (from a literal translation by Agnes Broome) of August Strindberg's two plays, The Dance of Death Parts I and II (both written in 1900), about a marriage that has turned sour...

Nick Hern Books, 2014

playtext

Acts: 2, Scenes: 22, Roles: Total (24), Female (7), Male (17), Unassigned (0)

...Howard Brenton's play Doctor Scroggy's War is the story of a fictional soldier, Jack Twigg, who, after receiving an injury on the front line during the First World War, encounters the polymath and celebrated surgeon Harold Gillies...

Nick Hern Books, 2013

playtext

Acts: 2, Scenes: 25, Roles: Total (34), Female (8), Male (24), Unassigned (2)

...Howard Brenton's Drawing the Line is a historical drama about the partition of India in August 1947, an act that was to have huge ramifications for the modern world. It highlights the extraordinarily contingent and chaotic political...

Methuen Drama, 1986

Contemporary Dramatists

playtext

Acts: 2, Roles: Total (42), Female (8), Male (34), Unassigned (0)

...It is the day of the Epsom Derby and Britain is gripped by racing fever. At Epsom Downs Racecourse, a magnificent cross-section of society gathers to watch the famous Derby race in which Lester Piggot rode 'The Minstrel' to a dramatic...

Nick Hern Books, 2014

playtext

Acts: 3, Scenes: 22, Roles: Total (18), Female (5), Male (13), Unassigned (0)

...Eternal Love tells the story of the passionate 12th-century love affair between Abelard and Héloïse. It explores the war of ideas that resulted from the ensuing scandal, and examines the complex relationship between logic and religion...

Methuen Drama, 2004

Modern Plays

playtext

Roles: Total (3), Female (1), Male (2), Unassigned (0)

...Gum and Goo is a short dark play about the world inside the mind of a young autistic girl. It is part of Brenton’s group of ‘Plays for the Poor Theatre’ – plays with minimal theatrical requirements and small casts, but fierce intensity...

Methuen Drama, 2004

Modern Plays

playtext

Roles: Total (3), Female (1), Male (2), Unassigned (0)

...Heads is a short and brutal play about greed and the perfect man. It is part of Brenton’s group of ‘Plays for the Poor Theatre’ – plays with minimal theatrical requirements and small casts, but fierce intensity. A woman...

Nick Hern Books, 2016

playtext

Acts: 2, Scenes: 11, Roles: Total (7), Female (2), Male (5), Unassigned (0)

...Howard Brenton’s Lawrence After Arabia is a biographical play exploring the later years in the life of T.E. Lawrence, once celebrated as Lawrence of Arabia. It was commissioned to mark the centenary of the start of the Arab revolt...

Methuen Drama, 1986

Contemporary Dramatists

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Scenes: 8, Roles: Total (9), Female (2), Male (7), Unassigned (0)

...A group of activists occupy a derelict building to highlight the irony of a city which refuses to house its homeless while letting residences lie empty. Outside, a bailiff and a constable discuss the rates of pay in their respective...

Nick Hern Books, 2008

playtext

Acts: 4, Roles: Total (20), Female (2), Male (18), Unassigned (0)

...Never So Good was first performed in the Lyttelton auditorium of the National Theatre on 26 March 2008 (previews from 17 March 2008). It explores the decline of British fortunes in the middle of the twentieth century through a portrait...

Nick Hern Books, 2005

playtext

Scenes: 13, Roles: Total (9), Female (1), Male (8), Unassigned (0)

...Exploring the life and teachings of Paul the Apostle, Howard Brenton's Paul is a play that examines – and raises profound questions about – the historical basis of Christianity. It was first performed in the Cottesloe auditorium...

Methuen Drama, 1985

Modern Plays

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Acts: 2, Scenes: 10, Roles: Total (37), Female (6), Male (31), Unassigned (0)

...Pravda (which means ‘truth’) is a comedy of excess which put modern Fleet Street on the stage for the first time. It is an acerbic satire on the ruthless newspaper culture of the 1980s, in particular an insatiable media mogul eating...

Methuen Drama, 1986

Contemporary Dramatists

playtext

Acts: 2, Roles: Total (3), Female (2), Male (1), Unassigned (0)

...A ferocious battle of wits and fists is the subject of Howard Brenton's Sore Throats where recently divorced couple Judy and Jack face each other down in a hail of insult and violence over the acrimonious split of their assets...