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.

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.

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.

HANDBAGGED imagines what really happened in the private meetings between two of the world’s most powerful women: the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, and Queen Elizabeth II. Born just six months apart, each leader has the capacity to change the world, but how the world should be changed is another story altogether. Will Mags and Liz find common ground in tumultuous times, or will the gloves come off at Buckingham Palace?

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

An unsettling folktale for a modern age, Right Now explores the darker recesses of the human ability to normalise our traumas. Right Now by Catherine-Anne Toupin, translated by Christopher Campbell is about Alice. Bereft, a mother without her child. Haunted by the cries of her first-born, whilst dealing with the nosy neighbours next door, Alice struggles to keep a grasp on what’s left of her shattered reality. Right Now is a richly drawn portrait of a family coming to terms with their unremitting grief.