"Vintage Stoppard in its intelligence and wit." --VarietyIt is 1936, and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the river Styx, glad to be dead at last--yet his memories are dramatically alive. Confronting his younger self from the vantage of death, Housman thinks back to the man he loved, who could not return his feelings, and considers the Oxford of his youth, suffused with the flamboyant influence of the Wildean Aesthetic movement and the restrictions of High Victorian morality. Winner of the Evening Standard's Best Play Award, The Invention of Love inhabits Housman's imagination as if a dream, illuminating both the pain of hopeless love and the passion displaced into poetry.

Anonymous
In Elizabethan England, political intrigue abounds as the Tudors and the Cecils battle it out over the succession of Queen Elizabeth I (Joely Richardson/Vanessa Redgrave), and the Essex Rebellion mobilises against her. Enter the dashing and wildly talented Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Jamie Campbell Bower/Rhys Ifans), who not only fathers an illegitimate son in a clandestine incestuous relationship with Queen Elizabeth, but is also the secret author of the plays labeled with the name of William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall).

Shakespeare in Love
Young Will Shakespeare is the up-and-coming playwright of the time but has been disastrously struck by the bane of the writer's life - writer's block. His comedy "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter" is not going anywhere and the playhouse is under threat of closure. What Will needs is a muse - and she appears in the form of the beautiful (and betrothed) Lady Viola. The path of true love doesn't run smooth for Will, however - Viola is engaged to be married to the insufferable Lord Wessex at the command of Queen Elizabeth. The joys and tragedy of his own life soon find their way onto the page in a moving, witty and spellbinding tale.

Let others sing of war and a hero buffeted by fate. I sing of marriage and a marriage bed, and the endurance of love. With an introduction by the author, this is Tom Stoppard in the voice of Odysseus's wife recalling how the Trojan War 'took away my husband for ten years, and ten more coming the long way home', and Odysseus's dramatic arrival back on Ithaca. Weaving Homeric tropes with the wry wit of a woman of our time, Penelope tells this still vibrant love story from the oldest poem in Western literature.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, a city humming with artistic and intellectual excitement. Stoppard’s epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptized Jew married to Catholic Gretl, whose extended family convene at their fashionable apartment on Christmas Day in 1899. Yet by the time the play closes, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, which stole the lives of 65,000 Austrian Jews alone. From one of today’s most acclaimed playwrights, Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama of literary brilliance, historical verisimilitude, and powerful emotion.

Finally making its Broadway debut in a limited engagement run, Tom Stoppard's humane and heartbreaking Olivier Award-winning play of love, family, and enduranceAt the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, a city humming with artistic and intellectual excitement. Stoppard's epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptized Jew married to Catholic Gretl, whose extended family convene at their fashionable apartment on Christmas Day in 1899. Yet by the time the play closes, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, which stole the lives of 65,000 Austrian Jews alone. From one of today's most acclaimed playwrights, Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama of literary brilliance, historical verisimilitude, and powerful emotion.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a play which, as it were, takes place in the wings of Hamlet, and finds both humour and poignancy in the situation of the ill-fated attendant lords. The National Theatre production in April 1967 made Tom Stoppard's reputation virtually overnight. Its wit, stagecraft and verbal verve remain as exhilarating as they were then and the play has become a contemporary classic.

A new, beautiful updated edition of Tom Stoppard's best-loved play and one of Grove Atlantic's bestselling backlist titles, published with a new introduction by Tom Stoppard to coincide with the 50th anniversary of its debutRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of the most enduring and frequently performed plays of contemporary theater and has firmly established itself in the dramatic canon. Acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, it is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end. Revised and reissued to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the play's first performance, this definitive edition includes a new introduction and previously unpublished ancillary material.

I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. Promising young playwright Will Shakespeare is tormented by writer's block until he finds his muse in the form of passionate noblewoman, Viola De Lesseps. Their forbidden love draws many others, including Queen Elizabeth, into the drama and inspires Will to write the greatest love story of all time, Romeo and Juliet. Based on Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's Oscar-winning screenplay, Lee Hall's stage adaptation of Shakespeare in Love premiered in July 2014 at the Noel Coward Theatre, London, in a co-production by Disney and Sonia Friedman Productions.

"It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them."--Tom Stoppard, Arcadia In a large country house in Derbyshire in April 1809 sits Lady Thomasina Coverly, aged thirteen, and her tutor, Septimus Hodge. Through the window may be seen some of the "five hundred acres inclusive of lake" where Capability Brown's idealized landscape is about to give way to the Gothic style: "everything but vampires," as the garden historian Hannah Jarvis remarks to Bernard Nightingale when they stand in the same room 180 years later. Bernard has arrived to uncover the scandal which is said to have taken place when Lord Byron stayed at Sidley Park. Tom Stoppard's masterful play takes us back and forth between the centuries and explores the nature of truth and time, the difference between the Classical and the Romantic temperament, and the disruptive influence of sex on our orbits in life--"the attraction," as Hannah says, "which Newton left out."

Plays Two:
"The Dissolution of Dominic Boot"
"'M' is for Moon Among Other Things"
"If You're Glad I'll Be Frank"
"Albert's Bridge"
"Where Are They Now?"
"Artist Descending a Staircase"
"The Dog It Was That Died"
"In the Native State"
Introduced by the author, this second collection of work by Tom Stoppard contains his radio plays, written between 1964 and 1991. These plays reflect the full range of Stoppard's gifts as well as his craftsmanship and versatility. His work for radio complements (and sometimes prefigures) his work for the stage.
Included in this volume is "In the Native State," which became the stage play "Indian Ink."
"Albert's Bridge "won the Italia Prize and "In the Native State" won a Sony Award.

Tom Stoppard's reputation as a playwright was made when his dazzling debut, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, opened at the National Theatre. Fifty years later, the play's wit, stagecraft and verbal verve remain as exhilarating as they were in 1967 as the two ill-fated attendant lords from Shakespeare's Hamlet take centre stage, musing on the purpose of existence and its end. This new edition publishes to coincide with a fiftieth anniversary production at The Old Vic, London, and contains a new preface by the author.

Only a year ago, the landowner Nikolai Ivanov was full of energy and optimism, in love with his wife and working hard. Now, for no reason he can understand, Ivanov is overcome with inertia and self-disgust. His wife is dying and he feels nothing. He is drowning in debt and despair, and he does nothing. Is it him? Is it Russia? And is the possibility of happiness with the young woman who loves him just a cruel illusion? Ivanov was the 27-year-old Chekhov's shot at despatching the 'superfluous man' of Russian literature, and in surrounding him with a brilliantly drawn set of provincial types he created some of the best comedy he was ever to write. Ivanov in this version was first presented by the Donmar Warehouse at the Wyndham's Theatre, London, on 12 September 2008.

Flora Crewe, a young poet travelling in India in 1930, has her portrait painted by a local artist. More than fifty years later, the artist's son visits Flora's sister in London while her would-be biographer is following a cold trail in India.

The alternation of place and period in Tom Stoppard's new play (based on his radio play In The Native State) makes for a rich and moving exploration of intimate lives set against one of the great shifts of history, the emergence of the Indian subcontinent from the grip of Europe.

It is 1936 and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the Styx, glad to be dead at last. His memories, however, are dramatically if confusedly alive. The river which flows through Tom Stoppard's play connects Hades with the Oxford of Housman's early manhood where High Victorianism in art, literature and morality is being challenged by the Aesthetic movement and an Irish student called Wilde is preparing to burst on to the London scene... The Invention of Love premiered at the National Theatre, London, in September 1997.

As produced by London's Old Vic and later, New York's BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) in 2009.
Anton Chekhov was a master whose daring work revolutionized theatre. "In The Cherry Orchard," his last full-length play, an impoverished landowning family is unable to face the fact that their estate is about to be auctioned off. Lopakhin, a local merchant, presents numerous options to save it, including cutting down their prized cherry orchard. But the family is stricken with denial. "The Cherry Orchard" charts the precipitous descent of a wealthy family and in the process creates a bold meditation on social change and bourgeois materialism.

Comedy

Tom Stoppard, from an original play by Ferenc Molnar

Characters: 5 male, 1 female

The co authors, the composer and most of the cast of a comedy destined for Broadway are simultaneously trying to finish and rehearse the play while crossing the Atlantic on an ocean liner. Tom Stoppard's hilarious play has been freely adapted from Ferenc Molnar's classic farce Jatek a Kastelyban.

"Adaptation in Stoppard's terms means finding a sympathetic text and using it as a springboard for invention that leaves the original far behind this time, Stoppard has found a totally compatible source, matching his temperament at every point, except in irrepressible high spirits around a] slender central device, he weaves an increasingly amazing pattern of verbal misunderstandings, eccentric character development, showbiz spectacle, and seagoing hazards, all of which come to occupy equal importance in the plot." London Times.

Comedy

Characters: 9 male, 2 female

2 Interior Sets

This clever romp is two short plays. In the first, a troupe of English schoolboys (played by adults) speak in a mock language called "Dogg." This hilarious language babbles along until the schoolboys, who are studying Shakespeare's "foreign" language, present an incredibly funny 15 minute version of Hamlet and then encore with a two-minute version! The second play, dedicated to dissident Czech dramatist Pavel Kohout, is about a performance of Macbeth he and his friends once staged in a living room since the government banned public performances. The action shifts between the bare stage and the police inquiry. The murder and intrigue of Shakespeare's play are juxtaposed with the Czech political harassment.

"The language and the laughter are contagious...Lewis Carroll would have been at home."-The New York Times

"A blend of comic nonsense and astringent political satire." -Christian Science Monitor

Characters: 8 male, 4 female

Unit set.

This play moves back and forth between 1809 and the present at the elegant estate owned by the Coverly family. The 1809 scenes reveal a household in transition. As the Arcadian landscape is being transformed into picturesque Gothic gardens, complete with a hermitage, thirteen year old Lady Thomasina and her tutor delve into intellectual and romantic issues. Present day scenes depict the Coverly descendants and two competing scholars who are researching a possible scandal at the estate in 1809 involving Lord Byron. This brilliant play moves smoothly between the centuries and explores the nature of truth and time, the difference between classical and romantic temperaments, and the disruptive influence of sex on our life orbits the attraction Newton left out.

"Pure entertainment for the heart, mind, soul.... The best Broadway play for many, many a season. It is a work shot through with fun, passion and, yes, genius." N.Y. Post.

"Stoppard's richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and ... emotion. It's like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop the loops.... The playwright is a daredevil pilot who's steady at the controls." N.Y. Times.

"Full of complex ideas and pleasures one expects from this master of dramatic composition." Time Out.

"A dazzling exposition of epigrammatic wit." Daily Express. To learn more about the 2011 Broadway production, visit www.Arcadiabroadway.com.

Winner of the 1995 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play and the 1994 Olivier Award.

"The Coast of Utopia", which can be enjoyed as a whole or as three separate plays, follows a group of young intellectuals from the country houses and cafes of the 1830s, through the European revolutions of 1848-9, to exile in London in the 1850s. The trilogy as a whole tells an epic story of romantics and revolutionaries caught up in the struggle for political freedom in an age of emperors.

The play begins with Max and Charlotte, a couple whose marriage seems about to rupture. But nothing one sees on a stage is the real thing, and some things are less real than others. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage by her husband, Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie. Both marriages are at the point of rupture because Henry and Annie have fallen in love. But is it the real thing?
In "The Real Thing," Tom Stoppard combines his characteristically brilliant wordplay and wit with flashes of insight that illuminate the nature--and the mystery--of love, creating a multi-toned play that challenges the mind while searching out the innermost secrets of the heart.

In this meeting of two of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights. Tom Stoppard has reinvigorated Luigi Pirandello's masterpiece of madness and sanity. After a fall from his horse, an Italian aristocrat believes he is the obscure medieval German emperor Henry IV. After twenty years of living this royal illusion, his beloved appears with a noted psychiatrist to shock the madman back to sanity. Their efforts expose that for the past twelve years the nobleman has in fact been sane. With his mask of madness unveiled, the aristocrat launches an offensive to deflect their unwanted attention. While Pirandello's characters race linguistically about in Stoppardian dervishes, battling for the upper hand--and the greatest laughs--one question emerges: What constitutes sanity?

Professor Leopold Nettles, the "hero" of Largo Desolato, is the author of a book that contains a troublesome paragraph laying him open to arrest on charges of "disturbing the intellectual peace." Pressed by the government to recant, Nettles is tor tured--by internal demons as well as external ones. Vaclav Havel has created a vivid and terrifying portrait of the writer in the totalitarian state that is as real and immediate as today's headlines.

Introduced by Stoppard, this third collection of plays contains his television plays, written between 1965 and 1984. They show that Stoppard's writing for the small screen is comparable to his more celebrated stage work, as the masterly and timely Professional Foul demonstrates. In his introduction the author briefly describes how the pieces came to be written and the circumstances of their original production.