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Great Plays in The AnswerBank: Arts & Literature
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Great Plays

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Ray The Grey | 09:03 Tue 10th Jan 2006 | Arts & Literature
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Can anyone recommend some great plays. I have read Shakespeare, Shaw & some Greek plays, but not much more recent? I have been spurred into exploring plays more since watching Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the weekend, which I thought was exceptional.
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I've rather enjoyed the work of Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter, but they can fall flat when you read them (Pinter's especially) - you really need to see them acted on stage, which is what they were written for.
Hello. I will endorse Pinter and Stoppard. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is the great modern classic. All of these writers use dark humour.
Try Peter Shaeffer's Amadeus - fabulous piece of work.
Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" Ostensibly about the Salem witch trials it's an allegory of McCarthyism

I've seen the following in the past couple of years and highly recommend them.
Jane Eyre-Polly Teale
After Mrs Rochester- Polly Teale
Don Carlos- Friedrich Schiller
The House of Bernardo Alba- Federico Garcia Lorca
Hedda Gabler-Henrik Ibsen

Polly Teale is a modern writer and director. Her work is fantastic!!!

My favourites are


"Bent"- Martin Sherman


"Roberto Zucco"- Bernard-Marie Kolt�s


"Good"- C P Taylor


"Bernadette" Elisabeth O' Reilley


and as said above Pinter, Beckett etc etc.


Robert Bolt's Man for All Seasons is a good read, and interesting to compare with the screen versions. The old Penguin Modern Playwrights version (long out of print, probably, but worth snapping up if seen in 2nd-hand or charity shops) also included John Whiting's The Devils, again recommendable for similar reasons.

Robert Bolt's play has just opened in London with Martin Shaw.


You must read "The Cherry Orchard" by Chekov, "The Wild Duck" by Ibsen and "Suddenly Last Summer", another play by Tennessee Williams.

Question Author

Thank you very much everyone!


There are a couple that I have seen, and I have read some other Chekov, and one or two of the titles people have mentioned, but there's a whole lot more for me to read. That will keep me going for a while


Much appreciated...

death of a salesman, sleuth, an inspector calls are all great plays in my opinion


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