This wide-ranging Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama offers challenging analyses of a range of plays in their political contexts. It explores the cultural, social, economic and institutional agendas that readers need to engage with in order to appreciate modern theatre in all its complexity. An authoritative guide to modern British and Irish drama. Engages with theoretical discourses challenging a canon that has privileged London as well as white English males and realism. Topics covered include: national, regional and fringe theatres; post-colonial stages and multiculturalism; feminist and queer theatres; sex and consumerism; technology and globalisation; representations of war, terrorism, and trauma.
Acknowledgements xi List of Illustrations xii Notes on Contributors xiii Introduction 1 Mary Luckhurst Part I Contexts 5 1 Domestic and Imperial Politics in Britain and Ireland: The Testimony of Irish Theatre 7 Victor Merriman 2 Reinventing England 22 Declan Kiberd 3 Ibsen in the English Theatre in the Fin de Siecle 35 Katherine Newey 4 New Woman Drama 48 Sally Ledger Part II Mapping New Ground, 1900-1939 61 5 Shaw among the Artists 63 Jan McDonald 6 Granville Barker and the Court Dramatists 75 Cary M. Mazer 7 Gregory, Yeats and Ireland's Abbey Theatre 87 Mary Trotter 8 Suffrage Theatre: Community Activism and Political Commitment 99 Susan Carlson 9 Unlocking Synge Today 110 Christopher Murray 10 Sean O'Casey's Powerful Fireworks 125 Jean Chothia 11 Auden and Eliot: Theatres of the Thirties 138 Robin Grove Part III England, Class and Empire, 1939-1990 151 12 Empire and Class in the Theatre of John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy 153 Mary Brewer 13 When Was the Golden Age? Narratives of Loss and Decline: John Osborne, Arnold Wesker and Rodney Ackland 164 Stephen Lacey 14 A Commercial Success: Women Playwrights in the 1950s 175 Susan Bennett 15 Home Thoughts from Abroad: Mustapha Matura 188 D. Keith Peacock 16 The Remains of the British Empire: The Plays of Winsome Pinnock 198 Gabriele Griffin Part IV Comedy 211 17 Wilde's Comedies 213 Richard Allen Cave 18 Always Acting: Noel Coward and the Performing Self 225 Frances Gray 19 Beckett's Divine Comedy 237 Katharine Worth 20 Form and Ethics in the Comedies of Brendan Behan 247 John Brannigan 21 Joe Orton: Anger, Artifice and Absurdity 258 David Higgins 22 Alan Ayckbourn: Experiments in Comedy 269 Alexander Leggatt 23 'They Both Add up to Me': The Logic of Tom Stoppard's Dialogic Comedy 279 Paul Delaney 24 Stewart Parker's Comedy of Terrors 289 Anthony Roche Part V War and Terror 299 25 AWounded Stage: Drama and World War I 301 Mary Luckhurst 26 Staging 'the Holocaust' in England 316 John Lennard 27 Troubling Perspectives: Northern Ireland, the 'Troubles' and Drama 329 Helen Lojek 28 On War: Charles Wood's Military Conscience 341 Dawn Fowler and John Lennard 29 Torture in the Plays of Harold Pinter 358 Mary Luckhurst 30 Sarah Kane: From Terror to Trauma 371 Steve Waters Part VI Theatre since 1968 383 31 Theatre since 1968 385 David Pattie 32 Lesbian and Gay Theatre: All Queer on the West End Front 398 John Deeney 33 Edward Bond: Maker of Myths 409 Michael Patterson 34 John McGrath and Popular Political Theatre 419 Maria DiCenzo 35 David Hare and Political Playwriting: Between the Third Way and the Permanent Way 429 John Deeney 36 Left in Front: David Edgar's Political Theatre 441 John Bull 37 Liz Lochhead: Writer and Re-Writer: Stories, Ancient and Modern 454 Jan McDonald 38 'Spirits that Have Become Mean and Broken': Tom Murphy and the 'Famine' of Modern Ireland 466 Shaun Richards 39 Caryl Churchill: Feeling Global 476 Elin Diamond 40 Howard Barker and the Theatre of Catastrophe 488 Chris Megson 41 Reading History in the Plays of Brian Friel 499 Lionel Pilkington 42 Marina Carr: Violence and Destruction: Language, Space and Landscape 509 Cathy Leeney 43 Scrubbing up Nice? Tony Harrison's Stagings of the Past 519 Richard Rowland 44 The Question of Multiculturalism: The Plays of Roy Williams 530 D. Keith Peacock 45 Ed Thomas: Jazz Pictures in the Gaps of Language 541 David Ian Rabey 46 Theatre and Technology 551 Andy Lavender Index 563
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