Richard Bean – författare

The sixth collection of plays from award-winning playwright Richard Bean, including the world-conquering hit One Man, Two Guvnors, as well as Young Marx, his riotous take on Karl Marx's life in London, which launched London's new Bridge Theatre and The Hypocrite, a historical-farcical romp that lit up Hull's year as City of Culture.One Man, Two GuvnorsBased on Carlo Goldoni’s classic Italian comedy The Servant of Two Masters, sex, food and money are high on the agenda.Winner of the both 2011 Evening Standard Theatre Best New Play & Critic's Circle Best New Play awards.Young MarxCreditors, spies, rival revolutionary factions and prospective seducers of his beautiful wife all circle like vultures. His writing blocked, his marriage dying, his friend Engels in despair at his wasted genius, his only hope is a job on the railway. But there’s still no one in the capital who can show you a better night on the piss than Karl Heinrich Marx.The HypocriteApril 1642. Sir John Hotham, Governor of Hull, is charged by Parliament to secure the arsenal at Hull and deny entry to King Charles I. If only it were that simple. With a Royalist siege outside the city walls and the rebellion of the mob within, Civil War seems inevitable and losing his head more than probable.

What will happen in England after we have won this war?Bunting! Bunting everywhere!After the bunting has been taken down.They will never take down our bunting!July 1940. After an aerial dog fight, Pilot Officer Jack Absolute flies home to win the heart of his old flame, Lydia Languish.Back on British soil, Jack’s advances soon turn to anarchy when the young heiress demands to be loved on her own, very particular, terms.Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s classic comedy of manners, The Rivals, is given an uproarious Battle of Britain update by Richard Bean and Oliver Chris.In 2011, Richard Bean became the first playwright to win the Evening Standard Award for Best Play for two plays, The Heretic and One Man, Two Guvnors. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at the National Theatre, London, in July 2022.

Young Marx is a comedy set in 1850's London, where Karl Marx, is hiding in Dean Street, Soho. Broke and restless, the play portrays the thirty-two-year-old revolutionary as a frothing combination of intellectual brilliance, invective, satiric wit, and child-like emotional illiteracy.Creditors, spies, rival revolutionary factions and prospective seducers of his beautiful wife all circle like vultures. His writing blocked, his marriage dying, his friend Engels in despair at his wasted genius, his only hope is a job on the railway. But there’s still no one in the capital who can show you a better night on the piss than Karl Heinrich Marx.Young Marx aims to demystify Karl Marx, and is full of jokes and farce. It was chosen as the first play at the opening of London's Bridge Theatre in 2017, where it played to critical acclaim.

Fired from his skiffle band, Francis Henshall becomes minder to Roscoe Crabbe, a small time East End hood, now in Brighton to collect £6,000 from his fiancee’s dad. But Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her own dead brother, who’s been killed by her boyfriend Stanley Stubbers. Holed up at The Cricketers’ Arms, the permanently ravenous Francis spots the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with one Stanley Stubbers, who is hiding from the police and waiting to be re-united with Rachel. To prevent discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart.Simple.Based on Carlo Goldoni’s classic Italian comedy The Servant of Two Masters, in this new English version by prize winning playwright Richard Bean, sex, food and money are high on the agenda.

I want theatre to be sweaty, exciting, unpredictable….Mike Bradwell is on a mission to revolutionise British theatre. He’s sick of fancy plays by dead blokes and wants to tell stories about real people, living real lives. And it doesn’t get more real than Hull.In a freezing cold house on Coltman Street, a motley crew of unemployed actors gather to improvise a play with no name, no plot, no budget and no bookings.Richard Bean’s (The Hypocrite, One Man, Two Guvnors) hilarious and irreverent comedy takes us back to the 70s and Hull Truck Theatre’s origin story. It is a roaring combination of comedy, cabaret, farce and drama. Join us for a celebration of where it all began…This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at Hull Truck Theatre in February 2022.

He talks about going to Switzerland, to that place where you pay them to kill you… And I say “go! It’ll do you good. Broaden your horizons…you’ve never been abroad!After sixty years of marriage, happily settled into their retirement village in Yorkshire, Jack and Florence have elevated bickering almost to the status of high art. That said, they’re otherwise getting along fine with the support of a cousin and the hilarious interventions of the man known locally as ‘Rhubarb Eddie’. But will their anxious son, shuttling between London and LA, and their errant daughter, contemplating a move to Australia, leave them to live out their days in peace?Richard Bean’s uproarious new comedy tackles the prickly problem of dealing with ageing parents who just don’t want to be dealt with. This edition was published to coincide the world premiere at London's Hampstead Theatre, in October, 2023.

“‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’ makes dying at sea sound like something noble, patriotic. Whereas their husband, son or father has died for one half of a fish and chip supper…”February 1976. In freezing weather off the coast of Iceland, the sidewinder Graham Greene ices up, heels over, and sinks in seconds, taking fifteen of her crew with her. Such are the realities of the brutal world of arctic fishing. On impulse, despised trawlerowner Donald Claxton flies to Reykjavik to see the survivors, setting in train an evening of drinking, horseplay, romance and storytelling that will change all their lives forever.Richard Bean revisits Hull’s Distant Water trawling fleet that gave him his 2005 hit Under the Whaleback. His other plays include To Have and To Hold, Kiss Me and In the Club at Hampstead, One Man, Two Guvnors and Jack Absolute Flies Again at the National Theatre.

In the southern Pacific Ocean on the remote island of Pitcairn, the infamous mutineers of The Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian (or should it be Titreano?) begin to establish a new society alongside their Tahitian followers. Tensions quickly swell as the British settlers refuse to relinquish the vices of their past. Social, racial and sexual schisms render the once paradisiac island into a hotbed of discord and bloody violence.Pitcairn vividly explores the conflict between personal freedoms and public responsibilities. Pitcairn is Richard Bean’s brutal telling of the colonisation of the remote island of Pitcairn by Fletcher Christian and the Bounty mutineers. The play charts – with salty humour and growing horror – the spiralling descent of the colony from a new Eden of freedom and equality to a brutal dystopia.

Richard Bean’s fast and furious new play is an anarchic and foul-mouthed satire about the press, the police and the political establishment. Paige Britain is the ambitious, morally-bankrupt young news editor of The Free Press, a tabloid newspaper locked in a never-ending battle for more readers.

Dylan isn’t your typical snooker player. He’s a vegetarian, for starters. This is the biggest week of his life and everybody wants a piece of him – his ex-con Dad, local gangster Waxy Chuff and the snooker corruption squad.The Nap is a laugh out loud comedy thriller about love, honour and not getting snookered. It centres around Dylan Spokes, a professional snooker player, born and raised in Sheffield. Dylan is preparing for a big match, but not only are his friends and family getting in the way, but he is visited by police investigating match fixing. The Nap is a farce by award-winning playwright, Richard Bean, with plenty of sharp lines, jokes and an array of hilarious characters. The play includes a live snooker match, with comic commentary. It opened at the Sheffield Crucible in 2016 and later on Broadway by the Manhattan Theatre Club.

A riotous new comedy from award-winning playwright Richard Bean, author of One Man, Two Guvnors.April 1642. Sir John Hotham, Governor of Hull, is charged by Parliament to secure the arsenal at Hull and deny entry to King Charles I. If only it were that simple. With a Royalist siege outside the city walls and the rebellion of the mob within, Civil War seems inevitable and losing his head more than probable.

The new collection from multi-award-winning playwright Richard Bean. Contains the plays, Great Britain, The Nap, Pub Quiz is Life, Pitcairn and Kiss Me.Foreword by Sir Nicholas Hytner.

Dylan isn’t your typical snooker player. He’s a vegetarian, for starters. This is the biggest week of his life and everybody wants a piece of him – his ex-con Dad, local gangster Waxy Chuff and the snooker corruption squad.The Nap is a laugh out loud comedy thriller about love, honour and not getting snookered. It centres around Dylan Spokes, a professional snooker player, born and raised in Sheffield. Dylan is preparing for a big match, but not only are his friends and family getting in the way, but he is visited by police investigating match fixing. The Nap is a farce by award-winning playwright, Richard Bean, with plenty of sharp lines, jokes and an array of hilarious characters. The play includes a live snooker match, with comic commentary. It opened at the Sheffield Crucible in 2016 and later on Broadway by the Manhattan Theatre Club.

Seven men come together to bake enough bread to feed the population of Hull. It's just another Sunday. Nellie's so worn down from a lifetime making dough, he loses his vest in the mix. First, Owen Man's on a promise. The ovens are cranked up and running, and the wholemeal's pleasingly big going in. But there's a spanner in the works which threatens bread production in Hull for good, and life as they know it for the men on the shift. Toast is Bean's second play, first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in February 1999.

Why has middle manager Stephen England got up in the night and defecated on the living room carpet? His wife Judith doesn't know, nor does his mother Irene. Only Andy, the gauche youth who regularly turns up uninvited to borrow his power tools, can save him (or destroy him). Mr England was produced at the Sheffield Crucible, October 2000.

The life of Darrel Ascough, a Hull trawlerman, is played out in three acts in the crew's quarters of a distant water trawler: First, at sixteen, Darrel is a deckie learner on the Kingston Jet. Here he meets Hull's "one man circus" Cassidy, and is introduced to his legacy. On the James Joyce, and as a young but skilled trawlerman, Darrel is the only survivor when the trawler capsizes when heavy with ice. In the final act, on the heritage museum ship the Arctic Kestrel, Darrel meets the confused and rootless youth Pat, and is forced to address the meaning of his legacy and his true heritage. A powerful and moving story of fate, choices and men at work, Under the Whaleback opens at the Royal Court Theatre in August 2002.

If you're a Robinson, family matters are about to get serious. Things have changed since dad set up the family business in the 60's: new products, more competition and a bigger market. At the end of the day though, it's still all about cash and stock. But this is no ordinary family business: the Robinsons are drug dealers. After 35 years of serving it up to the local community, dad has handed over the reins to son Sean. And there are going to be changes, but not all for the better. Strange things are happening in the previously quiet streets of Whitley Bay. The local police are becoming more and more interested in the activities of the family and serious questions are being asked.: Who killed Pammy? Who are the mysterious Russians? And more importantly, where the f**k are all the spoons? Delivering a pure hit of darkly disturbing comedy, Smack Family Robinson draws a fine line between love and hate, and then snorts the lot.

A new play from the author of Under the Whaleback

"confirms Richard Bean as a writer of beguiling originality" - The Daily Telegraph

In May 1875 Lord Primrose Agar, drunk as a skunk, wagered one of his tenant farmers, Orlando Harrison, that his new border collie pup Jip would outlive the 94 year old Harrison. The prize would be the 82-acre Kilham Wold Farm in East Yorkshire. Thirteen years later, having buried his dog, Agar shook hands with Orlando and conferred on the Harrisons a century of struggle..."Harvest" opens at the Royal Court Theatre in September 2005.

A play full of door-slamming shenanigans, as a MEP's political and personal life collide in a Strasbourg hotel suite, with hilarious results.

Set amongst the expatriate Irish community of New York as they try to raise money for NORAID, the charitable organization often accused of being an IRA front. New York fire fighters of Irish descent give money to NORAID, along comes 9/11, and several die at the hands of a terrorist group.

This is the new play by award-winning playwright Richard Bean. At once brilliantly funny, true, and touching, The English Game is a timely and revealing look at the political and social tensions that underpin modern society.

‘Fucking Frogs! My grandfather didn’t die in the English Civil War so’s half the population of France could come over here and live off the soup!’A riotous journey through four waves of immigration from the 17th century to today. As the French Huguenots, the Irish, the Jews and the Bangladeshis in turn enter the chaotic world of Bethnal Green, each new influx provokes a surge of violent protest over housing, jobs, religion and culture. And the emerging pattern shows that white flight and anxiety over integration is anything but new. Written with scurrilous bravura, Richard Bean’s great sweep of a comedy follows a pair of star-crossed lovers amid cutters’mobs, Papists, Jewish anarchists and radical Islamists across four tempestuous centuries. England People Very Nice enjoyed a sell-out run at the National Theatre.