Noises Off is not one play but two - simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage farce that develops during Nothing On's final rehearsal and tour. The two farces begin to interlock, as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage, and exit from that only to make their entrances back into Nothing On. In the end, at the disastrous final performance in Stockton-on-Tees, the two farces can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into one single collective nervous breakdown. Noises Off won both the Evening Standard and the Olivier Awards for Best Comedy when it was first produced, and ran in the West End for nearly five years. Michael Frayn's most recent play, Copenhagen, won both the Evening Standard Best Play Award in London and the Tony Best Play Award in New York.

This revised Student Edition includes an introduction by Bess Rowen, Visiting Assistant Professor at Villanova University, US, which looks in particular at the play's treatment of rape, vulnerable people, mental institutions (especially in connection to Williams's own family), sexuality and sexual desire. A Streetcar Named Desire shows a turbulent confrontation between traditional values in the American South - an old-world graciousness and beauty running decoratively to seed - set against the rough-edged, aggressive materialism of the new world. Through the vividly characterised figures of Southern belle Blanche Dubois, seeking refuge from physical ugliness in decayed gentility, and her brutal brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski, Tennessee Williams dramatises his sense of the South's past as still active and often destructive in modern America. METHUEN DRAMA STUDENT EDITIONS are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. A well as the complete text of the play itself, this volume contains: * A chronology of the play and the playwright's life and work * An introductory discussion of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play was originally conceived and created * A succinct overview of the creation processes followed and subsequent performance history of the piece * An analysis of, and commentary on, some of the major themes and specific issues addressed by the text * A bibliography of suggested primary and secondary materials for further study

Edited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. Shakespeare's Macbeth is one of the greatest tragic dramas the world has known. Macbeth himself, a brave warrior, is fatally impelled by supernatural forces, by his proud wife, and by his own burgeoning ambition. As he embarks on his murderous course to gain and retain the crown of Scotland, we see the appalling emotional and psychological effects on both Lady Macbeth and himself. The cruel ironies of their destiny are conveyed in poetry of unsurpassed power. In the theatre, this tragedy remains perennially engrossing.

A play set in contemporary London where the Feigel family harbours an asylum-seeker and grapples with the morality of the law and protecting ones’ family.

Rosa and Ben Feigel are a cosmopolitan progressive, dynamic, inter-racial North London couple. Rosa is the daughter of black South African exiles, Ben is of Jewish decent - the son of a man who escaped to the UK on Kindertransport. Their adored teenage son Oliver - full of political conviction, which his parents have encouraged - has hidden his closest friend, Imran, an asylum-seeking teenager from an unnamed country, in their home. When Ben and Rosa find out, they realise they are faced with just two options: turn the child over to the authorities knowing that he will be sent back to a dangerous country, or help him to hide and endanger themselves.

A bitter argument erupts between the Feigels about the morality of the law, the limits of empathy, what we will do to protect those we love, and what we might sacrifice for strangers. Hold Still is a vivid, deeply aff ecting portrait of a long-term marriage, and a family shaped by intergenerational trauma.