Pornography looks at the events of the first week of July 2005 (the G8 summit, Live 8, the announcement of the 2012 Olympics and the 7/7 bombings) through the perspectives of eight anonymous individuals, including a terrorist. The play can be performed by any number of actors with the scenes presented in any order. This flexibility means that it is ideal for student groups: containing four monologues, two duologues and fifty-two self-contained anecdotal speeches.
This Student Edition offers a study of the meaning, context and performance choices available in this subtle and...

Written during the 1970s, John McGrath's winding, furious, innovative play tracks the economic history and exploitation of the Scottish Highlands from the post-Rebellion suppression of the clans to the story of the Clearances: in the nineteenth century, aristocratic landowners discovered the profitability of sheep farming, and forced a mass emigration of rural Highlanders, burning their houses in order to make way for the Cheviot sheep. The play follows the thread of capitalist and repressive exploitation through the estates of the stag-hunting landed gentry, to the 1970s rush for profit...

The only difference between me and the people judging me is they weren't smart enough to do what we did.

One of the most infamous scandals in financial history becomes a theatrical epic. At once a case study and an allegory, the play charts the notorious rise and fall of Enron and its founding partners Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who became 'the most vilified figure from the financial scandal of the century.'

This Student Edition features expert and helpful annotation, including a scene-by-scene summary, a detailed commentary on the dramatic, social and political...

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...

Written specifically for GCSE students by academics in the field, the Methuen Drama GCSE Student Editions provide in-depth explanatory material alongside the play texts frequently studied at Key Stage 4.

Whether for use in the classroom or independent study, these editions offer a fully comprehensive and lightly glossed play text with accompanying notes specifically directed towards readers of this age, which unravel essential topics and challenge all students to delve further into literary analysis.

A well established modern classic, Willy Russell's Blood Brothers...

Written specifically for GCSE students by academics in the field, the Methuen Drama GCSE Student Editions provide in-depth explanatory material alongside the play texts frequently studied at Key Stage 4.

Whether for use in the classroom or independent study, these editions offer a fully comprehensive and lightly glossed play text with accompanying notes specifically directed towards readers of this age, which unravel essential topics and challenge all students to delve further into literary analysis.

In Simon Stephens's multi-award-winning stage adaptation of The Curious...

Everything human beings do finishes up bad in the end. Everything good human beings ever make is built on something monstrous. Nothing lasts. We certainly won't . . .

William Carlisle has the world at his feet, but its weight on his shoulders. He is intelligent, articulate and f***ed. In the library of a grammar school, William and his fellow sixth-formers are preparing for their mock A-Levels while navigating the pressures of teenage life. They are educated and aspirational young people, but step-by-step, the dislocation, disjunction and latent aggression is...

But that's what this is, isn't it? The ultimate bitch fight.

When John takes a break from his boyfriend, his accidentally meets the girl of his dreams. Filled with guilt and indecision, he decides there is only one way to straighten this out . . .

Mike Bartlett's metrosexual play about love and longing provides us with questions of who we are and who we want to be. John's refusal to fix his identity disturbs and disrupts the lives of those around him in this contemporary tale of sex without nudity and struggle without violence. Mike Bartlett's punchy story takes a...

'One of the best plays ever written about the First World War'
GUARDIAN

'To say that it leaves you emotionally shattered feels like an insult to those bygone souls and the horrors the faced, but quietly shattering it is, all the same'
DAILY TELEGRAPH

A battalion of 1,000 young men raised in 1914 from volunteers in the Accrington area of East Lancashire go to war. They are destined to see their first real action on 1st July 1916 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, still regarded as the greatest British military disaster with huge loss of life. Not...

Woza Albert is one of the most popular and influential plays to have come out of the South African cultural struggle of the 1980s and a central work in the canon of South African theatre. Working with the idea of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ taking place in apartheid South Africa, the original authors improvised a brilliant two-man show consisting of 26 vignettes, commenting on and satirising life under the apartheid regime.

This Student Edition contains a commentary and notes by Temple Hauptfleisch, Emeritus Professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. It offers...