PLAY SCRIPTS

The bookstore is currently being upgraded. Apologies, back soon.

• A Midsummer Night's Dream	by William Shakespeare	view in Amazon
In one of Shakespeare's most perennially popular comedies a young woman, Hermia, flees ancient Athens with her lover, only to be pursued by her would-be husband and her best friend. Unwittingly, all four find themselves in an enchanted forest where fairies and sprites take an interest in human affairs, dispensing magical love potions and casting mischievous spells. Slapstick collides with courtly romance and confusion ends in harmony, as love is transformed, misplaced and ultimately restored.
• An Inspector Calls and Other Plays	by J B Priestley	view in Amazon
A policeman interrupts a rich family's dinner to question them about the suicide of a young working-class girl. As their guilty secrets are gradually revealed over the course of the evening, 'An Inspector Calls', J. B. Priestley's most famous play, shows us the terrible consequences of poverty and inequality. The other powerful plays in this collection - 'Time and the Conways', 'I Have Been Here Before' and 'The Linden Tree' - explore time, fate, free will and the effects of war.
• The Play of George Orwell's Animal Farm	by George Orwell	view in Amazon
The "Heinemann Plays" series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. This dramatization of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" comes with lyrics by Adrian Mitchell and music by Richard Peaslee.
• Equus	by Peter Shaffer	view in Amazon
Self-consciously staging itself in the psychotherapy sessions of a disturbed young man, Peter Shaffer's Equus is a shocking exploration of the limits of faith, of the intersecting worlds of the sacred and profane, and of the paltry value of a 'mundane' life, published in Penguin Modern Classics.
• Ernie's Incredible Illucinations	by Alan Ayckbourn	view in Amazon
This is a bright comedy by the famous English comic playwright about the extraordinary powers of Ernie Fraser, a dreamer with a difference. Ernie has a vivid imagination; and his thoughts have the disconcerting habit of turning into reality....
• Invisible Friends	by Alan Ayckbourn	view in Amazon
Alan Ayckbourn's play is about a very ordinary teenager called Lucy. With her father glued to the cowboys on the telly, her mother preoccupied with neighbourly gossip and her brother enclosed in his ear-phones, no one wants to know about her place in the school swimming team. So Lucy revives her childhood fantasy friend, Zara, setting a place for her at the very ordinary tea table. This time Zara materializes, bringing with her an idealized father and brother, and showing Lucy how to make her real family vanish. The moral of this cautionary tale is carefully spelt out - that when you get what you want it's not what you wanted - as Lucy's dream family turns out to be a nightmare. The play is supposedly for children of seven upwards, but there's a message here for parents, too, about listening to kids.
• Journey's End	by R. C. Sherriff	view in Amazon
Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as 'useful [corrective] to the romantic conception of war', R.C. Sherriff's Journey's End is an unflinching vision of life in the trenches towards the end of the First World War, published in Penguin Classics.
• Junk: Play: Adapted for the Stage	by Melvin Burgess	view in Amazon

• Little Sweet Thing	by Roy Williams	view in Amazon
Kev is just out of the Young Offenders Institute and is determined to keep his nose clean, but back on the streets the pressure is mounting. . .
• My Mother Said I Never Should	by Charlotte Keatley	view in Amazon
Charlotte Keatley's first main stage play My Mother Said I Never Should was premiered in 1987 at Contact, Manchester, and in 1989 at the Royal Court Theatre, London. It has been translated into twenty-two languages and is performed across the world. The play moves back and forth through the lives of four women, and sets the enormous social changes of the twentieth century against the desire to love and to be loved. In 2000 it was chosen by the Royal National Theatre as one of the hundred Significant Plays of the Twentieth Century.
• Of Mice and Men: Playscript	by John Steinbeck	view in Amazon

• Godber Plays: 2: Teechers; Happy Jack; September in the Rain; Salt of the Earth	by John Godber	view in Amazon
John Godber is one of the unsung heroes of British theatre, reaching the giddy heights of number three in the most-performed playwrights league table, nestled in behind Shakespeare and Ayckbourn
• The Accrington Pals	by Peter Whelan	view in Amazon
The Accrington Pals is a poignant and harrowing play set in the early years of the First World War, as the country's jingoistic optimism starts to wane and the true terror of warfare gradually becomes clear. The play looks at both the terrifying experiences of the men at the front and the women who were left behind to face social changes, deprivation and the lies of propaganda. While often comic vignettes portray the everyday life of a town denuded of men, the men face the terror that is the Battle of the Somme.
• The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts	by Arthur Miller	view in Amazon
Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 - 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' - and the American anti-communist purges led by Senator McCarthy in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	by Mark Haddon	view in Amazon
Simon Stephens's adaptation of Mark Haddon's bestselling, award-winning novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time offers a richly theatrical exploration of this touching and bleakly humorous tale.
• The Play of Kes	by Allan Stronach et al	view in Amazon
The "Heinemann Plays" series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. In this dramatization of Barry Hines's novel, 15-year-old Billy trains a kestrel for whom he learns to feel great affection.
• The Railway Children	by Mike Kenny E. Nesbitt	view in Amazon
Mike Kenny's imaginative stage adaptation of E. Nesbit's much-loved children's classic. Famously filmed, this story of a prosperous Edwardian family - mother and three children - forced into near-penury in the rural north of England captures the anxieties and exhilarations of childhood with great tenderness and insight.
• The Witches: Plays for Children	by Roald Dahl	view in Amazon

• When We Are Married	by J B Priestley	view in Amazon
Twenty-five years ago, the Helliwells, the Parkers and the Soppitts were married on the same day by the same parson. They gather at the Helliwell home to celebrate their silver wedding. The new chapel organist tells them that he recently met the parson who conducted the triple wedding ceremony - he was not authorised to do so. Pandemonium breaks out when these pillars of society believe they have been living in sin for 25 years.
• The Nativity Goes Wrong	by Henry Lewis	view in Amazon
The Christian Humanitarian Reading Initiative for Spiritual Theatre (or C.H.R.I.S.T. for short) are putting on a production of The Nativity Story. It's opening night and nothing is going to plan. Despite a collapsing manger, a deranged donkey, and a director on the brink of hysteria, the show must go on.
• Too Much Punch For Judy	by Mark Wheeller	view in Amazon
This hard-hitting verbatim play is based on a tragic drink drive accident that results in the death of the vehicle’s front seat passenger, Jo. Her sister Judy, driving the car, escapes physically unhurt – but can never escape the consequences of her own reckless behaviour.
• Scrounge	by Amie M Marie	view in Amazon
Carol is disabled. She must apply to the Department for Work & Pensions for welfare. Abby applies for a well paying job assessing Personal Independence Payment claimants on behalf of the DWP. A stage play based on real conversations between disabled people and assessors, doctors, and the public, as well as whistleblowers who have called out the "grave and systematic violations" (UN, 2016) of disabled peoples' rights in the UK.
• The Play About Theresa May	by Amie M Marie	view in Amazon
This is a very strong and very stable play. Following Theresa May's 2016 ascension to leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, the former Home Secretary is out of her depth and unrepentantly dapping crocodile tears. Read two very different editions of The Play About Theresa May, one from 2017 and the other from 2018.