‘Doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t drink. Doesn’t do drugs. I’m worried about her, she’s not normal.’ ‘It’s the modern world. You can’t judge kids by your own standards.’ Things have changed since Dad set up the family business in the 60s: new products, more competition, and a bigger market. At the end of the day though, it’s still all about cash and stock. But this is no ordinary family business – the Robinsons are drug dealers.

Its government has declared a vicious class war. A one-sided war . . . We have started to fight back . . . with bombs. Against a backdrop of Tory cuts, high unemployment and the deregulated economy of 1970s Britain, a young urban guerrilla group mobilises: The Angry Brigade. Their targets: MPs, embassies, police, pageant queens. A world of order is shattered by anarchy and the rules have changed. An uprising has begun. No one is exempt. As a special police squad hunt the home-grown terrorists whose identities shocked the nation, James Graham's heart-stopping thriller lures us into a frenzied world that looks much like our own. The Angry Brigade was first produced by Paines Plough in September 2014 and this edition, featuring changes to the script, has been published to coincide with the production's transfer to the Bush Theatre, London, in May 2015.

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights is an authoritative guide to the work of twenty-five playwrights who have risen to prominence since the 1980s. Written by an international team of scholars, it will be invaluable to anyone interested in, studying or teaching contemporary drama. Among the many playwrights whose work is examined are Sarah Daniels, Terry Johnson, Martin Crimp, Sarah Kane, Anthony Neilson, Mark Ravenhill, Simon Stephens, Debbie Tucker Green, Tanika Gupta and Richard Bean. Each essay features: A biographical sketch and introduction to the playwright A discussion of their most important plays An analysis of their stylistic and thematic traits, the critical reception and their place in the discourses of British theatre A bibliography of texts and critical material

This is an essential guide for anyone interested in the best new British stage plays to emerge in the new millennium. For students of theatre studies and theatre-goers Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today is a perfect companion to Britain's burgeoning theatre writing scene. It explores the context from which new plays have emerged and charts the way that playwrights have responded to the key concerns of the decade and helped shape our sense of who we are. In recent years British theatre has seen a renaissance in playwriting accompanied by a proliferation of writing awards and new writing groups. The book provides an in-depth exploration of the industry and of the key plays and playwrights. It opens by defining what is meant by 'new writing' and providing a study of the leading theatres, such as the Royal Court, the Traverse, the Bush, the Hampstead and the National theatres, together with the London fringe and the work of touring companies. In the second part, Sierz provides a fascinating survey of the main issues that have characterised new plays in the first decade of the new century, such as foreign policy and war overseas, economic boom and bust, divided communities and questions of identity and race. It considers too how playwrights have re-examined domestic issues of family, of love, of growing up, and the fantasies and nightmares of the mind. Against the backdrop of economic, political and social change under New Labour, Sierz shows how British theatre responded to these changes and in doing so has been and remains deeply involved in the project of rewriting the nation.

Affection I can endure, affectation I abhor. Empty phrases, meaningless gestures of faked good-will. These affable dispensers of embraces make me ill. Disgusted with French society where powdered fops gossip in code and bejewelled coquettes whisper behind fans, poet Alceste embarks on a one-man crusade against fakery, frippery and forked tongues. But could the woman he adores be the worst culprit of them all? And in this rarefied world will his revolution prove merely revolting? Considered by many to be Molière's best work, The Misanthrope was first performed in 1666 in Paris by the King's Players. Following the huge successes of Tartuffe and The Hypochondriac master wordsmith Roger McGough once again dips his quill into a Molière classic in this mockery of manners and morals set amid seventeenth-century French aristocracy and written in verse.

In the southern Pacific Ocean on the remote island of Pitcairn, the infamous mutineers of The Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian (or should it be Titreano?) begin to establish a new society alongside their Tahitian followers. Tensions quickly swell as the British settlers refuse to relinquish the vices of their past. Social, racial and sexual schisms render the once paradisiac island into a hotbed of discord and bloody violence. Pitcairn vividly explores the conflict between personal freedoms and public responsibilities. Pitcairn is Richard Bean’s brutal telling of the colonisation of the remote island of Pitcairn by Fletcher Christian and the Bounty mutineers. The play charts – with salty humour and growing horror – the spiralling descent of the colony from a new Eden of freedom and equality to a brutal dystopia.

A boy wakes up in a field somewhere in London. He's a door-to-door salesman: a pedlar boy. An encounter with an old acquaintance sends him into a frenzied questioning of everything: his life, his world, where he's coming from and where he's going to. peddling received its world premiere at Hightide Festival on 10 April 2014, performed by Harry Melling, before transferring to 59E59 Theatre, NY, for a four-week run.

Includes the plays Toast, Mr England, Smack Family Robinson, and Honeymoon Suite 'Suddenly with four new plays opening within 12 months, Richard Bean has become the playwright of the moment and now, in Honeymoon Suite, his most prestigious premiere to date, he has written what seems like the perfect play' The Financial Times on Honeymoon Suite 'Toast is as funny, touching, and brilliant an account of men at work as any we have had since David Storey's The Changing Room' The Spectator on Toast 'Cunningly effective' The Times on Mr England 'A brilliant black satire that plays on an Ortonesque reversal of values. Bean distributes deftly crafted, razor-sharp lines among a cast of characters who would sooner snort them than deliver them.' The Guardian on Smack Family Robinson

This collection of essays examines the contribution of British plays to key social, political, and intellectual debates since 2000. It explores some of the most pressing concerns that have dominated the public discourse in Britain in the last decade, focusing on their representation in dramatic texts. Each essay provides an in-depth analysis of one play, assessing its particular contribution to the debate in question. The book aims to show how contemporary drama has developed unique ways to present the complexities and ambiguities of certain issues with aesthetic as well as emotional appeal.

The Private misses the farm. The Captain dreams of painting. The Corporal relishes the fight. And a hundred years later, The Woman seeks to understand. 1916 – In the darkness of the French night, three young soldiers, a private, a corporal and a captain, cross no man's land towards the enemy trench. Stealth is key to their survival and so they walk in silence, with nothing to communicate the thoughts in their heads save for the barest of gestures. 2014 – A woman goes on a day trip to visit the touristic monuments commemorating the Battle of the Somme at Vimy Ridge and the Loghnagar Crater – the site of a mine explosion that killed over 6,000 people – where she encounters remembrance, restaurants and bright, themed gift shops. Each Slow Dusk is a startling play about action, humanity, and the legacy of war. Immersing you in the reality of conflict through vivid, thrilling detail, it gives you a fresh way of thinking about war – from the past soldiers' perspective to the woman's present-day experience. Each Slow Dusk was published to coincide with the first production and national tour of the play by Pentabus Rural Theatre Company, in autumn, 2014.