Ronald Harwood - Böcker

In this volume four of Ronald Harwood's most successful plays - 'A Family', 'The Dresser', 'J.J. Farr' and 'Another Time' - are collected together for the first time.

A play which looks at questions surrounding culpability, revenge and retribution, universal responsibility and the possibility of evil. An elderly Ukrainian odd-job man, who had been brought to an upper-middle-class English household after World War II, is accused of war crimes.

'I belong nowhere.'Obsessed with power and fame, Gustav Mahler rejects his Jewish background and his friends with devastating consequences.Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), a composer and conductor of passion and genius, was born in Bohemia and faced a lifetime of prejudice - 'I'm homeless. Not once but three times. First, a native of Bohemia in Austria. Second, an Austrian among Germans. And third, a Jew in the rest of the world'. But in 1897, in order to be granted the prestigious position of Director of the Vienna Court Opera, Mahler decided to convert to Catholicism. In time, however, as his world collapsed, he came to believe he was being made to pay a dreadful price for his ruthless ambition.Mahler's Conversion premièred at the Aldwych Theatre, London in September 2001.

May 1945: victory in Europe and a Labour landslide in the UK. English traitor John Amery is arrested in Italy and brought back to London for trial. If convicted, he faces the death penalty. But his father is a senior politician. Surely the Establishment will look after its own. Based on an extraordinary true story, "An English Tragedy" is a disturbing tale of wartime treason and conflicting loyalties by Ronald Harwood, author of the "OscarA"[registered] winning screenplay for "The Pianist", and stage plays including "The Dresser", "Taking Sides" and "Quartet". "An English Tragedy" premiered at Watford Palace Theatre in February, 2008.

Collaboration and Taking Sides are companion pieces by Ronald Harwood. Taking Sides premiered at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester in 1995; Collaboration premiered at the same theatre in July 2008, when the two plays were staged in repertory. Collaboration In 1931, composer Richard Strauss and writer Stephan Zweig embark on an invigorating artistic partnership. But Zweig is a Jew and the Nazis are on the march. Is it possible to keep artistic aspiration and political action separate? How fine is the line between collaboration and betrayal? Taking Sides Prized by Hitler as the cultural jewel in the crown of the Third Reich, conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler became the perfect post-war target for interrogation as a Nazi sympathiser. Major Steve Arnold, who has witnessed the horrors of Belsen, is about to cross-examine him.'What does the artist do in a brutal, totalitarian society? Can art ever claim to be above politics? Harwood's fierce moral debate is set in the American zone of occupied Berlin in 1946. The play acts as a powerful metaphor for the present and all those post-authoritarian societies busy ransacking their pasts.' Guardian'A brave, wise and deeply moving play about the fatal confrontation between culture and power, between art and politics, between irresponsible freedom and responsible compromise. A gripping moral challenge in a cocksure and self-seeking age.' Sunday Times