There's a million in the middle - and they might go either way. On May 22nd, 2015, the people of Ireland voted resoundingly for marriage equality - making Ireland the first country in the world to introduce gay marriage by popular vote. Little about Ireland's 20th-century history suggested that the country would find itself at the vanguard of LGBT+ rights. "Homosexual conduct may lead a mildly homosexually-orientated person into a way of life from which he may never recover," warned the Irish Supreme Court in 1982. Homosexuality remained criminalised till 1993. But a long, hard fight by determined activists, as well as the individual efforts and sacrifices of thousands of ordinary people, gradually made the case for gay rights and, eventually, marriage equality. Colin Murphy's documentary drama, based on interviews by the journalist Charlie Bird, charts the arc of that fight - culminating in the fervour of the final campaign weeks - interwoven with the personal stories of some of those who were touched by it. This edition was published to coincide with the presentation of A Day in May at Dublin's Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire, in October 2022.

The definitive guide to Moliere's world and his afterlife, this is an accessible contextual guide for academics, undergraduates and theatre professionals alike. Interdisciplinary and diverse in scope, each chapter offers a different perspective on the social, cultural, intellectual, and theatrical environment within which Moliere operated, as well as demonstrating his subsequent impact both within France and across the world. Offering fresh insight for those working in the fields of French Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies and French History, Moliere in Context is an exceptional tribute to the premier French dramatist on the 400th anniversary of his birth.

Finding the theatre of the 1920s lacking in bite and conviction, Thornton Wilder set out to bring back realism and to celebrate the innocent, simple and religious. Yet he also tried to endow individual experience with cosmic significance and Our Town is both an affectionate portrait of American life and 'an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life'. The Skin of our Teeth deals with human survival in a 'comic strip' way, and The Matchmaker is a hilarious farce which urges rebellion against all the constraints that deny a rich, full life.

In 1934, the people of Inishmaan learn that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighbouring island to film his documentary Man of Aran. No one is more excited than Billy, an unloved and crippled boy whose chief occupation has been gazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank. As news of his audacity ripples through his rumour-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a world so comically cramped and mean-spirited that hope is an affront to its order. With this bleak yet uproariously funny play, Martin McDonagh fulfilled the promise of his award-winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane while confirming his place in a tradition that extends from Synge to O'Casey and Brendan Behan. This Student Edition, complete with plot summary and scholarly notes, is edited by Dr. P.J. Mathews of University College Dublin.

The life of fifteenth-century heroine Joan of Arc is the stuff of legend, and her cruel death (burnt at the stake aged just nineteen) led to her being declared a martyr, granting her an impressive legacy. Following her canonisation in 1920, and against a history of overly romanticised retellings of the story, Bernard Shaw put pen to paper to give a more accurate account, without resorting to demonising her persecutors; as he writes in his preface, 'there are no villains in the piece'. It was an immediate success, securing him the Nobel Prize for Literature, although critics were initially divided by this frank approach - T.S. Eliot was outraged, saying, 'instead of the saint or the strumpet of the legends... he has turned her into a great middle-class reformer.' Nonetheless - or perhaps even because of this controversy - Saint Joan is considered one of Bernard Shaw's finest and most important plays. This edition has an introduction by Simon Mundy, who has spent several years as Vice-President of PEN International's Writers for Peace Committee, and extensive explanatory notes.

Four millennials looking for sex, love and a well-located flat find themselves caught in a complex game of rivalry, desire and seduction. As the cost of happiness soars, how can they negotiate the new rules of modern relationships and win the game of love? Games for Lovers is a glittering modern rom-com with a wicked gleam in its eye.

An insomniac is watching TV in a language he doesn't understand; a woman is stood in a garden stretching her arms to the sky. The whole world is asleep and something extraordinary is about to happen. No One Is Coming to Save You is the hypnotic story of two young lives lived in social, political and economic fear. Hopeful new writing for the

A Liverpudlian West Side Story: twin brothers are separated at birth because their mother cannot afford to keep them both. She gives one of them away to wealthy Mrs Lyons and they grow up as friends in ignorance of their fraternity until the inevitable quarrel unleashes a blood-bath.

'Willy Russell is less concerned with political tub-thumping than with weaving a close-knit story about the working of fate and destiny ... it carries one along with it in almost unreserved enjoyment" "Guardian"

One of the longest-running and most successful ever West End musicals, "Blood Brothers" premiered at the Liverpool Playhouse in January 1983.

My son is dead and sitting on the throne. 1605. Orthodox Russia stands alone, defiant against the Roman Catholic and Protestant West. The Kremlin has suppressed all opposition and keeps a ruthless grip on power with the support of the church and an appeal to nationalist sentiment. In Poland, a formidable young opponent appears: Dmitry. At his back a Polish army fuelled by fear of the Russian threat marches on Moscow. But is he who he thinks he is? An explosive new version of the great German writer Schiller's last, unfinished play - resurrected in the unique, pulsating dramatic verse of Peter Oswald, which premiered in the original production directed by Tim Supple. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Marylebone Theatre in London, in September 2022.

Max de Winter brings his shy young bride to Manderley, his great house in Cornwall. Everywhere, she senses the overpowering presence of Rebecca, Max's drowned wife. Mrs Danvers, the grim housekeeper, will not allow her to forget her shortcomings. She doubts Max's love until Rebecca's body is found. Max confesses that he murdered Rebecca, hating her depravity. The husband and wife now face the exciting fight to save Max from the gallows.3 women, 8 men

"It's not always children's stories that happen to children." When the men come to drive her away, Youmna cuts off Nour's hair. And so begins one girl's journey. By bus, by lorry, into the sound of gun-shots, through adolescence and across borders. The UK premiere of Estelle Savasta's critically acclaimed French play Traversee, Going Through is a bold play about the realities of child migration, combining English, BSL and Creative Captioning.

This new supernatural thriller is set in a theatre that has been closed for sixty years following the accidental death of a child during rehearsals for Murder by Poison, a Victorian thriller. Now Micky, the great-grandson of the theatre's original owner, has set about restoring the theatre to the glory of its former heyday, and to cap his plans he's intent on reviving the very same play to re-open the renovated theatre. Only Micky's elderly and eccentric father William knows the truth of what happened all those years ago. He tries to warn Micky that the play is doomed and urges him to abandon his plans, but Micky ignores the warning - and as rehearsals progress, unusual and mysterious occurrences begin to mount with deadly and terrifying consequences.

With an Introduction and Notes by Anne Varty, Royal Holloway, University of London. Oscar Wilde took London by storm with his first comedy, Lady Windermere's Fan. The combination of dazzling wit, subtle social criticism, sumptuous settings and the theme of a guilty secret proved a winner, both here and in his next three plays, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and his undisputed masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest. This volume includes all Wilde's plays from his early tragedy Vera to the controversial Salome and the little known fragments, La Sainte Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy. The edition affords a rare chance to see Wilde's best known work in the context of his entire dramatic output, and to appreciate plays which have hitherto received scant critical attention. Wilde's plays have never failed to delight audiences and are a lasting testimony to their author's supreme wit and theatrical genius.

She can't stay awake. She sold drugs. She's good at interrogations. She drinks in the mornings. She ate a rabbit. She smashed up a shop. She stabbed a man. She used a hammer. She had a baby. She can't find her mother. She's covered in blood and doesn't know why. Alice Birch's heartbreaking new play reaches across society to explore the impact of the criminal justice system on women and their families.

Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, and Saint Joan are widely considered to be three of the most important in the canon of modern British theatre. Pygmalion (1912) was a world-wide smash hit from the time of its premiere in Vienna 1913 and it has remained popular to this day. Shaw was awarded an Academy Award in 1938 for his screenplay of the film adaptation. It was, of course, later made into the much-loved musical My Fair Lady. Heartbreak House (1917), which was finally performed in 1920 and published in 1921, bares the hallmarks of European modernism and a formal break from Shaw's previous work. A meditation on the war and the resultant decline in European aristocratic culture, it was perhaps staged too soon after the conflict; indeed, it did not have the success of his earlier works, which was likely due to his experimental aesthetics combined with a war-weary audience that sought lighter fare. However, while this contemporary reception was muted, it is now recognised as a modernist masterpiece. Saint Joan (1923) marked Shaw's resurrection and apotheosis. The first major work written of Joan of Arc after her canonization (1920), the play interrogates the origins of European nationalism in the post-war era. Like Pygmalion, it was an immediate world-wide hit and secured Shaw the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Drawing upon the transcripts of Joan's trial, Shaw blended his trademark wit to produce a hybrid genre of comedy and history play. Despite the historical setting, Saint Joan is highly accessible and continues to delight audiences.

An eye for an eye. It's very simple. You choose your homeland like a hyena picking and choosing where he steals his next meal from. Scavenger. Yes you grovel to the feet of Mengistu and when his people spit at you and kick you from the bowl you scuttle across the border. Scavenger. As a violent civil war rages back home, teenager Alem and his father are in a B&B in Berkshire. It's his best holiday ever. The next morning his father is gone and has left a note explaining that he and his mother want to protect Alem from the war. This strange grey country of England is now his home. On his own, and in the hands of the social services and the Refugee Council, he lives from letter to letter, waiting to hear something from his father. Then Alem meets car-obsessed Mustapha, the lovely 'out of your league' Ruth and dangerous Sweeney - three unexpected allies who spur him on as Alem fights to be seen as more than just the Refugee Boy. Based on the novel by Benjamin Zephaniah, Refugee Boy is an urgent story of a courageous African boy sent to England to escape the violent civil war, a story about arriving, belonging and finding 'home'.

Published in 1993: The first modern scholarly edition of the author's play, not published until 1778. Sebastian reclaims his betrothed from Antonio; the Duchess avenges herself on the Duke for making her drink from her father; and Abberzanes and Francesca have an illicite affair. The witches are credible forces of evil.

Originally published in 1984, this book contains the full text of I, Sir John Oldcastle, alongside critical and textual notes, including an examination of the authors and the theatrical background and assessment. For such an obscure play, I Sir John Oldcastle has had a varied printing history and has been printed eighteen times since its original 1600 publication date. The text here is a modern-spelling version and archaic forms are only presered where rhyme or metre requires them, or when modernization obscres rather than clarifies the required sense of the word.

This compilation of Isaac Bickerstaff's plays was originally compiled and published in 1981, and the plays written in the 1760s-70s. Edited and with an introduction by Peter A. Tasch, the volume contains seven plays: The Captive; He Wou'd if He Cou'd; or, An Old Fool worse than Any; The Recruiting Serjeant; 'Tis Well it's no Worse; The Brickdust-Man and Milk-Maid; The Sultan, or A Peep into the Seraglio; and The Spoil'd Child.

Originally collated and published in 1980, this volume contains the plays of Colley Cibber, edited and with an introduction by Rodney L. Hayley. The book contains The Lady's Last Stake, The Rival Fools, Ximena, The Non-Juror and The Refusal.

This New Mermaids anthology brings together the four most popular and widely studied of Christopher Marlowe's plays: Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and 2, The Jew of Malta, Edward II and Dr Faustus. The new introduction by Brian Gibbons explores the plays in the context of early modern theatre, culture and politics, as well as examining their language, characters and themes. On-page commentary notes guide students to a better understanding and combine to make this an indispensable student edition ideal for study and classroom use from A Level upwards.