Harley Granville Barker – författare

No one in Barker's generation did more to change British Theatre In The Voysey Inheritance, a young man deals with the discovery that the inheritence due to him has been mismanaged by his own parents; A Waste (banned by the Lord Chamberlain) deals with a young man's life thrown away; The Secret Life is a portrait of spendthrift, indolent Edwardian aristocracy; Rococo is a one-act farce set in a vicarage and Vote by Ballot shows the teething troubles of mass democracy.

No one in Barker's generation did more to change British Theatre The Marrying of Ann Leete, is thinly veiled costume drama, using an 18th century tale to reflect on 19th century reality, it follows the story of Ann a "new woman", surrounded by a society of manoeuvres and lies; The Madras House follows the fortunes of the Madras family at the height of Edwardian expansion of London and the reformation of ideas about society and gender roles; His Majesty is the fictional story of the king of a cash-strapped Eastern European country where naive make-believe meets the dark universe of realpolitik; Farewell to the Theatre is a witty commentary on the trials and tribulations of a theatre and its actors.

Financial chicanery and ethical conflict in early twentieth-century classic being revived at the National Theatre Edward's highly principled world is turned upside down when his father reveals that he has been illegally speculating with clients' money. To make matters worse, he soon discovers his large, scandal-fearing family would perpetuate the crime rather than risk public dishonour. 'Of course it's pleasant and comfortable to keep within the law ...then the law will look after you. Otherwise you have to look pretty sharp after yourself. You have to cultivate your own sense of right and wrong ...deal with your own justice. But that makes a bigger man of you, let me tell you.' This magnificently observed, hugely enjoyable portrait of an upper-middle-class family was written by the father of 20th-century British theatre, Harley Granville Barker, ten years before the First World War finally sent old values flying.The play was first staged at the Court Theatre, London, in 1904. It opens at the Royal National Theatre on 18 April 2006.

Harley Granville Barker, one of the most versatile figures in twentieth-century theatre, was the leader of the campaign to reform the English stage in the Edwardian period. His work as an actor, director, playwright, and manager set new standards of production and gave Shaw his first successful showings; his later career as a critic, after he abandoned the stage, opened new interpretations of Shakespeare and led the way to the establishment of a national theatre. This volume presents three of Granville Barker's best plays: The Marrying of Ann Leete (about a young woman rebelling against convention), The Voysey Inheritance (digging at middle-class hypocrisy), and Waste (banned by the Lord Chamberlain, the tragedy of a politician caught in a sexual trap). Written between 1899 and 1907, and collected here for the first time in a scholarly edition, they reveal Barker as an exciting, subtle and innovative dramatist.