NHB Collected Works – serie

After the breakout success of his early work for stage and screen, Jack Thorne turned for inspiration to his own family for a series of plays about hope, idealism and domestic politics. The work in this collection – five full-length plays and two shorts – showcases his extraordinary ability to combine electrifying dialogue with heartfelt warmth, candour and humour.Hope (Royal Court Theatre, 2014) is a funny and scathing fable about the leaders of a local council faced with savage funding cuts. 'A surprisingly entertaining state-of-the-nation drama' The StageThe Solid Life of Sugar Water (Graeae/Theatre Royal Plymouth, 2015) is an intimate, tender play about loss, hurt and rediscovery. 'Startlingly good... an adult play in the very best sense' The TimesJunkyard (Headlong, 2017) is a joyful celebration of imaginative play, a musical drama about a group of young people tasked with building a playground out of junk. 'Genuinely funny and poignant' WhatsOnStagethe end of history... (Royal Court, 2019) is a moving and sophisticated portrait of the impact of political idealism on a family. 'Clever and highly intriguing' IndependentAlso included are Burying Your Brother in the Pavement, written for the National Theatre Connections Festival in 2008, which tackles complex themes of grief, violence and sexuality with fierce compassion and wild imagination; and two short plays: Whiff Whaff and Boo.'I think these plays are about love, about heroes, about trying to understand how to be heroic, about trying to understand how to lead a good life' Jack Thorne, from his Introduction'Jack Thorne is Britain's hottest playwright and screenwriter' The Times'Jack Thorne never ceases to stimulate and entertain' Evening Standard'Thorne is a writer of immense emotional intelligence and his dialogue regularly devastates' The Stage

A playwright known for dazzling structural inventiveness combined with emotional intelligence and wit, James Fritz is a unique voice in British theatre. His work, reflected in these six plays covering the first decade of his career, confronts the fault lines in our culture with thrilling imagination, an unflinching moral seriousness and a warm, compassionate sense of humour.Four Minutes Twelve Seconds (Hampstead Theatre, 2014; Trafalgar Studios, 2015; winner of the Critics' Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright) is a 'morally terrifying drama' (Evening Standard) that unpicks the trust between parents and their teenage offspring in an age of selfies and sexting.Ross & Rachel (Edinburgh Fringe, 2015; Off-Broadway, 2016) is a 'dialogue for one' that takes an incisive look at the myths of modern love. 'Shockingly good... a virtuosic piece of writing, playful, post-modern and devastatingly serious, all at once' Time OutParliament Square (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, and Bush Theatre, London, 2017; winner of the Judges' Award, Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting) is a searingly powerful exploration of what one individual can do to effect change. 'There are few playwrights working in Britain today whose work is as slick and unsettling as James Fritz's' ExeuntLava (Nottingham Playhouse/Fifth Word, 2018; revived 2022) is a funny, tender and moving story about friendship and reconnection in the aftermath of catastrophe. 'Compassionate, warm and funny... Fritz's plays find reservoirs of humour in places you wouldn't expect' The StageSkyscraper Lullaby (Audible Original, 2022) is a powerful drama, first written as an audio play, about two parents trying to come to terms with the disappearance of their toddler, a haunting examination of the ways we cope with tragedy, complicity and remorse.Also included is a previously unpublished short play, twins (Arcola Theatre, 2015), as well as a playful and illuminating introduction written by the author.

Since her play Steel opened in her native Sheffield in 2018, Chris Bush has rapidly become one of the UK's most successful and widely staged playwrights, with her plays on stage at the National Theatre, in the West End, and across Europe. Celebrated for her spirited dissections of power, female agency and northern identity, her work is infused with wit, empathy, and a powerful sense of place and belonging.Included here are five of her plays, all first performed between 2018 and 2021, together with a revealing introduction in which she reflects on the tumultuous period from which they emerged.Steel (Sheffield Theatres, 2018) is a political epic constructed from minimal resources, a two-hander spanning three decades of women in politics. 'Sharp, witty and uncannily topical' The StageFaustus: That Damned Woman (Headlong, 2020) is a radical reimagining of the classic tale, asking what women must sacrifice to achieve greatness. 'Original, ambitious and fantastically revisionist' GuardianNine Lessons and Carols (Almeida Theatre, 2020) is a play, with songs by Maimuna Memon, about connection and isolation, forged during the Covid pandemic, exploring what we hold on to in troubled times. 'A reminder of the power of theatre and our need for it' TelegraphHungry (Paines Plough, 2021) is a pithy two-hander about food, love, class and grief in a world where there's little left to savour. 'Reconfirms Chris Bush as one of our greatest, most relevant contemporary playwrights' Broadway WorldNot the End of the World (Schaubühne, Berlin, 2021) is a daringly theatrical investigation of the climate crisis through the perspectives of class, patriarchy and colonialism. 'Staggering… Bush's remarkable text melds a ruthless structural concept with exquisite lyricism' Guardian'One of our most prolific and arresting writers' Evening Standard'A writer of great wit and empathy' The Times

The second collection of plays from the multi-award-winning Irish playwright, Enda Walsh.This volume of remarkable plays charts the development of one of the most strikingly original playwrights in contemporary theatre. It collects together four full-length plays – three of which were produced by Galway’s Druid Theatre Company, three of which were performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, and two of which transferred to London’s National Theatre – along with two fascinating short plays and a Foreword by the author.The Walworth Farce (2006) is a madcap yet tender play about what can happen when we become stuck in the stories we tell about our lives.The New Electric Ballroom (2008) is a dark, glitter-dusted fable of the emotionally stultifying effects of small-town life.In a savage and riveting take on the classic Greek myth of Odysseus’s wife, Penelope (2010) sees four ridiculous men facing their inevitable deaths, and playing for an unwinnable love.Ballyturk (2014) saw Walsh reuniting with actor Cillian Murphy after Disco Pigs and Misterman for a jaw-droppingly physical play in which the lives of two men unravel over the course of ninety minutes.Also included in this volume are two short plays, My Friend Duplicity (2010), which went on to inspire Ballyturk, and Room 303 (2011).‘One of the most fiercely individual voices in the theatre today’ New York Times‘Enda Walsh makes his own distinctive stage music in the fury of his writing talent and the irresistible surge of his blatant theatricality’ Independent

This collection of plays written and introduced by actor-turned-writer Ayub Khan Din charts the development of a writer able to turn the tumultuous experience of life in modern Britain into satisfying, humane and often richly comic drama.Whether drawing on his own childhood, growing up in an Anglo-Pakistani family in Salford, or on E.R. Braithwaite's account of racial tensions in the East End in To Sir, With Love, he depicts the struggles of individuals to come to terms with their conflicting cultural legacies – and he does so with unerring warmth and compassion.East is East (1996) is an irresistible comedy set in multiracial Salford in 1970, where the Khan children are buffeted this way and that by their Pakistani father’s insistence on tradition, their English mother’s laissez-faire and their own wish to be citizens of the modern world. The film adaptation that followed, with a screenplay by the author, became one of the most successful British films ever made. The version included here is the revised text first performed at the Trafalgar Studios in 2014.The short, elegiac play, Notes on Falling Leaves (2004), is an emotionally tender depiction of a young man as he loses his mother to dementia, 'overwhelming in its emotional impact' (Telegraph).In All the Way Home (2011), a quarrelsome group of siblings gathers at the family home under the shadow of impending loss. Amidst the cut and thrust of spiky Salford banter, long-harboured resentments rise to the surface and family bonds unravel and unwind.To Sir, With Love (2013), based on E.R. Braithwaite's autobiographical novel, is the uplifting story of a talented, idealistic young teacher discovering the reality of life as a black man in Britain after the Second World War as he struggles to find a way to connect with his students at a tough but progressive East End school.

Since her debut in 2008, Lucy Kirkwood has firmly established herself as a leading playwright of her generation, the writer of a series of savagely funny, highly intelligent and beautifully observed plays that tackle the pressing issues of our times.This collection, with an introduction by the author, brings together five of her plays, starting with the wild and riotously funny farce, Tinderbox (Bush Theatre, 2008), a disturbing vision of a dystopian future where England is dissolving into the sea, realised with 'off-kilter imaginative flair' (The Times).Written for Clean Break theatre company, it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now (Arcola Theatre, 2009; winner of the John Whiting Award) is a devastating report from the hidden world of Eastern European women trafficked to London to work in the sex industry.The previously unpublished small hours (Hampstead Theatre, 2011), a collaboration with Ed Hime, directed by Katie Mitchell, is an intimate dissection of the claustrophobic world of a new mother struggling to cope on her own.The sharply satirical NSFW (Royal Court, 2012) is a 'richly absorbing and inventive' (Telegraph) look at power games, privacy and gender politics in the media.The volume concludes with Chimerica (Almeida Theatre and West End, 2013), a gripping and provocative examination of the shifting balance of power between East and West. Winner of multiple awards, including the Olivier and Critics' Circle Awards for Best New Play, the Evening Standard Best Play Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Chimerica is 'gloriously rich and mind-expanding' (Guardian), and a 'tremendously bold piece of writing' (Evening Standard).'Kirkwood is the most rewarding dramatist of her generation' Independent

Robert Holman wrote plays of startling beauty, combining close observation of the way people behave with a thrilling and often fiercely uncompromising mastery of dramatic form. He is the playwright most admired by other playwrights. To Simon Stephens, he was, until Holman's death in 2021, 'My favourite living writer'.Here, in this selection from Holman's first decade of playwriting, a monkey is taken for a French spy by an eighteenth-century fishing community; the inhabitants of a Greek island reside under the shadow of the atom bomb; and a group of lonely people converge on the North Yorkshire moors.With an introduction written for this volume by Holman himself, Robert Holman Plays: One contains The Natural Cause (Cockpit Theatre, London, 1974), Mud (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1974), Other Worlds (Royal Court, 1983), Today (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1984) and The Overgrown Path (Royal Court, 1985).'Holman's instinct for truth, and an unaffected ability to spot what's poignant in it, is what one remembers: that, and a paradoxical impression of spare richness, astringent abundance' The Times

A collection of shorter plays from stage and television by one of the UK's foremost political playwrights.Included are:Blood Sports, five hilarious sketches on sporting subjectsBall Boys, an unlikely match between Marx and tennisBaby Love, a powerful and moving account of a baby-snatcherThe National Theatre, 'Three Sisters' in a strip clubThe Midas Connection, an ironic look at gold dealingEspecially suitable for performances by groups with limited time and/or resources, all the pieces engage – however wryly – with important issues. The whole collection sheds fascinating new light on Edgar the dramatist.

Ten short plays by Caryl Churchill, written for stage, radio and TV, selected and introduced by the author.This collection of short plays by one of our leading playwrights opens up a little-known aspect of her writing, and demonstrates her remarkable versatility and breadth of concern.Abortive (Radio 3, 1971)The After-Dinner Joke (BBC TV, 1978)The Hospital at the Time of the RevolutionHot Fudge (Royal Court Theatre, 1989)The Judge's Wife (BBC TV, 1972)Lovesick (Radio 3, 1967)Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen (Radio 3, 1971)Schreber's Nervous Illness (Radio 3, 1972)SeagullsThree More Sleepless Nights (Soho Poly Theatre, 1980)The volume also includes an introduction by the author.