Handbags, hairspray and sensible shoes. The monarch - Liz. Her most powerful subject - Maggie. One believed there was no such thing as society. The other had vowed to serve it. Opening the clasp on the antipathy between two giants of the twentieth century, Handbagged by Moira Buffini premiered at the Tricycle Theatre in September 2013.

Something exciting is happening with the contemporary history play. New writing by playwrights such as Jackie Sibblies Drury, Samuel Adamson, Hannah Khalil, Cordelia Lynn, and Lucy Kirkwood, makes powerful theatrical use of the past, but does not fit into critics' familiar categories of historical drama. In this book, Benjamin Poore provides readers with tools to name and critically analyse these changes. The Contemporary History Play contends that many history plays are becoming more complex and layered in their aesthetic approaches, as playwrights work through the experience of being surrounded by numerous and varied forms of historical representation in the twenty-first century. For theatre scholars, this book offers a means of interpreting how new writing relies on the past and notions of historicity to generate meaning and resonance in the present. For playwrights and students of playwriting, the book is a guide to the history play's recent past, and to the state of the art: what techniques and formulas have been popular, the tropes that are widely used, and how artists have found ways of renewing or overturning established conventions.

In your quest for respectability I think we can say you have been talking out of both corners of your mouth. One corner talks to your rich backers, the other to your street-fighters. 1931. Hans Litten is one of the most celebrated lawyers in Berlin, famed for his brilliant mind and the rhetorical flair with which he defends those fighting back against the rapidly growing Nazi movement. So, when he calls Herr Hitler as star witness in the trial of a band of murderous SA men, the politician feels the full force of Litten's intellect, wit and courage. It arouses in Hitler a feeling he can't abide or forget. Two years later, on the night of the Reichstag fire, Litten is arrested. He is held without trial, beaten, tortured, and threatened as 'an enemy of human society'. As Litten disappears into the Nazi system, his indomitable mother, Irmgard, confronts his captors and, at enormous personal risk, fights to secure his release. This riveting drama by the writer of The Man Who Crossed Hitler explores Irmgard's struggle, her son's resistance, and the heroic battle of the weak against the powerful, truth against lies and mothers against murderers. Taken At Midnight received its world premiere on 26 September 2014 at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester. This edition features an introduction by the author.

A collection of wide-ranging and ambitious short plays reflecting the complexities of women and political power in the United Kingdom.

Together ten chronologically-organised scenes offer a vision of love and sex in England across two millennia, from classical times to the present day via the Renaissance and the Swinging Sixties.3 women, 3 men

Monarchies are facing public demands for modernization and adapting to changing societal, political, and media environments. This book proposes new directions in the research of contemporary European monarchies and offers innovative perspectives on trans/national royal public interactions and (semi-)fictional representations of monarchs. Its case studies address historic and recent developments, including newly invented royal traditions, media depictions, Meghan Markle's impact on the image of the British monarchy, and the royal family's role in Brexit negotiations. With its interdisciplinary analyses, the book reflects current academic, societal, and popular cultural interest in royalty.

Hallway-dwelling Semyon is unemployed and disheartened with life. When his last hope for self-respect disappears, Semyon decides to take his own life. But word gets out and he finds himself inundated with sympathetic visitors - begging him to die on their behalf. Suddenly he is an important man, and on the night of his proposed suicide events spiral out of control. Moira Buffini has freely adapted Nikolai Erdman's celebrated satirical comedy 'The suicide', banned by Stalin before a single performance.-- Back cover.