Kategoria BISAC: Drama >> European - General

"Meyer's translations of Ibsen are a major fact in one's general sense of post-war drama. Their vital pace, their unforced insistence on the poetic centre of Ibsen's genius, have beaten academic versions from the field" (George Steiner)

The plays shine freshly from the pages ...This will be our definitive Ibsen." (JC Trewin) This volume contains Ibsen's first great modern prose play and his two last symbolic dramas. The Pillars of Society, written between 1875 and 1877, exhibits many of the classic elements which recur in the subsequent plays - a marriage founded on a lie, women...

The second volume in the series of authoritative Methuen editions of Strindberg's Collected Plays

This volume contains two of Strindberg's best-known plays from the years following his mental breakdown: the expressionist masterpiece A Dream Play (1901), which he described as 'my most beloved play, child of my greatest pain'; and both parts of The Dance of Death (1900), a terrifying analysis of a tormented marriage: 'it leaves an astonishing, an almost unaccountable, impression of genius ... as a beggar's cloak full of holes may have a kind of majestic beauty when the wind fills it,...

Wedekind's expressionist plays influenced the whole course of modern drama

A moralist who wore the mask of an immoralist, Wedekind was the terror of the German bourgeoisie. His work was censored and the original Lulu play was not even published during his lifetime; Wedekind toned it down and adapted it to make two plays: Pandora's Box and Earth-Spirit. The version in this volume, Lulu: A Monster Tragedy, is based on the first manuscript, presenting the original sexually voracious heroine to a British audience for the first time. The volume also contains Spring Awakening, "a work of...

The second collection of plays by Michel Vinaver, one of France's most prominent playwrights

High Places: "A drama which, from second to second, maintains the spectator in suspense, and which, by the same stroke, achieves the dimension of pure, great metaphysical theatre." (Le Monde); The Neighbours " bizarre contemporary vaudeville, biting, disturbing, very subtle and wildly funny" (Le Figaro); Portrait of a Woman: "An intriguing challenging piece." (Financial Times); The Television Programme: "The piece is beautifully plotted and written from the heart." (Independent on Sunday)...

David Lan's new version of one of Chekhov's greatest plays, was commissioned for a co-production between the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Young Vic. Directed by Katie Mitchell, it premiered at the Young Vic, London, in March 1998, a century after its

Uncle Vanya is the first of Chekhov's three great masterpieces. Set on a remote farm in the Ukraine, it tells of two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere, and a flirtation that brings disaster. Written towards the end of the 1890s, it casts a diamond-hard glance towards our century."A notably sharp, bright translation" (The...

This collection contains Gogol's three completed plays

The Government Inspector, which satirises a corrupt society was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest play in the Russian language and is still widely studied in schools and universities: "I resolved to gather into one heap everything that was bad in Russia which I was aware of at that time, all the injustices being perpetrated in those places, and in those circumstances that especially cried out for justice, and tried to hold them all up to ridicule, at one fell swoop." (Nikolai Gogol)

Marriage is a comedy about the business...

One of Eduardo de Filippo's finest Neapolitan comedies

Filumena Domenico is a former Neopolitan prostitute who has had three sons by three different fathers. As her sons become adults Filumena feels the pressing need to become respectable and so she searches for a man to marry her, ensuring legitimacy for her family.
A striking new translation by Timberlake Wertenbaker

First publication in English of France's most successful contemporary playwright

Don Juan on Trial: 'Brilliant dialogue' (Le Figaro); The Visitor: 'An overwhelming triumph ...a masterpiece' (Paris Match); 'Sharp, biting, unexpected and cunning' Le Figaro; Enigma Variations: 'Schmitt...writes with extreme cunning...a brilliant author' (Le Monde); 'Simple, shattering and witty. A play full of surprises' (L'Express); Between Worlds: Schmitt's eighth play is a metaphysical comedy set in the 'Two Worlds Hotel', where those in a coma come to stay while their medical dramas unfold back...

Kenneth McLeish's definitive translations of the most successful French dramatist of the Belle Epoque

Georges Feydau (1862-1921) was the most successful French dramatist of the belle epoque and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest of farce-writers. His series of dazzling hits match high-speed action and dialogue with ingenious plotting. Reaching the heights of farcical lunacy, his plays nevertheless contain touches of barbed social comment and allowed him to mention subjects which would have provoked outrage in the hands of more serious dramatists.

This volume of new,...

A new version of one of the most influential plays of the 20th century

Six people arrive in a theatre during rehearsals for a play. But they are not ordinary people. They are the characters of a play that has not yet been written. Trapped inside a traumatic event from which they long to escape, they desperately need a writer to complete their story and release them. Intrigued by their situation, the director and his company of actors listen as the characters begin to describe and argue over the key events of their lives...One of the most extraordinary and mysterious plays of the...

Kenneth McLeish's definitive translations of the most successful French dramatist of the Belle Epoque

Georges Feydau (1862-1921) was the most successful French dramatist of the belle epoque and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest of farce-writers. His series of dazzling hits matched high-speed action and dialogue with ingenious plotting. Reaching the heights of farcical lunacy, his plays nevertheless contain touches of barbed social comment and allowed him to mention subjects which would have provoked outrage in the hands of more serious dramatists.

This volume...

The first major English language version of a contemporary German classic

A study of the frail, flawed relationship between a middle-aged woman tripe butcher and a loud-mouthed factory worker. Since its 1981 premiere Through the Leaves has been praised as a play that explores the pathos of the inability of two people to relate intimately to each other through conversation. Anthony Vivis' superb translation is published to tie in with the production at the Duchess Theatre in London, starring Simon Callow.
"A contemporary German classic?a beautiful study of two people" Nicolas de...

Arguing that Brecht 's aesthetic theories are still highly relevant today, and that an appreciation of his theory and theatre is essential to an understanding of modern critical theory, this book examines the influence of Brecht 's aesthetic on the pre-eminent materialist critics of the twentieth century: Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Frederic Jameson, Theodor W. Adorno and Raymond Williams.

Re-reading Brecht through the lens of post-structuralism, Sean Carney asserts that there is a Lacanian Brecht and a Derridean Brecht: the result of which is a new Brecht whose...

The representation and experience of embodiment is a central preoccupation of Samuel Beckett's drama, one that he explored through diverse media. McMullan investigates the full range of Beckett's dramatic canon for stage, radio, television and film, including early drama, mimes and unpublished fragments. She examines how Beckett's drama composes and recomposes the body in each medium, and provokes ways of perceiving, conceiving and experiencing embodiment that address wider preoccupations with corporeality, technology and systems of power. McMullan argues that the body in Beckett's drama...

Among the greatest and best known of Ibsen's works, these four plays brilliantly exemplify his landmark contributions to the theater: his realistic dialogue, probing of social problems, and depiction of characters' inner lives as well as their actions. Rich in symbolism and often autobiographical, each of these dramas deals convincingly and provocatively with such universal themes as greed, fear, and sexual hostility, and confronts the eternal conflict between reality and illusion....