Oberon Modern Plays – serie

WINNER - Best American Play, Obie Awards 2018In 1920, the Russian writer Isaac Babel wanders the countryside with the Red Cavalry. In 1990, a mysterious KGB agent spies on a woman in Dresden and falls in love. In 2010, an aircraft carrying most of the Polish government crashes in the Russian city of Smolensk.Set in Russia over the course of ninety years, this thrilling and epic new play by Rajiv Joseph traces the stories of seven men and women connected by history, myth and conspiracy theories.

"I want to be a fireman." "I want to be a teacher." "I want to be a movie star." Poland, 1925. As these Polish classmates - five Catholic, five Jewish - grow up, their lives take dramatically unexpected turns as their country is torn apart by invading armies, first Soviet and then German. Friend betrays friend and violence quickly escalates, reaching a crescendo that will forever haunt the survivors. Based on true events in the Polish village of Jedwabne and inspired in part by Jan T. Gross' controversial book Neighbors, Our Class bravely explores a subject still debated today.

A tale for today set in a magical tower block where the water has gone missing and five extraordinary individuals from the east and from the west cross paths on a hot and enchanted evening ending with a moonlit kiss and a homicide. Arabian Night is a sleek and sensual urban thriller from one of the most acclaimed voices of the German stage. Nominated Play of the Year by six German critics in 2001, ATC staged the UK premiere of Arabian Night in April 2002, and toured the play throughout the UK in April and May.

The Government has so far refused a Public Inquiry into the riots that shook our cities this Summer, so the Tricycle is mounting its own.This verbatim play builds a real-time picture of the riots as they unfolded. And then, from interviews with politicians, police, teachers, lawyers, community leaders, as well as victims and on-lookers, The Riots analyses what happened, why it happened, and what we should do towards making a better future for ourselves and our city. Astonishing stories and equally astonishing conclusions told by the many voices that have been stirred up by the riots.

‘People know, you’re my boy. And they know better than to lay a fucking finger on you. See? You are safer here with me, than you have ever been.’Liam’s 17 years old, loves Dr Who and has lost his mum. He has had to move from London to Wales, to the valleys, to the middle of nowhere, to live with a dad he doesn’t know. Whose nickname isn’t Violence for nothing.

The first collection of plays from the critically acclaimed Karen Zacarías, one of the ten most produced playwrights in the USA.Contains the plays Native Gardens / The Book Club Play / Destiny of DesireThe Book Club PlayA hit comedy about books and the people who love them. When the members of a devoted book club become the subjects of a documentary filmmaker and accept a provocative new member, their long-standing group dynamics take a hilarious turn. Sprinkled with wit, joy and novels galore.Destiny of DesireOn a stormy night in Bellarica, Mexico, two baby girls are born — one into a life of privilege and one into a life of poverty. When the newborns are swapped by a former beauty queen with an insatiable lust for power the stage is set for two outrageous misfortunes to grow into one remarkable destiny. Karen Zacarías infuses the Mexican telenovela genre with music, high drama and burning passion to make for a fast-paced modern comedy.Native GardensYou can’t choose your neighbors. In this brilliant new comedy, cultures and gardens clash, turning well-intentioned neighbors into feuding enemies. Pablo, a rising attorney, and doctoral candidate Tania, his very pregnant wife, have just purchased a home next to Frank and Virginia, a well-established D.C. couple with a prize-worthy English garden. But an impending barbeque for Pablo’s colleagues and a delicate disagreement over a long-standing fence line soon spirals into an all-out border dispute, exposing both couples’ notions of race, taste, class and privilege.

An evocative, heart-warming story of unfulfi lled dreams and unrequited love.Based on the hit film screenplay by Charles Dance starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, and on the original short story by William J. Locke, Ladies In Lavender tells the tale of two sisters Ursula and Janet who live in a close-knit fishing village in picturesque Cornwall, in 1936. When a handsome and talented young Polish violinist bound for America is washed ashore, the Widdington sisters take him under their wing and nurse him back to health. However, the presence of the mysterious young man disrupts their peaceful lives and the community in which they live.

Between light and shadow, science and superstition, fear and knowledge is a dimension of imagination. An area we call the Twilight Zone.Adapted by Anne Washburn (Mr Burns) and directed by Olivier Award-winner Richard Jones, this world premiere production of the acclaimed CBS Television Series The Twilight Zone lands on stage for the first time in its history. Or its present. Or its future.Stage magic and fantasy unite as the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

At the turn of the 20th Century, the great cruise liner Virginia shuttles back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, transporting passengers from old Europe to the New World. When an abandoned baby is found on board the sailors christen Novecento – 1900. The child is destined to a strange fate. Novecento will never leave the ship as long as he lives, yet he becomes the greatest jazz musician the world would never know. He only knows his music, which has a magical effect on everyone who hears. For six years before World War II, Tim Tooney played trumpet with him and Novecento gave him his story...Adapted for film in The Legend of 1900, this stage adaptation presented as a monologue, is a beautiful piece of theatre.

"A tender little green shoot of a piece" Lyn Gardner1996. A young mother walks out of a small house in Shepherd’s Bush and doesn’t look back.2019. A daughter lies in a bath and stares at a crack in the ceiling.Joy and EJ prepare for their first meeting in twenty-two years. They run, they bathe, they inhale, they wait.i will still be whole (when you rip me in half) is the debut play by acclaimed theatre critic Ava Wong Davies: a lyrical interlinking of monologues devoted to blood ties, the cycle of trauma, and what we inherit from our parents.

Times are tough for the family in the wood. They'd eat like kings if only they could.But hunger gnaws - famine stalks the land. Something quite wicked has the upper hand!Poor mother and father must do "what is best"... And Hansel and Gretel will be put to the test! Armed with their very last slice of bread. Will they eat to survive or ........leave a.................trail...................................home..................................................instead?Hansel & Gretel was first performed on the 4th December 2009 at Bristol Old Vic and was a co-production between Kneehigh and Bristol Old Vic. Carl Grose and Kneehigh put their own unique spin on the classic fairytale.

Includes the plays Suzannah, Living Secretly, The Dead Dogs, A Red Butterfly's Wings, Warm, Telemakos and SleepIn their different ways, these plays are existential suspense stories, centred around a common concept of time. The past is recreated through present moments, the future hinted at through shared memories, yet experienced from different perspectives. Fosse’s drama explores life lived in unexpected ways, with a sense of otherness pervading the present and colouring the characters’ relationships.The whole life of Suzannah Ibsen unfolds as she waits for her playwriting husband to come home. In Sleep, one day captures the lives of a young woman and a young man as they grow into middle-age and old age. Living Secretly asks questions about how to live with and open up to one’s actions through sequences of time. In The Dead Dogs, lives are shockingly disrupted by an event that changes the directions of their future. Warm’s characters move back and forth through time to capture past images and actions, in an effort to make sense of the present. Telemakos reinvents an old classic from a contemporary point of view. Fosse’s damatic voice is full of poetic intensity, yet wryly ironic, and with a sense of the comedy of the human condition. Includes the plays Suzannah, Living Secretly, The Dead Dogs, Telemakos, Sleep and A Red Butterfly s Wings.

Includes the plays Someone is Going to Come, The Guitar Man, The Name and The ChildIn Someone is Going to Come the two of them want to be together, just the two of them, so they leave the city and buy a remote house by the sea. But is it possible to do what they want to do? Won't somebody come? Surely someone will come.The Guitar Man is a poignant monologue in which a busker sings songs to an audience that is always on the move, always passing him by.The Name (winner of the Ibsen Prize in Norway) tells the story of an estranged family forced to live under one roof. When a pregnant girl and the father of the child have nowhere to live, they move into her parents' house. But the parents have never met the father-to-be, and don't yet know about the pregnancy.In The Child a man and a woman find each other in a bus stop on a rainy night. They hold each other close. They rent an old house out of town. The woman becomes pregnant. But the child is too small to survive.In these four varied plays Jon Fosse's unique linguistic style, at once poetic and naturalistic, magnifies the love and pain of ordinary people seeking to live their lives.Cast sizes: 3,6,1,6

Includes A Summer's Day, Dream of Autumn and WinterThese three seasonal plays are typical Fosse, imbuing apparently mundane situations with an almost hypnotic intensity. In A Summer's Day, an old widow remembers the day, many years before, when her husband went out to sea in a terrible storm.In a series of continuous but chronologically distinct scenes, Dream of Autumn shows a man unexpectedly meeting an old friend: she will become his second wife, and cause him to fall out with his family.In Winter a fascinating but mercurial woman tries to seduce a businessman, but once he has given up his family and career, he realises may have mistaken her intentions.

In 1997, a BAFTA award-winning British film about six out of work Sheffield steelworkers with nothing to lose took the world by storm. And now they’re back, live on stage, only for them, it really has to be The Full Monty.Simon Beaufoy, the Oscar-winning writer of the film, has now gone back to Sheffield where it all started to rediscover the men, the women, the heartache and the hilarity of a city on the dole.The Full Monty was the winner of the UK Theatre Best Touring Production award 2013.

A twisting two-hander and psychological thriller from the acclaimed author of Belongings. Heather and Carla haven’t seen each other since school. Their lives have taken very different paths – Carla lives a hand-to-mouth existence while Heather has a high-flying career, husband and a beautiful home. And yet, here they are in a café having tea and making awkward conversation. That is until Heather presents Carla with a bag containing a significant amount of cash and an unexpected proposition…Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s electric new thriller asks how far beyond the playground we carry our childhood experiences and to what lengths some people are willing to go to in order to come to terms with them.

It's 1967 in Detroit. Motown music is getting the party started, and Chelle and her brother Lank are making ends meet by turning their basement into an after-hours joint. But when a mysterious woman finds her way into their lives, the siblings clash over more much more than the family business. As their pent-up feelings erupt, so does their city, and they find themselves caught in the middle of the '67 riots.Detroit '67 is presented in association with Classical Theatre of Harlem and the National Black Theatre.Detroit '67 was awarded the 2014 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History

'Not as if I always lived here, mind you…I started off in Govan. Never dreamt in those days I’d end up this side of the river. Real step up in the world that was…I’m grateful for it. Despite everything, I’m grateful for it'Glasgow, the 1970s. Martha and Amie are old neighbours, trapped in their decaying tenement and cut off from family and friends. With the present closing in and the future uncertain, Martha and Amie’s real companions are the past and their memories of ordinary lives peopled by extraordinary characters and their struggles and triumphs.I Didn’t Always Live Here is a compassionate and heart-rending journey into the forgotten lives of the dispossessed and elderly, as well as an uplifting journey into the human spirit’s capacity to cope with social exclusion and financial hardship. One of multi-award-winning playwright and poet Stewart Conn’s earliest works, I Didn’t Always Live Here now receives its first production since its world premiere at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre in 1967.

Too old to move with the times; too young to let go of their dreamsVillage school teacher Platonov is a man who is loved by women. Despite his best intentions he is drawn into a series of extra-marital affairs that all hold the promise of escape from the provincial Russian reality where he and his circle of friends are trapped. Consumed by bitterness and disappointment, they attempt to fill the void in their lives with sex and vodka, blaming their fathers for the mess they’ve been left in.Sons Without Fathers is a brand-new version of Chekhov’s remarkable first play. Helena Kaut-Howson's version chooses to focus on just one of the many themes covered in the original text – the predicament of a disaffected generation left adrift in a world without hope. Updated to modern-day Russia, the play intertwines the central story with contemporary political issues.

Fergus has lived in England for almost seven years. He hasn't been back to his hometown in five. Using animation, storytelling and spoken word, my heart is hitchhiking down peachtree st is a one man show about living far away from home. It's about the stories you tell people when they ask where you're from. It's about knowing that once you leave, you can't go back.

Strepsiades lives in Greece. He has debt. A lot of debt. And that’s because his son, Phiddy, has a penchant for betting and isn’t so keen on working. At a loss, Streps has an idea: Phiddy can go to Socrates' Academy and learn how to talk himself out of trouble! Job done! What could possibly go wrong?Socrates and His Clouds, inspired by Aristophanes' Clouds and Plato's Dialogues, is a serio-comic drama about the fragility of morality, the hazards of education and the burdens of being a teacher.

Richard III brings the Wars of the Roses cycle of history plays to a close in bloody fashion. Arguably Shakespeare’s most villainous king, we watch in horror and delight as Richard murders his way to the throne, unable to resist his cruel wit and dark humour. This is a hugely entertaining and diabolical adventure that tells the story of one man’s journey to heaven, then back to hell.

The Comedy of Errors is a brilliant piece of theatrical mechanism, a story of mounting confusion involving two pairs of twins. But it also explores the relations between lovers and between husband and wife, and ends with the warmth and reconciliation of a multiple family reunion.

From Morning To Midnight, among the most frequently performed German Expressionist works, charts the life of a cashier who steals money from the bank and flees to Berlin. The un-named protagonist's bid to escape his middle-class daily life is ultimately frustrated. It is a popular piece in which Kaiser satirized the cheapness and futility of modern society. His hero, a kind of machine-age Everyman, searches everywhere for some kind of fulfilment - in commercial sex, in salvationist religion - but discovers through a series of nightmarish episodes that the world is deceitful and illusory. In the end, disillusioned and pursued by the police, he takes his own life.This new version by Dennis Kelly, opened at the National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre in November 2013, as part of the National’s 50th Anniversary Season.

Rosemary and Evelyn met “a hundred thousand years ago” in Central Park when their children were barely born. Somewhere Fun reunites the two women thirty-five years later on Madison Avenue, one windy fall day. With their children now grown and the world changing rapidly before (what’s left of) their eyes, each finds herself face to face with the terrors, joys, and surprises of life and time. Somewhere Fun is a wildly original story about connection — to our families, our memories, our moment in time.

Gutted is a fast-paced, powerful new play by Rikki Beadle-Blair. Set in South East London, this is a story about love, family and sordid secrets told through the eyes of four brothers. When the eldest brother comes out of rehab he embarks on a truth-telling mission and triggers an unstoppable family meltdown. In an explosive 24 hours, years of denial are uncovered and life will never be the same again.A thought-provoking and complex drama, Gutted reveals Beadle-Blair at his best. This is daring, shocking and intensely emotional work infused with warmth and humour.

'Password Emil!'If Mrs Tischbein had known the amazing adventures her son Emil would have in Berlin, she'd never have let him go.Emil is excited to be taking the train on his own for the first time. He doesn't like the look of his fellow passenger, the man in the bowler hat. Emil will just have to keep his wits about him and his money in his pocket. But Emil falls asleep and when he wakes up the man in the bowler hat is gone - and so is the money! Emil is determined to get it back. He teams upwith a gang of young detectives and so begins a hair-raising chase across Berlin to catch the dirty rotten thief...

Thomas Middleton’s outrageous ‘city comedy’: a brilliantly plotted, farcical satire of lies and lust, translated from Jacobean London to the Soho of the 1950s.A dashingly impecunious bachelor, Dick Follywit, in need of quick cash and a good time has to live on his wits so turns con-man to fool his rich uncle. He variously becomes a Lord, a high-class call girl and a poor actor. Meanwhile, Truly Kidman, a high-class call girl – poor but quick-witted – needs to fool and then marry a rich young man…Sean Foley and Phil Porter’s edited version of Middleton’s play is faithful to the original text but adapts it to fit the seedy world of 1950s Soho, updating character names and including songs of the time to enhance the biting satire of lust and deception in the life of Bohemian London.

'...Like the albatross, we need a safe place we can be. But somewhere we're together, my Mama and my me...'High up in a Glasgow tower block, ten-year-old Star and her mother await the outcome of their claim for asylum. As Mama’s mind fragments under the pressure of their unknown future, Star constructs a poetic and fantastical world of her own. Some Other Mother is a story of loss and survival, which explores the traumatising impact of the asylum system, regardless of the outcome.