National Network for Equitable Library Service

Six plays, united only by the fact that they take place in one and the same suburban motel room - Problem Child, Criminal Genius, Risk Everything, Adult Entertainment, Featuring Loretta, and The End of Civilization. Transients, lovers, the haunted, the hunted, the desperate, the dumb, each "strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard of no more."

"Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue is that rare and rewarding thing: a theatre work that succeeds on every level while creating something new. The playwright combines a lyrical ear with a sophisticated sense of structure to trace the legacy of war through three generations of a Puerto Rican family. Without ever invoking politics, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue manages to be a deeply poetic, touching and often funny indictment of the war in Iraq." —The New York Times.

Armagh, 1981. The Carney farmhouse is a hive of activity with preparations for the annual harvest. A day of hard work on the land and a traditional night of feasting and celebrations lie ahead. But this year they will be interrupted by a visitor. Developed by Sonia Friedman Productions, The Ferryman premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in April 2017, before transferring to the West End. The production was directed by Sam Mendes. This revised edition published in 2017.

In Happy Days, Samuel Beckett pursues his relentless search for the meaning of existence, probing the tenuous relationships that bind one person to another, and each to the universe, to time past and time present. Once again, stripping theater to its barest essentials, Happy Days offers only two characters: Winnie, a woman of about fifty, and Willie, a man of about sixty.

'I know you're there... Miranda? Miranda!' On a summer's day in 1900, three Australian schoolgirls on a picnic expedition to the remote Hanging Rock abscond from their group. They are last seen heading towards the beckoning Rock... In Tom Wright's chilling adaptation of Joan Lindsay's classic novel, five performers struggle to solve the mystery of the missing girls and their teacher. Euphoria and terror reverberate throughout the community, as the potential for history to repeat itself becomes nightmarishly real.

Blackpool, 1976. The driest summer in two hundred years. The beaches are packed. The hotels are heaving. In the sweltering backstreets, far from the choc ices and donkey rides, the Webb Sisters are returning to their mother's run-down guest house, as she lies dying upstairs. Jez Butterworth's play The Hills of California was first performed at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End in 2024, directed by Sam Mendes, and produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and Neal Street.

Mike Bartlett's controversial 'future history play' explores the people beneath the crowns, the unwritten rules of our democracy, and the conscience of Britain's most famous family. Queen Elizabeth II is dead. After a lifetime of waiting, her son ascends the throne. A future of power. But how to rule? Drawing on the style and structure of a Shakespearean history play, King Charles III opened at London's Almeida Theatre, directed by its Artistic Director Rupert Goold, in 2014, before transferring to the West End.

Hortense yearns for a new life away from rural Jamaica, Gilbert dreams of becoming a lawyer, and Queenie longs to escape her Lincolnshire roots. In these three intimately connected stories, hope and humanity meet stubborn reality, tracing the tangled history of Jamaica and Britain. Andrea Levy's epic novel Small Island, adapted for the stage by Helen Edmundson, journeys from Jamaica to Britain in 1948 – the year the HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury. It premiered at the National Theatre, London, in April 2019, directed by Rufus Norris.

A heartrending drama about family, betrayal and forgiveness, spanning four generations and two hemispheres. From the writer of the award-winning film Lantana. When the Rain Stops Falling moves from the claustrophobia of a London flat in 1959 to the windswept coast of southern Australia, and into the heart of the Australian desert in 2039. It interweaves a series of connected stories as seven people confront the mysteries of their past in order to understand their future, revealing how patterns of betrayal, love and abandonment are passed on.

"Letts is a master of pitch-dark comedies that measure the grisliest depths of human behavior...Linda Vista is very funny, equally unsettling...An inspired, ruthless take on the classic midlife-crisis comedy." – Ben Brantley, New York Times. Fifty-year-old Wheeler is moving into his own apartment after a nasty divorce. With a blend of humor and humanity, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts demonstrates the ultimate midlife crisis: the bewildering search for self-discovery once you've already grown up.