Methuen modern plays

DATE WITH AN ANGEL Luisa was drawn to Zachary West. It was more than a nurse's compassion for her patient that moved her, it was the man himself: temperamental, courageous and so very desirable. When she discovered it was her father's car that had caused Zachary's accident, she was draw even further into his life. For Zachary, healing --- both physically and emotionally --- would take time. And Luisa wanted to be there with him. But did he want her? She was fighting a rival she could neither see nor understand, a woman who haunted Zachary's dreams. A woman he could not forget ...

" ... Follows the lives of six friends from their meeting in the sixties when they first come together as Cambridge undergraduates, through the following twenty years to the onset of middle age. Although on the surface a comedy of literary manners, The common pursuit is also a study of love and friendship, deceit and compromise"--Pre page .

This 1977 play focuses on the relationship between two actors: Robert, the stage veteran, and John, the young promising actor. They are involved in a number of productions, and gradually their relationship changes.

"Harrowing, moody, and supremely powerful, The Hothouse, first published in 1953, stands among the finest novels written in postwar Germany. Bitterly controversial at home, largely unknown abroad, Koeppen (1906-1996) brought a volcanic, high-modernist style to German literature, a style that remains unparalleled to this day. It is only since his death that his works have begun to experience a literary renaissance. Here, with the first English publication of The Hothouse, award-winning translator Michael Hofmann has produced a work that not only conveys Koeppen's uniquely radical voice but also is a breathtaking piece of prose in its own right." "The Hothouse refers to the city of Bonn with its warm, damp climate, but it also refers to the political environment of the temporary capital of divided postwar Germany, where politics became more about compromise and half measures than principled change."--BOOK JACKET.

Set in the 'Bugaran' Embassy in New York, there are several of Africa's most ridiculous tyrants gathered. A sculptor is immortalizing them, but they are hard to set in stone -- for one, because of their constant concern about their countries collapsing (or leadership falling into other hands), especially in their absence.

A story for everyone who works for a living. An examination of the machinations behind the scenes at a real estate office.

In this gripping short play, David Mamet combines mercurial intelligence with genuinely Hitchcockian menace. The Cryptogram is a journey back into childhood and the moment of its vanishing - the moment when the sheltering world is suddenly revealed as a place full of danger. On a night in 1959 a boy is waiting to go on a camping trip with his father. His mother wants him to go to sleep. A family friend is trying to entertain them - or perhaps distract them. Because in the dark corners of this domestic scene, there are rustlings that none of the players want to hear. And out of things as innocuous as a shattered teapot and a ripped blanket, Mamet re-creates a child's terrifying discovery that the grownups are speaking in code, and that that code may never be breakable.

"Noises Off, the classic farce by the Tony Award-winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the back-stage "drama" that develops during Nothing On's final rehearsal and tour. The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare that's happening backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown."--BOOK JACKET.

"Back in the Swinging Sixties, Travis Flood led a gang that terrorised East London. Now, after an absence of many years, he returns to find his old turf in the clutches of a new kind of gang... with a new kind of leader. Rio -- ruler of a mob of girls -- instantly captivates Travis with her haunting beauty. But soon a shocking story begins to emerge -- one that shatters both their distorted memories. A scorching dark comedy where a monster from the past meets the mosters of the present."--Page of cover.

The figure of Galileo, whose 'heretical' discoveries about the solar system brought him to the attention of the Inquisition, is one of Brecht's most human and complex creations. Temporarily silenced by the Inquisition's threat of torture, and forced to abjure his theories publicly, Galileo continues to work in private, eventually smuggling his work out of the country.

"Plays written by the Italian farceur, Dario Fo, in conjunction with his wife and fellow-performer, Franca Rame. Two plays start with the breakdown of a relationship and deal with the fate of women in a society in which both the social system in which they live and its dominant ideology are shaped by men. The twenty monlogues in this volume range from the deeply serious to the extravagantly comic and are accessible to a wide range of audiences ". -- National Theatre website.