If Only (NHB Modern Plays)

The play's action is narrated by eighteen-year-old Katie, an ordinary girl from Luton who plays clarinet in the orchestra and is applying for a place at university. When her boyfriend Abe, a black 24 year old, gets involved in a violent street altercation following a perceived racial slight, the situation escalates alarmingly. Katie finds herself in a car riding across the city as Abe and his mates Jake and Asif attempt a revenge attack. Amidst the baying for blood and the longing for love and excitement, Katie is forced to decide her future.

My local Post Office was run by a Pakistani gentleman, and twice I was standing in the queue behind two different young kids, looking quite confused about life, wearing English Defence League tops. The strange thing is, both were polite to the Pakistani shopkeeper, and he was polite back. I wanted to tell a story about that racial complication. The premiere production was directed by Joe Murphy and designed by Hannah Clark. It was performed by Rosie Wyatt, and featured projected line drawings by Jenny Turner reproduced in the playtext.

Amy Shindler's play Burning Bridges is a drama about a young woman living with autism, and how her behaviour affects those closest to her. The play begins in a flat in North-West London belonging to Dan and Kate, a married couple in their thirties. When Kate's younger sister Sarah, who has Asperger's Syndrome, comes on a visit from America, what starts as a fortnight of family holiday spirals into a nightmare of accusation and intrigue as Sarah sets about seducing her brother-in-law. The premiere production was directed by Sally Knyvette and designed by Max Dorey.

Jack Thorne's Burying Your Brother in the Pavement is a play that tackles the story of a teenage boy grieving for his dead brother with emotional honesty and imaginative flair. Written specifically for young people, it was commissioned as part of the National Theatre Connections Festival and premiered by youth theatres across the UK, including a performance at the National Theatre in July The play revolves around Tom, 'an ordinary-looking teenager in his early teens'.

He is first encountered hiding in the attic to escape the traumatic funeral wake for his brother, Luke, which is taking place in the house below. Luke died on the streets of the dingy, crime-ridden Tunstall Estate, his neck slashed by a broken bottle. The world outside, reflected through Tom's vivid imagination, is colourful and surreal: Tom hatches a plan to bury his brother under the pavement where he died, and camps out there, meeting a succession of characters: It transpires that Luke had sneaked off to the Tunstall Estate because he was secretly gay and had a crush on a poor boy there.

In a production note accompanying the text, Thorne states: This should look like a piece of theatre achieved on the bounce and stuffed full of life. Ali Taylor's play Cathy is about the impact of spiralling living costs and the UK government's austerity measures on the most vulnerable in society. The play was produced by Cardboard Citizens, a theatre company that makes work with and for homeless people, and first performed at the Pleasance Theatre, London on 11 October as part of a UK tour.

The play follows Cathy age 43 and her year-old daughter Danielle as they struggle to find a suitable home after being forced out of their East London flat following a change of landlord. Reluctant to move away for fear of disrupting Danielle's exam preparations, or becoming unable to visit her father in his care home, Cathy seeks help from the local housing office, only to find herself falling through cracks in the system, with no one willing or able to stop her descent.

Cardboard Citizens commissioned Ali Taylor to write the play as a piece of 'Forum Theatre', marking the 50th anniversary of Ken Loach's film, and, at the same time, the 25th anniversary of the theatre company. Adrian Jackson, Artistic Director of Cardboard Citizens, explains in a note included in the published script: In a Forum Theatre presentation, after showing the play to an audience which has a stake in the issues, a discussion ensues, as to what might be different — how, in particular, the protagonists of the play, in this case Cathy and maybe Danielle, might have dealt with the oppressions that confront them in other ways, to try to overcome their problems.

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This is in no way intended to suggest that they are responsible for their situation — rather it is a provocation to see how all of us, however little power we appear to have, might confront the powerful institutions and mind-sets that surround us, to bring about change. The production was directed by Adrian Jackson and designed by Lucy Sierra. Enda Walsh's Chatroom is a play about manipulation, cyberbullying and adolescent insecurity. It was first performed as part of the National Theatre Connections season, an annual festival of new plays for youth theatres and schools.

It received its first professional production in the Cottesloe auditorium of the National Theatre, London, on 10 March The play's action takes place in a staged representation of the virtual space of an internet chatroom. But when a new member, Jim, joins to share his depression and thoughts of suicide, the conversation takes a dark turn. The group is torn between those who want to help and those who see this as a chance to create a martyr for the teenage population.

A feature film version was released in , directed by Hideo Nakata from a screenplay by Enda Walsh. Anna Jordan's play Chicken Shop is a dark coming-of-age story centring around a sixteen-year-old boy and his attempts to prove his masculinity. The play was first performed at Park Theatre, London, on 2 September Jordan had already won the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting with her play Yen , although that play was yet to receive its premiere it was premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in In Chicken Shop , sixteen-year-old Hendrix has a growing resentment for his mother, Hilary 43 , and her constant preaching on the virtues of an organic lifestyle.

He also has a troubled relationship with his mother's year-old girlfriend Katie Australian, 'sparky, stunning, hyper-sexual' , who winds him up relentlessly.

But most of all he's sick of the bullies at school, who think if his mum is gay then he must be too. In a desperate attempt to prove his masculinity, Hendrix visits the brothel above the local fried-chicken shop, where he meets Luminita 24, Moldovan , who Hendrix naively believes is trying to earn money to go to university, when in reality she has been trafficked and is in thrall to the thuggish Leko 38, Albanian. As the secret friendship between Hendrix and Luminita grows in snatched moments, his eyes are gradually opened to the reality of Luminita's world. Lucy Kirkwood's play The Children is a near-future drama about the aftermath of a catastrophe at a nuclear power station, exploring the responsibilities we have towards future generations.

The play is set in 'a small cottage on the east coast', where Hazel and Robin, two retired nuclear scientists in their sixties, are living in the wake of a disaster at the local power station where they used to work. Even though electricity is rationed and a Geiger counter is on hand to check for signs of radiation, they seek to preserve a semblance of normality: Robin now farms, while Hazel practises yoga and the pair keep in touch with their eldest daughter, Lauren.

A powerful play about international relations and the shifting balance of power between East and West, Lucy Kirkwood's Chimerica is both a political examination and an engaging personal drama. As tanks roll through Beijing and soldiers hammer on his hotel door, Joe — a young American photojournalist — captures a piece of history with his camera: Joe is covering the presidential election, marred by debate over cheap labour and the outsourcing of American jobs to Chinese factories.

When a cryptic message left in a Beijing newspaper suggests that the so-called 'tank man' is still alive and living in America, Joe is driven to discover the truth about the unknown hero he photographed. The play asks urgent questions about the emergence of China as a global superpower, the impact and legacy of authoritarian government, and the decline of Western supremacy.

It also explores the personal price paid by those who pursue the truth, whatever the cost. Chimerica premiered at the Almeida Theatre in London in in a co-production with theatre company Headlong. It was an immediate critical success, receiving a clutch of five-star reviews.

The play's action takes place in Manchester between February and October The play opens as best friends Christie and Luke, both sixteen, are camping out in a field not far from their homes. Christie is consumed with anxiety about whether he can pluck up the courage to ask Julie Bridges out on a date. Luke, brasher and more confident, offers to step in on his behalf and, in so doing, starts off a chain of events that will force a wedge between the two boys.

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The premiere production was directed by Sarah Frankcom and designed by Jamie Todd. Dawn King's play Ciphers is a thriller about spies, double agents, and the opaqueness of the human soul. Justine is a British Intelligence Officer. She is pursuing Kareem, a youth worker, whom she believes may have information on a suspected terrorist living in the UK. But when Justine is found dead in mysterious circumstances, her sister Kerry sets out to find out what happened and stumbles into a world of secrets and subterfuge that make her question who Justine really was.

The play's exploration of the fluidity of personal identity is heightened by the use of doubling in production, particularly the doubling of Justine and Kerry, who the script stipulates should be played by the same actor. It was first performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in November The play is set in Ireland in Oliver Cromwell has passed the Act for the Settlement of Ireland, decreeing that all Catholic landowners must relocate to the province of Connaught, a blighted and barren land in the west of the country.

Madeleine, an Irish woman married to an English man, Robert Preston, has just given birth to their first child, but their joy is short-lived. Their union becomes the focus of an ever-rising resentment within their small farming community. The play was revived by Shared Experience in on a tour starting in Birmingham on 7 March and including a month-long engagement from 23 April to 25 May at London's Tricycle Theatre.

The production was directed by Polly Teale and designed by Angela Davies. The play opens in the Liberty of the Clink, an area on the south bank of the Thames which historically was exempt from the jurisdiction of the county's high sheriff, and where the renowned prison known as The Clink was to be found. Lucius Bodkin, one half of traditional comedy duo the Bodkin Brothers, wants a brilliant career and, unlike his brother Thomas, is willing to take any risk to achieve it. His opportunity arrives when he is chosen to entertain a visiting delegation from the Dutch Republic.

But the Queen is at death's door, conspirators are everywhere, and Lucius has reckoned without the backstabbers and wide boys that stand in his way. Owen McCafferty's Closing Time is a tender portrait of love, dignity and emotional damage set in a Belfast pub. It was first performed at the National Theatre, London, on 9 September The pub provides a sanctuary from the outside world for those who live or drink there. Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park is an acerbic satire tracing the fault line between race and property through the changing ownership of a property in Clybourne Street, central Chicago.

The play is set in the interior of 'a modest three-bedroom bungalow, Clybourne Street, in the near north-west of central Chicago'. In the opening act, set in , Russ and Bev are moving out after a family tragedy. Their son committed suicide in the house, after going off the rails during the Korean War, and they are desperate to get out.

They are selling the place for a knock-down price, which means that a black family will be moving in, much to the disquiet of neighbourhood resident Karl, who pops round to tell Bev and Russ — in front of the black maid Francine — that they are undermining property values. In the second act, set in , the same property is being bought by Lindsey and Steve, a young white couple who want to build a new house on the same plot, but face hostility from the all-black residents' committee who are concerned that white newcomers will erase the cultural significance of the area.

In the earlier play, the black Youngers plan to move into a white neighborhood when a character named Karl Lindner, a representative of the community association, offers to buy them out. The production transferred to Broadway the following year. Sam Holcroft's play Cockroach depicts a world infected by violence, exploring Darwin's theory of evolution and the apparent male propensity for war. It was first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, on 23 October , in a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland.

The play is set in a classroom in a seemingly normal modern-day comprehensive school. While Beth, the teacher, instructs the unruly pupils in the principles of natural selection, the boys are being called up to fight in some unspecified conflict that rages on in the world outside. Beth believes that only education will set her pupils free, but, despite her best efforts, the tide of conflict is soon lapping at the school gates.

One by one, pupils and teacher are pulled under as their hopes and dreams float away from them. In a central recurring image, the girls clean the torn and bloodied uniforms of dead soldiers. The premiere production was directed by Vicky Featherstone and designed by Naomi Wilkinson. The play is performed on an empty stage 'but for three simple wooden chairs and a coffin'. Kevin Toner is a washed-up, hard-drinking bricklayer who has returned to Belfast after years of living in Kilburn, London.

A chair is transformed into his mother as he plagues her with questions as to why she left the family home, and another becomes his estranged wife, Theresa, with whom he shared a drink problem. As Kevin slowly grows more inebriated, a portrait emerges of a man grown haggard and bitter from his lonely existence, and from a family tragedy for which he shares the guilt. It was performed by Patrick O'Kane. Henry Naylor's The Collector is a play about life in occupied Iraq after the invasion by the US-led coalition, as a team of prison guards become brutalised by war. Under Saddam, Mazrat was a notorious torture house where more than 10, people died; now it is under Allied command, and Nassir works there, translating for the American interrogators.

He's local, pro-Western, determined to bring liberal values to his country and is about to get married to Zoya, his sweetheart. But when he is recognised by Faisal, a new prisoner and psychotic supporter of the old regime, Nassir's life becomes a living hell. Kathryn Barker Productions under the auspices of Kathryn Cabot launched their own tour of the show in autumn , with the following cast: It was first performed at the Bush Theatre, London, on 3 November The play is set in a flat in Kentish Town, north London, in Struggling writer Tony and his partner of five years, Greg, seem to have the perfect relationship.

But Tony is starting to yearn for something deeper, something more like monogamy. When he finds out that Greg has been having a full-blown affair with their cleaner, Robert, their differing attitudes towards love and commitment become clear. In his foreword to Kevin Elyot: I presented them with a script entitled Cosy , which was passed on to their literary manager Sebastian Born. He responded favourably and, largely through his support, it finally opened on 3 November under the title Coming Clean.

Cosy had fallen out of favour — a pity, as I'd always liked the pun on the opera which plays such an important part. I came up with the present title as a necessary compromise after what had proved to be quite a bumpy ride from acceptance to premiere. The cast was Eamon Boland, C. Coming Clean won the Samuel Beckett Award for writers showing particular promise in the field of the performing arts. James Fritz's play Comment is Free is about a journalist caught up in a devastating media storm. The play is presented as a text featuring hundreds of voices.

According to an author's note, 'It should feel noisy — things should overlap, and not everything needs to be heard. Alistair's voice is heard only through his answerphone message, but the play allows us to infer details of his public persona from the array of hostile voices ranged against him, including one voice that threatens to 'murder you and your wife slowly and then drown your daughter'. Alistair's wife, Hilary, insists that her husband's public persona is a 'panto version', very different from the 'real guy at home' who, she says, is 'a wonderful husband'.

When Hilary's brother, Ben, warns her that Alistair's public image is getting out of hand, and that people are getting 'very upset', she dismisses his concerns. But then Alistair is found dead, the police come calling, and public opinion rapidly shifts in unpredictable ways. Nick Whitby's The Complaint is a play about an individual taking on a bureaucracy, in the tradition of Franz Kafka. Afra, a woman in her twenties, has decided to make an official complaint to the authorities, represented by Mr Tabutanzer.

She is certain that her grievance is legitimate, and she is perfectly clear about her rights. But Mr Tabutanzer, while keen to show empathy towards her, has no intention of providing a resolution: As Mr Tabutanzer and his team tie themselves up in red tape, Afra gets increasingly lost.

Committed to the truth, she submits to polygraphs and torture to prove that she is sane. And she has no intention of giving up until she gets some satisfaction. In his Author's Note, Whitby explains that the play was written 'in during the Arab Spring and the Greek financial crisis. The play, however, works in the opposite way. Evan Placey's Consensual is a play about a pupil-teacher relationship that has overstepped the mark.

The play's action revolves around a British secondary school, with an ensemble group of students maintaining an insistent presence throughout the first half. Seven years ago, as a year-old teaching assistant, she made a mistake: Now she is a fully-qualified teacher and heavily pregnant, and Freddie has turned up. Lost and unhappy, he's intent on pressing charges. Though we see both of their stories, in the first half we're never sure the truth of what happened.

While Diane tries to teach a bunch of teenagers SRE — the new educational buzzword for Sex and Relationships Education — her world unravels in the background. Freddie, meanwhile, is undermined and ridiculed by his brother for going to the police. At the time, he crowed about his conquest. Unsettlingly, who is right and who is wrong is not clear cut. Nina Raine's Consent is a play about attitudes towards rape, and how victims of rape are treated by the current British justice system.

It was first performed as a co-production with Out of Joint in the Dorfman auditorium of the National Theatre, London, on 4 April previews from 28 March. The plot of Consent revolves around a contentious rape case: Having counselled their best friends Jake and Rachel, also lawyers, through their own rocky patch, Edward and Kitty find themselves in a similar situation. Fraying under the pressures of motherhood, and never having forgiven Edward over a previous indiscretion, Kitty winds up in an affair of her own and, after a fraught argument, she accuses him of rape.

A double bill of plays from the frontline of climate change - an epic portrait of an England of the near future, in the grip of unprecedented and catastrophic floods. On the Beach is set in an England in the grip of unprecedented flooding, glaciologist Will Paxton returns from months in Antarctica to tell his parents that he will take up a role within Government.

Thirty years ago, his father silenced his own radical thinking on climate change. Yet behind the reunion with his father lies years of secrecy and bitterness.

NHB Modern Plays - Drama Online

The dialectic between Will and his father is explored with an urgent intensity which reflects the state of national emergency in which England finds itself. Waters blends the personal with the political turning this large-scale play into a compelling human drama. In Resilience , England faces an uncertain future as catastrophic flooding on an unprecedented scale is predicted to hit its battered shores.

The Tory Government that has just come to power wants radical answers to the imminent floods. Their newly appointed expert Will Paxton who features prominently in the first part of the double bill, On the Beach posits an extreme scenario. He declares England, potentially from coastline to capital, to be in total peril. Impressive in scale and chilling as a prediction of our immediate future, the two plays are complementary but can also stand alone.

Helen Edmundson's stage adaptation of Jamila Gavin's Whitbread Award-winning children's novel, Coram Boy published in , is a Dickensian tale of philanthropy, foundling children, and families both divided and, ultimately, reunited. It was first performed, with music composed by Adrian Sutton, in the Olivier auditorium of the National Theatre, London, on 15 November previews from 2 November. In 18th-century Gloucestershire, the evil Otis Gardner preys on unmarried mothers, promising to take their babies and their money to Thomas Coram's hospital for foundling children.

Instead, he buries the babies and pockets the loot. But Otis's downfall is set in train when his half-witted son Meshak falls in love with a young girl, Melissa, and rescues the unwanted son she has had with a disgraced aristocrat. The child is brought up in Coram's hospital, and proves to have inherited the startling musical gifts of his father — gifts that ultimately bring about his father's redemption and a heartbreaking family reunion. It won the Meyer-Whitworth Award. The play follows two brothers, Callum age 18 and Gussie age 16 , living on the Fife coast and recently orphaned.

NHB Modern Plays

Callum believes they should make a new start in London, but, on the night of their mother's funeral, having drunk copious amounts of beer, the two boys think they spot their mother calling to them from out at sea. Things get more complicated when they meet runaway Harriet age 17 , who is trying to find her father, and both brothers fall for her.

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The production was directed by Lisa Spirling and designed by Polly Sullivan. In Mark O'Rowe's play Crestfall , three women recount their lives in a brutally patriarchal and unforgiving town where they are used, abused and manipulated by those around them. The play comprises three monologues, delivered in turn by three female characters.

Olive Day sleeps around with any man she can find, though she never charges. Married to the volatile Jungle, she also has a secret lovechild with the local pimp, Inchy Bassey. Alison Ellis is married to the Bru but struggles to connect with him and tires of her lonely existence. Thirdly, drug-addled prostitute Tilly, forced into a botched abortion by Inchy because of his situation with Olive, decides to let the town know the truth about their secret child, leading to a devastating and bloody finale. O'Rowe revised the play in preparation for its publication in , making changes 'mostly the language, which I found too spare, too humourless, and almost wilfully contradictory in its lack of flow or rhythm.

A little better, anyway. Or not much worse, in any case. Tom Basden's The Crocodile is a satirical play based on an short story of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The play is about a struggling actor a civil servant in Dostoyevsky's story who begins to receive the recognition he feels he deserves only after being swallowed whole by a crocodile at the zoo. The play is set in a zoo in St Petersburg in Ivan Matveich, a jobbing actor in his thirties, is visiting the zoo one afternoon with his best friend, Zack, who attempts to persuade Ivan to abandon the stage for some more worthwhile pursuit.

When Ivan is swallowed whole by a crocodile, he at first cries out from inside the crocodile for someone to slice the beast open and rescue him Alecky Blythe's Cruising is a verbatim-theatre comedy about pensioners going in search of love. It was first performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in a co-production between the theatre and Recorded Delivery on 7 June The play was created and performed using the verbatim-theatre techniques developed by Blythe with her company Recorded Delivery, and first seen in her previous fringe show, Come Out Eli Arcola Theatre, The play is composed entirely from recorded interviews, edited and replicated on stage with meticulous verisimilitude.

Maureen is a pensioner in search of passion. After 33 blind dates, 12 cruises and one broken heart, she is still determined to find Mr Right. On the other hand, her best friend Margaret has had no shortage of suitors. But Maureen has her doubts. Is Margaret just on the rebound and, more importantly, what will happen to her pension? On an isolated island, military captain Edgar and his wife Alice live a bitter life, their marriage soured by hatred. When the possibility of redemption and escape arrives for Alice in the shape of their former comrade Kurt, it seems that Edgar is prepared to use his very last breath to make their lives a living hell.

Sam Holcroft's short play Dancing Bears examines the twisted loyalties and violence of teenage gangs. It was first performed as part of Clean Break's Charged season, a collection of plays about the lives of women in the criminal justice system, at Soho Theatre, London, on 10 November Cockroach was revived at the Soho Theatre in March The play is performed on 'a bed of hot coals', with the characters constantly performing a 'firewalk'.

As a consequence she, Babymother and Razor Kay form a girl gang with the aim of standing up to the men who have injured and discarded them. But their mistreatment has left them with no means of communication beyond violence, or the threat of violence. In an article for the Nick Hern Books blog http: Clean Break put me in touch with women who had experience of gang culture and they kindly shared their stories with me.

I also attended the Nacro Youth Justice Conference and spoke with social workers, police, teachers and health professionals who helped to shed light on the psychology behind gang-related behaviour. And slowly but surely a structure began to emerge. It seemed that all-female gangs often evolved as offshoots from mixed-gender gangs. The Massacre at Sosenki Forest, November The Rise and Fall of Email. How to write a great review. The review must be at least 50 characters long. The title should be at least 4 characters long.

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