Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama, 1880 - 2005

Mary Luckhurst is Senior Lecturer in Modern Drama at the University of York. She is the author of Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre (2006), co-author of The Drama Handbook: A Guide to Reading Plays (2002), and co-editor of Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 1660-2000 (2005). She has also edited The Creative Writing Handbook: Techniques for New Writers (1996), On Directing: Interviews with Directors (1999), and On Acting: Interviews with Actors (2002). She was awarded a University of York outstanding teaching award in 2006 and is also one of the Higher Education Academy's National Teaching Fellows.

"Offers strong and accessible scholarship on major playwrights and aspects of theatrical history and historiography, and usefully reflects on its own practices and agendas, and will be extremely useful to students and theatre scholars." Cercles "A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama 1880-2005 is a much needed intervention in the field, with its substantial coverage of Irish drama and significant essays on the work of women playwrights, as well as solid coverage of the usual suspects. It is profitably innovative in terms of both structure and content. Many volumes with such a coverage remit fail to ever go much beyond the standard canonical playwrights and texts...a ‘must buy’ for all University libraries...this is a volume which will have currency for years to come." New Theatre Quarterly "Luckhurst argues for a reassessment of 'Englishness,' and, accordingly, this companion emphasizes postcolonial and feminist agendas and questions the dominance of urban locales and certain theatrical institutions...combined, the essays provide a necessary reassessment of British and Irish drama." Choice“There is so much valuable material in the book that it is sure to be frequently read and consulted.”Donald Hawes, Reference Reviews

• Acknowledgements xi List of Illustrations xiiNotes on Contributors xiiiIntroduction 1Mary LuckhurstPart I Contexts 51 Domestic and Imperial Politics in Britain and Ireland: The Testimony of Irish Theatre 7Victor Merriman2 Reinventing England 22Declan Kiberd3 Ibsen in the English Theatre in the Fin de Siecle 35Katherine Newey4 New Woman Drama 48Sally LedgerPart II Mapping New Ground, 1900–1939 615 Shaw among the Artists 63Jan McDonald6 Granville Barker and the Court Dramatists 75Cary M. Mazer7 Gregory, Yeats and Ireland’s Abbey Theatre 87Mary Trotter8 Suffrage Theatre: Community Activism and Political Commitment 99Susan Carlson9 Unlocking Synge Today 110Christopher Murray10 Sean O'Casey's Powerful Fireworks 125Jean Chothia11 Auden and Eliot: Theatres of the Thirties 138Robin GrovePart III England, Class and Empire, 1939–1990 15112 Empire and Class in the Theatre of John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy 153Mary Brewer13 When Was the Golden Age? Narratives of Loss and Decline: John Osborne, Arnold Wesker and Rodney Ackland 164Stephen Lacey14 A Commercial Success: Women Playwrights in the 1950s 175Susan Bennett15 Home Thoughts from Abroad: Mustapha Matura 188D. Keith Peacock16 The Remains of the British Empire: The Plays of Winsome Pinnock 198Gabriele GriffinPart IV Comedy 21117 Wilde's Comedies 213Richard Allen Cave18 Always Acting: Noel Coward and the Performing Self 225Frances Gray19 Beckett's Divine Comedy 237Katharine Worth20 Form and Ethics in the Comedies of Brendan Behan 247John Brannigan21 Joe Orton: Anger, Artifice and Absurdity 258David Higgins22 Alan Ayckbourn: Experiments in Comedy 269Alexander Leggatt23 'They Both Add up to Me': The Logic of Tom Stoppard's Dialogic Comedy 279Paul Delaney24 Stewart Parker's Comedy of Terrors 289Anthony RochePart V War and Terror 29925 AWounded Stage: Drama and World War I 301Mary Luckhurst26 Staging 'the Holocaust' in England 316John Lennard27 Troubling Perspectives: Northern Ireland, the 'Troubles' and Drama 329Helen Lojek28 On War: Charles Wood's Military Conscience 341Dawn Fowler and John Lennard29 Torture in the Plays of Harold Pinter 358Mary Luckhurst30 Sarah Kane: From Terror to Trauma 371Steve WatersPart VI Theatre since 1968 38331 Theatre since 1968 385David Pattie32 Lesbian and Gay Theatre: All Queer on the West End Front 398John Deeney33 Edward Bond: Maker of Myths 409Michael Patterson34 John McGrath and Popular Political Theatre 419Maria DiCenzo35 David Hare and Political Playwriting: Between the Third Way and the Permanent Way 429John Deeney36 Left in Front: David Edgar's Political Theatre 441John Bull37 Liz Lochhead: Writer and Re-Writer: Stories, Ancient and Modern 454Jan McDonald38 'Spirits that Have Become Mean and Broken': Tom Murphy and the 'Famine' of Modern Ireland 466Shaun Richards39 Caryl Churchill: Feeling Global 476Elin Diamond40 Howard Barker and the Theatre of Catastrophe 488Chris Megson41 Reading History in the Plays of Brian Friel 499Lionel Pilkington42 Marina Carr: Violence and Destruction: Language, Space and Landscape 509Cathy Leeney43 Scrubbing up Nice? Tony Harrison's Stagings of the Past 519Richard Rowland44 The Question of Multiculturalism: The Plays of Roy Williams 530D. Keith Peacock45 Ed Thomas: Jazz Pictures in the Gaps of Language 541David Ian Rabey46 Theatre and Technology 551Andy LavenderIndex 563