WINNER OF THE 2011 THEATRE BOOK PRIZE Shakespeare's greatest play, directed by the most experienced and acclaimed director in the land, starring one of our very finest actors at the very peak of his powers... What could possibly go wrong? The stage is set for what promises to be one of the greatest tours in the history of theatre. Take a front row seat as a whole host of stars led by Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Trevor Nunn set off to take the world by storm with their new production of King Lear only to endure injuries, critical backlash and almost constant controversy. As understudy to the King himself, Weston's frank and funny account takes us right through from the London rehearsals to the historical Stratford Season, back to the glittering West End, and then out across the globe. Punctuated with hilarious celebrity anecdotes, insightful travelling tales, and lessons for any aspiring thespian, Weston deftly lifts the curtain the on Royal Shakespeare Company's much heralded tour and reveals the chaos underneath.

Offers a completely new introduction, with a particular emphasis on the play's afterlife in global performance and adaptation.

Michael Pennington takes us on a fascinating journey through King Lear from the point of view of the play's characters. Part memoir, part analysis, part adventure story, this book delves into the unique production of Lear that Pennington led in New York in 2014. An original and candid approach to Shakespeare's classic from one of today's finest actor-writers at the top of his form.

Year of the Mad King: The Lear Diaries, is Antony Sher's account of researching, rehearsing and performing one of Shakespeare's greatest roles: King Lear. His honest, illuminating and witty commentary provides an intimate, first-hand look at the development of his Lear and the production as a whole. Also included are a selection of his paintings and sketches, many reproduced in full color.

“A beautiful, endlessly echoing portrait of a murder and its afterlife. Ms. Nottage shaped this story with such theatrical inventiveness and discipline that it never feels sensational… A finely wrought fusion of elements.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times Continuing in her tradition of crafting thought-provoking, socially conscious dramas, Lynn Nottage’s play tells the story of Mlima, an elephant struck down by poachers for his magnificent tusks. Beginning in a game park in Kenya, the play tracks the trajectory of Mlima’s tusks through the ivory trade market while Mlima’s ghost follows close behind—marking all those complicit in his barbaric death.

King Lear is arguably the most complex and demanding play in the whole of Shakespeare. Once thought impossible to stage, today it is performed with increasing frequency, both in Britain and America. It has been staged more often in the last fifty years than in the previous 350 years of its performance history, its bleak message clearly chiming in with the growing harshness, cruelty and violence of the modern world. Performing King Lear offers a very different and practical perspective from most studies of the play, being centred firmly on the reality of creation and performance. The book is based on Jonathan Croall's unique interviews with twenty of the most distinguished actors to have undertaken this daunting role during the last forty years, including Donald Sinden, Tim Pigott-Smith, Timothy West, Julian Glover, Oliver Ford Davies, Derek Jacobi, Christopher Plummer, Michael Pennington, Brian Cox and Simon Russell Beale. He has also talked to two dozen leading directors who have staged the play in London, Stratford and elsewhere. Among them are Nicholas Hytner, David Hare, Kenneth Branagh, Adrian Noble, Deborah Warner, Jonathan Miller and Dominic Dromgoole. Each reveals in precise and absorbing detail how they have dealt with the formidable challenge of interpreting and staging Shakespeare's great tragedy.

One of the Guardian's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century "With language so vibrant it practically has a pulse, Enright makes an exquisitely drawn case for the possibility of growth, love and transformation at any age." —People From internationally acclaimed author Anne Enright comes a shattering novel set in a small town on Ireland's Atlantic coast. The Green Road is a tale of family and fracture, compassion and selfishness—a book about the gaps in the human heart and how we strive to fill them. Spanning thirty years, The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling irreparably apart. As they grow up, Rosaleen's four children leave the west of Ireland for lives they could have never imagined in Dublin, New York, and Mali, West Africa. In her early old age their difficult, wonderful mother announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold. A profoundly moving work about a family's desperate attempt to recover the relationships they've lost and forge the ones they never had, The Green Road is Enright's most mature, accomplished, and unforgettable novel to date.

THE STORY: Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs after a six-year absence to celebrate Christmas with her parents, her brother, and her aunt. Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the f

An “irresistible” account of a little-known literary salon and creative commune in 1940s Brooklyn (The Washington Post Book World). A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year February House is the true story of an extraordinary experiment in communal living, one involving young but already iconic writers—and America’s best-known burlesque performer—in a house at 7 Middagh Street in Brooklyn. It was a fevered yearlong party, fueled by the appetites of youth and a shared sense of urgency to take action as artists in the months before the country entered World War II. In spite of the sheer intensity of life at 7 Middagh, the house was for its residents a creative crucible. Carson McCullers’s two masterpieces, The Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, were born, bibulously, in Brooklyn. Gypsy Rose Lee, workmanlike by day, party girl by night, wrote her book The G-String Murders in her Middagh Street bedroom. W. H. Auden—who, along with Benjamin Britten, was being excoriated back in England for absenting himself from the war—presided over the house like a peevish auntie, collecting rent money and dispensing romantic advice. And yet all the while, he was composing some of the most important work of his career. Enlivened by primary sources and an unforgettable story, this tale of daily life at the most fertile and improbable live-in salon of the twentieth century comes from the acclaimed author of Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York’s Legendary Chelsea Hotel. “Brimming with information . . . The personalities she depicts [are] indelibly drawn.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . Not to mention funny and raunchy.” —The Seattle Times