Faber Drama – serie

Subtitled 'A tragicomedy in two Acts', and famously described by the Irish critic Vivien Mercier as a play in which 'nothing happens, twice', En attendant Godot was first performed at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris in 1953. It was translated into English by Samuel Beckett, and Waiting for Godot opened at the Arts Theatre in London in 1955. 'Go and see Waiting for Godot. At the worst you will discover a curiosity, a four-leaved clover, a black tulip; at the best something that will securely lodge in a corner of your mind for as long as you live.' Harold Hobson, 7 August 1955'I told him that if by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot. This seemed to disappoint him greatly.' Samuel Beckett, 1955

Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie.Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein's bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the friendless Creature, increasingly desperate and vengeful, determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.Urgent concerns of scientific responsibility, parental neglect, cognitive development and the nature of good and evil are embedded within this thrilling and deeply disturbing classic gothic tale.Frankenstein, based on the novel by Mary Shelley, premiered at the National Theatre, London, in February 2011.

The change will come. And it's not far away, I promise you that. Some figure will emerge from the dark screaming 'Get out of the way'. And not far behind others will follow... The young are waiting. In all their power. Knocking on the door.The master builder Halvard Solness has a fear of falling. A self-made man, without professional qualifications, he has achieved domination in the town but he's increasingly frightened of being displaced by the young. A woman, Hilde Wangel, appears from the mountains, claiming to have known Solness ten years previously, and telling him of a promise he made to her when she thirteen.David Hare has written a new adaptation of one of Henrik Ibsen's most complex autobiographical masterpieces - a mesmeric exploration of control, power, lust and death, which builds to a vertiginous climax.The Master Builder premiered in this English version at The Old Vic, London, in January 2016.

Patron? Collaborator? Employer? Voyeur? Lover?Questioned about the nature of his relationship with the 3rd Earl of Southampton, William Shakespeare is on trial.The evidence: tender poems, financial dependency, attempted revolution.A compelling new drama set in Elizabethan England - a powder keg of sex, politics and power - Dedication by Nick Dear premiered at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton, in September 2016.

Connecticut, 1969. On their way back from a party, two couples struggle home through thesnow. Not everyone arrives safely.The great detective writer Georges Simenon escaped France at the end of World War Two, and arrived in the USA to start again. With his American wife, he settled at Shadow Rock Farm in Lakeville.Years later, he wrote La Main, a psychological thriller set in a New England farmhouse. David Hare has taken this novel, and forged from it a startling new play. The Red Barn premiered at the National Theatre, London, in October 2016.

Listen, girls, if we stick together there's no ways we'll even get to the second round...Young, lost and out of control, a bunch of Catholic schoolgirls go wild for a day in the big city, the singing competition a mere obstacle in the way of sex, sambuca and a night back home with the submarine crew in Mantrap.Funny, sad and raucously rude, Lee Hall's musical play Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour, adapted from Alan Warner's novel The Sopranos, premiered at the Traverse Theatre in August 2015, in a production by the National Theatre of Scotland and Live Theatre and transferred to the National Theatre, London, in August 2016. The play won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy 2017 and transferred to the Duke of York's, London, in May 2017 in a co-production with Sonia Friedman Productions.

It's the legendary hot summer of 1959 and while the Cold War rages and America tunes into I Love Lucy, Captain Jack Fox - believed missing in action in the fields of France fifteen years before - is about to be reunited with his family in the Hamptons.But is this really Jack Fox? And if it isn't, who is this man? And why are there twenty-two other families so intent on claiming him as their own?A sparkling comedy of identity, lost and found, based on Jean Anouilh's hit 1937 play, Le Voyageur sans bagage, Anthony Weigh's Welcome Home, Captain Fox! premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in February 2016.

The whole country must be full of ghosts, the whole world. And we live in constant fear of them. All of us. I'm haunted by ghosts, you see. And I think I'll never be free of them.Helen Alving spent years creating the illusion of a happy marriage to a successful, charming man. Long after his death, she is still trapped by the emotional after-effects of the truth - that he was a serial adulterer and a reckless alcoholic. Stifled by obligations and expectations, Helen resolves to exorcise the ghosts of the past and free herself from the regrets that haunt her. But when her artist son Oswald returns home, it becomes clear that he has already paid the price for his father's past.Some legacies are impossible to escape. Some ghosts can never be laid to rest. David Watson's adaptation of Ibsen's Ghosts opened at the Home Theatre, Manchester, in November 2016.