Marina Carr

A woman - gaunt and ill, haggard after giving birth eight times - faces death. What was life? What was love? What else could have been? Full of mordant, bitter humour, this is a passionate threnody from one of Ireland's leading playwrights. 'Woman and Scarecrow' premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2006.

In Marina Carr's epic tragedy of rural life, three generations of the Rafterys live together in the midlands of Ireland. It is a closely knit farming community where hatred and rumours of incest, stillborn children, and abused families seem more common than love and affection. 'On Raftery's Hill' was first performed as a Druid Theatre/Royal Court Theatre co-production at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway, in May 2000.

Set in the mysterious landscape of the bogs of rural Ireland, Carr's lyrical and timeless play tells the story of Hester Swane, an Irish traveller with a deep and unearthly connection to her land. Tormented by the memory of a mother who deserted her, Hester is once again betrayed, this time by the father of her child, the man she loves. On the brink of despair, she embarks on a terrible journey of vengeance as the secrets of her tangled history are revealed. Premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1998.

An accomplished, beautiful forty-year-old woman, The Mai has always sought an exceptional life. Robert, her cellist husband, has always felt stifled by The Mai's ideals of perfection. After seventeen years he leaves her, whereupon she sets about building a dream house in the hope that he will one day return to her. From her fairytale castle, The Mai waits by the window for her dark-haired prince to return. Set in the inspiring surrounds of the West of Ireland, on the banks of the legendary Owl Lake, we enter this world on the day of Robert's return after an absence of four years. In the midst of Mai's and Robert's troubled reunion are the idiosyncratic characters that comprise the family. Irreverent and unapologetic, the opium-smoking one-hundred-year-old matriarch, Grandma Fraochlan, presides over all. The "Spanish Beauty," as she is known, with her "ancient and fantastical memory" and mythical presence, reminds us that the past is looming ever present. Her daughters, Agnes and Julie, meddle in the affairs of their three nieces, with comical tenacity. Deeply theatrical and profoundly intense, The MAI is an epic tale of love and loss, of elusive dreams shattered by vulgar but inescapable reality.

Contains plays, short biographies, and interviews with the authors.

Troy has fallen. It's the end of war and the beginning of something else. Something worse. As the cries die down after the final battle, there are reckonings to be made. Humiliated by her defeat and imprisoned by the charismatic victor Agamemnon, the great queen Hecuba must wash the blood of her buried sons from her hands and lead her daughters forward into a world they no longer recognize. Agamemnon has slaughtered his own daughter to win this war. But now another sacrifice is demanded... In a world where human instinct has been ravaged by violence, is everything as it seems in the hearts of the winners and those they have defeated?

"A premonition of impending disaster precedes a collision between the conscious and subconscious lives of two married couples. Hidden fantasies and passions conflict with the calls of friendship and fidelity. The characters' everyday existences and their struggles to accept mortality provide the backdrop to MARBLE's exploration of the tragedy of dying of an empty heart."--Page 4 of cover.