A Methuen Student Edition of Chekhov's classic play in Michael Frayn's acclaimed translation 'The play has been flooded with light, like a room with the curtains drawn back' John Peter, Sunday Times 'The direct simplicity of this new translation ... uncovers not only the nerve endings of Chekhov's restless malcontents but also their comic absurdities. It is, as he always intended, actually funny ...' Jack Tinker, Daily Mail When it opened in St Petersburg in 1896, The Seagull survived only five performances after a disastrous first night. Two years later it was revived by Nemirovich-Danchenko at the newly-founded Moscow Art Theatre with Stanslasky as Trigorin and was an immediate success. Checkhov's description of the play was characteristically self-mocking: "A comedy - 3F, 6M, four acts, rural scenery (a view over a lake); much talk of literature, little action, five bushels of love". Michael Frayn's translation was commissioned by the Oxford Playhouse Company.

This volume includes The Seagull, a about the battle for power between a mother and her son which ends in tragedy; Uncle Vanya tells of two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere, and a flirtation that brings disaster; Three Sisters in which three siblings wrestle with their futures and The Cherry Orchard where the old must inevitably give way to the new. Haunting and elusive, these four great late masterpieces have found in Michael Frayn a translator who perfectly captures their delicate balance of the tragic and the absurd. The volume also contains four of Chekhov's early short 'vaudevilles' as well as a substantial introduction by Michael Frayn. "The critical clamour for a Complete Chekhov in Michael Frayn's translation has borne fruit" (Sunday Times)

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.

"Stage Directions" covers half a lifetime and the whole range of Frayn's theatrical writing, right up to a new piece about his latest play, "Afterlife". It is also a reflection on his path into theatre: the 'doubtful beginnings' of his childhood, his subsequent scorn as a young man and, surprisingly late in life, his reluctant conversion. Whatever subjects he tackles, from the exploration of the atomic nucleus to the mechanics of farce, Michael Frayn is never less than fascinating, delightfully funny and charming. This book encapsulates a lifetime's work and is guaranteed to be a firm favourite with his legions of fans around the world.

For more than 25 years, York Notes have been helping students throughout the UK to get the inside track on the written word. Firmly established as the nation's favourite and most comprehensive range of literature study guides, each and every York Note has been carefully researched and written by experts to make sure that you get the most wide-ranging critical analysis, the most detailed commentary and the most helpful key points and checklists. York Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to English Literature. Written by established literature experts, they introduce students to a more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.

'The funniest book in the English language .' Richard Osman Michael Frayn's classic novel is set in the crossword and nature notes department of an obscure national newspaper during the declining years of Fleet Street, where John Dyson dreams wistfully of fame and the gentlemanly life - until one day his great chance of glory at last arrives. Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award and Skios, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. 'Still ranks with Evelyn Waugh's Scoop as one of the funniest novels about journalists ever written.' Sunday Times 'A sublimely funny comedy about the ways newspapers try to put lives into words.' Spectator

In 1941, German physicist Werner Heisenberg went to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr. Together they had revolutionized atomic science in the 1920s, but now they were on opposite sides of a world war. In this incisive drama by the prominent British playwright which premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London and opened to rave reviews on Broadway (ultimately winning the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play), the two men meet in a situation fraught with danger in hopes of discovering why we do what we do.

A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live the only immediate signs of the Second World War are the blackout at night and a single random bombsite. But the two boys start to suspect all is not as it seems when one day Keith announces a disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family. And when the secret underground world they have dreamed up emerges from the shadows they find themselves engulfed in mysteries far deeper and more painful than they had bargained for. Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award.

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 'Good God, thought Oliver, as he saw the smile. She thinks I'm him! And all at once he knew it was so. He was Dr Norman Wilfred.' On the sunlit Greek island of Skios, the Fred Toppler Foundation's annual lecture is to be given by Dr Norman Wilfred, the world-famous authority on the scientific organisation of science. He turns out to be surprisingly young and charming - not at all the intimidating figure they had been expecting. The Foundation's guests are soon eating out of his hand. So, even sooner, is Nikki, the attractive and efficient organiser. Meanwhile, in a remote villa at the other end of the island, Nikki's old school-friend Georgie waits for the notorious chancer she has rashly agreed to go on holiday with, and who has only too characteristically failed to turn up. Trapped in the villa with her, by an unfortunate chain of misadventure, is a balding old gent called Dr Norman Wilfred, who has lost his whereabouts, his luggage, his temper and increasingly all normal sense of reality - everything he possesses apart from the flyblown text of a well-travelled lecture on the scientific organisation of science... And as the time draws ever nearer for one or other Dr Wilfred - or possibly both - to give the eagerly awaited lecture, so Skios - Greece - Europe - career off their appointed track. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Skios is a story of mislaid identity, misdirected passion and miscalculated consequences. Michael Frayn is also the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His other bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award.

Comprising four one-act comic vaudevilles and four short stories adapted for the stage by Michael Frayn, The Sneeze introduces readers to a less familiar selection of work by one of the greatest precursors of modern drama. First published in 1989, this reissue includes The Sneeze; The Alien Corn; The Bear; The Evils of Tobacco; The Inspector-General; Swan Song; The Prospect, and Plots. Michael Frayns translations of Chekhovs work marry the expertise of the translator with the innate understanding of a master dramatist and are widely regarded as the truest, most authentic renderings of Chekhovs work: His keen imaginative sympathy with the great Russian dramatist extends beyond translation ...But translation is an art at which he excels. Spectator

John Garrard is a successful manufacturer who is driven by a compulsion to use and consume the world and the people around him. He is briefly intensely curious about everything he comes across, particularly other people's worlds: their religious beliefs, their sexual and artistic yearnings and their feelings about him. During one climactic night amid the hectic activities of a trade fair in Germany, it looks as if he will be forced to turn his sharp eyes upon himself and come face to face at last with silence and darkness.2 women, 11 men

Characters: 6 male, 2 female, plus extras (w/doubling)Multiple Sets

A man who has everything. Money, friends, a beautiful home. And then - pfft It's all vanished. Max Reinhardt, one the greatest impresarios of theatrical history, had a lifelong ambition - to dissolve the boundary between theatre and the world it portrays. Each year at the Salzburg Festival he directed a famous morality play, Everyman, about God sending Death to summon a representative of mankind for judgment. The victim he chooses is a man who, like Reinhardt, rejoices in his wealth and all the pleasures that money can buy. Then in 1938 Hitler declares his own day of reckoning and sends Death into Austria - whereupon Reinhardt, a Jew, is left as naked and vulnerable as Everyman himself. Michael Frayn's Afterlife is the story of how Reinhardt achieves his great ambition; though in a way he can scarcely have foreseen. "In his seventy-fifth year Michael Frayn has produced a minor masterpiece, and maybe not so minor either. I'd guess Afterlife is the best verse drama in English since T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral..." -New Stateman"A magnificent new play...Frayn exploits to chilling effect the ambiguous border between playing and reality." - Times Literary Supplement"The world premiere of Michael Frayn's Afterlife took place last night at the National Theatre, and it was an absolute firecracker." -New York Sun"Afterlife...Michael Frayn's tremendous new play is a piece of history, ...with sharp style and thrilling clarity" -The New York Times

"Reinhardt describes himself as someone whose goal is to "break the bonds twixt world and dream," and Afterlife obliges him by turning his own story into an "Everyman" drama, a consideration of the transience of life and the inevitably of death, often delivered in rhymed couplets-It's clever and, as you might expect from Mr. Frayn, impeccably executed." - London Theatre Journal

"A funny, witty, thoroughly enjoyable evening with more than a few serious ideas."-WriteWords.com

A collection of short plays Black and SilverCharacters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set In this short, affecting and laughable scene parents are awakened in the middle of the night by the baby. They stumble about trying to pacify the infant. At one point the husband panics because he cannot hear the baby breathing in the cradle, which is only reasonable because the wife has put it on their bed.Mr. FootCharacters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set A tour de force for an actor and actress-- and a foot. It seems the man's foot jiggles uncontrollably at various moments and the woman enjoys discussing this with a little man who isn't there. The New QuixoteCharacters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set A woman on the verge of middle age spent the night in her flat with a 20 year old she met at a party. Now it's Sunday morning and time for her to get on with the business of a new day, but the boy returns with all his records and books. He announces that he has found happiness and intends to stay. He is so sincere that she is swept along in the tide of his new found love. In The Two of Us, ChinamenCharacters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set Two actors play five characters. She has asked a woman, her new hippy boyfriend and some other guests for dinner. He invited the woman's deserted husband. The object is to keep the estranged husband and wife apart. They dine in two different rooms and maneuver the guests so that these two are never in the same room.

"As finely worked as a Swiss watch and as funny as the human condition permits ... the zigzag brilliance of the text as the clunky lines of the farce-within-a-farce rub against the sharp dialogue of reality." The Guardian A play-within-a-play following a touring theatre company who are rehearsing and performing a comedy called Nothing On, results in a riotous double-bill of comedic craft and dramatic skill. Hurtling along at breakneck speed it shows the backstage antics as they stumble through the dress-rehearsal at Weston-super-Mare, then on to a disastrous matinee at Ashton-under-Lyne, followed by a total meltdown in Stockton-on-Tees. Michael Frayn's irresistible, multi-award-winning backstage farce has been enjoyed by millions of people worldwide since it premiered in 1982 and has been hailed as one of the greatest British comedies ever written. Winner of both Olivier and Evening Standard Awards for Best Comedy. This edition features a new introduction by Michael Blakemore.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Headlong begins when Martin Clay, a young would-be art historian, believes he has discovered a missing masterpiece. The owner of the painting is oblivious to its potential and asks Martin to help him sell it, leaving Martin with the chance of a lifetime: if he could only separate the painter from its owner, he would be able to perform a great public service, to make his professional reputation, perhaps even rather a lot of money as well. But is the painting really what Martin believes it to be? As Martin is drawn further into this moral and intellectual labyrinth, events start to spiral out of control . . . Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Whitbread Novel Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, Headlong is an ingeniously comic thriller that follows a young philosophy lectuerer's obsessive race through the art world in search of an elusive masterpiece. Michael Frayn's other novels include Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel award, and Skios, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Eight short playlets, to be performed together in a single evening, examine with hilarity difficulties modern technology has added to life. In Alarms, two couples embark on a dinner party that is doomed to failure as, one by one, labor saving devices and even furniture become hostile. Doubles sees two couples having similar problems in adjacent hotel rooms. In Leavings, the dinner party is revisited to great amusement. In Look Away Now, passengers ignore the airline's safety lecture. Heart to Heart deals with the impossibility of communication at a noisy cocktail party. Glasnost presents a political speech that is sabotaged by a harassed autocue operator. Toasters shows the problems of trying to eat and work standing up at a social function. The last play, Immobiles, is acted out entirely over the phone as a couple try to decide where they should meet their German guests: Gatwick or Heathrow?

Loveable - ex-petty-criminal - Terry runs a small charity organisation called OPEN, which campaigns for the freedom of information. his partner both at work and at weekends is Home Counties divorcee Jaqui who funds the charity from her own pocket and generally organoises the close-knit staff. When Hilary - a Civil Servant - arrives, with a highly-confidential Home Office file detailing the cover-up of a death in police custody, Terry is given a not obe missed opportunity. His increasingly close involvement with Hillary presents him with a personal and professional dilema, and exposes the fact that everyone in the office has something to hide. Originally presented at the Hamstead Thetra, starring Adam Faith, "Now You Know" was adapted from Frayn's own commic novel.

This long-running hit starred Sam Waterston on Broadway as an urban architect whose attempts to improve humanity by the environments he creates, only leads to chaos when the high-rise boom goes bust and two close friends are caught in the cross-hairs.2 women, 2 men

Twenty years after graduation, six former students return to their college for a reunion dinner in this late 1970s riotous farce which takes on the ridiculousness of English propriety. Seeing the reunion as a chance to escape the tedium of family and working life, the group seizes the opportunity for drunken buffoonery and to reminisce about - and relive - their jaunty college days in stuffy, middle-class, white, male Oxbridge college. In classic bedroom farce form, the group gets locked into the college overnight with the much-desired head master's wife and a cabinet minister. They and their high profile guests are flung into one embarrassing situation after another as they chase in and out of multiple bedroom doors, some in their underwear, with misunderstandings and mistaken identities- all the staples of classic farce. Frayn's extraordinary repartee raises the genre to new heights of wit and subtly as the group comedically ponders their varying degrees of success and the role of predestination and free-will in their life choices.

Owen Shorter, professional journalist, and Mara Hill, well known lady novelist, discover at the beginning of the play that they have been sent to Cuba to write for rival color supplements. We follow their progress, together with Ed, an author from Illinois, and their guide, Angel, on their fact finding mission, as they do the obligatory rounds of official visits to sugar cane processing plants, new towns and other industrial show pieces.2 women, 3 men

Designed to meet the requirements for students at IGCSE and A level, this accessible educational edition offers the complete text of Spies with a comprehensive study guide. Highlights of Andrew Bruff's guide include: - detailed analyses of character, setting and theme; - close examination of the novel's plot, structure and narrative techniques; - key quotations and activities both for the student working alone and in the classroom. In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live the only immediate signs of the Second World War are the blackout at night and a single random bomb site. But the two boys start to suspect all is not as it seems when one day Keith announces a disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family. And when the secret underground world they have dreamed up emerges from the shadows they find themselves engulfed in mysteries far deeper and more painful than they had bargained for.

Why not program computers to take over the really dull jobs that human beings have to do - such as praying and behaving morally? At the William Morris Institute of Automation Research they are doing just that to free mankind for the really stimulating and demanding tasks of living today - first and foremost the impending visit of Her Majesty the Queen to open its new wing. . . Michael Frayn is the celebrated author of fifteen plays including Noises Off, Copenhagen and Afterlife. His bestselling novels include Headlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Spies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award and Skios, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Tin Men, his first novel, is now a modern classic. Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award it explores computers, technology and automation with customary humour and wit.

This amusing satire about audiences by the author of Noises Off, Copenhagen and other acclaimed plays takes place in the stalls (orchestra) of a West End theatre. The cast includes an usherette, audience members and a playwright in agony over crinkling candy wrappers, talking out loud, and inattention to his play. The characters in Michael Frayns metatheatrical comedy are actually watching the audience, expecting them to perform, and comedy ensues as Frayn holds a mirror up to the audience and they see their our own foibles as audience members.

'Michael Frayn's tremendous play is a piece of history, an intellectual thriller, a psychological investigation and a moral tribunal in full session' Sunday Times 'A profound and haunting meditation on the mysteries of human motivation' Independent 'Frayn has seized on a ral-life historical and scientific mystery. In 1941 the physicist Werner Heisenberg, who formulated the famous Uncertainty Principle about the movement of particles, and was at that time leading the Nazi's nuclear programme, went to visit his old boss and mentor, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. What was the purpose of his visit to Nazi-occupied Denmark? What did the two old friends say to each other, particularly bearing in mind that Bohr was both half-Jewish and a Danish patriot?...Frayn argues that just as it is impossible to be certain of the precise location of an electron, so it is impossible to be certain about the workings of the human mind...What is certain is that Frayn makes ideas zing and sing in this play' Daily Telegraph