David Edgar

First Performed at the Other Place, Stratford-Upon-Avon, 12 October 1994 (NHB International Collection)

Pentecost: The Rsc/Allied Domecq Young Vic Season 

THE STORY: Moving on to higher things from his job in a community college, former sixties activist Michael Bern finds that his partner has thrown a surprise fifty-fifth party in his honour, at which she and his friends present him with his FBI file

Daughters of the Revolution

Continental Divide

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Racism, Fascism and the Politics of the National Front

David Edgar's 'If Only' is a political drama set around the 2010 UK General Election and its possible consequences for policymaking. It was first performed at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, on 20 June 2013.

If Only

A new play about biblical translation from a top UK playwright, marking the King James Bible's 400th Anniversary.

Written on the Heart

Edgar Plays 3

A bloody conflict on Europe's eastern border is escalating at an alarming rate, while every urgent effort is made behind closed doors to find peace. David Edgar's new play moves thrillingly back and forth between the drama of the negotiating table and the theatre of war.

The Prisoner's Dilemma

Starting with international peace brokers playing simulation games on a university campus, David Edgar's intensely political play spirals upward and outward to present a situation of real conflict over bloodily unresolvable life-and-death issues.

This volume contains the best of David Edgar's work from the seventies The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs is an adaptation of the famous South African writer's diaries and deals with solitary confinement and loneliness - "a remarkable, persuasive picture." (Observer); Mary Barnes is based in a commune in the sixties and focuses on schizophrenia "promulgating the theory that schizophrenia can be effectively treated through behaviourist methods alone"; Saigon Rose tackles venereal disease and is "intriguing and entertaining...Edgar handles his themes - loss of innocence and a sense of betrayal - in a bitty, playful style laced with black comedy" (Independent); Oh Fair Jerusalem deals with the black death and Destiny deals with the loss of Empire and the rise of fascism in contemporary Britain "A play which astonished me with its intelligence, density, sympathy and finely controlled anger." Dennis Potter (Sunday Times).

Jail Diary of Albie Sachs; Mary Barnes; Saigon Rose; O Fair Jerusalem; Destiny

Edgar Plays: 1

After almost a century of unrest, the King James Bible was intended to end the violent upheavals of the English Reformation. But deep-seated discord forces a leading translator to confront the betrayal of his youthful religious ideals for the sake of social peace. The play begins with a heated debate about last-minute revisions to the new version, taking place in the Holborn house of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes in 1610. It then backtracks first to Flanders in 1536 to show us the outlawed William Tyndale smuggling his biblical translation out of prison, and then to Yorkshire in 1586 to demonstrate the unresolved tensions inside the Protestant Reformation. At the heart of the play is a long scene in which Andrewes debates at length with the ghost of Tyndale, who had been burnt at the stake almost 70 years earlier.

Robert Louis Stevenson

A superb adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous story of the unassuming Dr Jekyll and his dark alter-ego Mr Hyde.

A New Version of the Novel by Robert Louis Stevenson

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

"David Edgar, like Balzac, seems to be the secretary for our times" (Guardian) Nicholas Nickleby: "With uncommon audacity Nicholas Nickleby not only takes on Dickens' sprawling novel, it fractures all the petty limitations we have imposed upon the stage as well...A landmark" (New Statesman); In Entertaining Strangers, a community constructs a nativity play: "English left-wing social drama at its sturdiest and finest: human, argumentative, utterly unafraid of human realities, and seething with indignation and compassion" (Sunday Times) and Ecclesiastes, a radio play that looks at the rise and fall of a "fundamentalist" Christian clergyman in the US.

Ecclesiastes, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Entertaining Strangers

Edgar Plays: 2

"David Edgar, like Balzac, seems to be the secretary for our times" (Guardian) Our Own People: "A courageous and intelligent discussion of race and industrial relations" (City Limits); Teendreams (written with Susan Todd of Monstrous Regiment theatre company) is about the failed revolutionary dreams of a set of teenagers. Maydays compares the phenomenon of post-war social rebellion from Western and Eastern perspectives; That Summer is an "elegantly tangential treatment of the 1984 miners' strike" (Plays and Players) "Edgar never lets his drama simplify into ideological diagram...This elegant, humane play keeps its emphasis on the...results that can ensue when diverse lives briefly brush against each other." (Independent)

Teendreams; Our Own People; That Summer and Maydays

Edgar Plays: 3

A provocative, satirical look at the overwhelming difficulty of defining what it is to be British.

Testing the Echo

Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill's 'Three More Sleepless Nights' is a play about romantic relationships turning sour. It was first staged at the Soho Poly, London, on 9 June 1980.

Short Plays

Churchill: Shorts

"When the defiantly northern Wyverdale District Council fails to satisfy a government audit, a New Labour fixer is despatched from the capital to formulate a robust recovery plan. But resources spent on websites, 'faith festivals' and council leaflets in Bengali seem beside the point to the Labour old guard, struggling as they are to provide basic services to an alienated and divided electorate." "What looks at first like a topical satire of contrasting attitudes between north and south, old and new Labour, mushy peas and guacamole, quickly becomes a chilling drama about multicultural Britain, in which racial tensions can soar and good intentions have fatal consequences." "Premiered in the National's Olivier Theatre, Playing with Fire marks a return to the subject matter David Edgar first explored in his breakthrough play, Destiny."--BOOK JACKET.

Playing with Fire

Charles Dickens

THE STORY: Despite its length and large cast, the play requires relatively simple staging, enabling it to move smoothly through its many scenes and related story lines. The sum total is a brilliant recapturing of the sights and sounds of Victorian England

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

That Summer

Distinguished playwright David Edgar examines the mechanisms and techniques which dramatists throughout the ages have employed to structure their plays and to express their meaning. Written for playwrights and playgoers alike, Edgar’s analysis starts with the building blocks of whole plays – plot, character creation, genre and structure – and moves on to scenes and devices. He shows how plays share a common architecture without which the uniqueness of their authors’ vision would be invisible. What does King Lear have in common with Cinderella? What does Jaws owe to Ibsen? From Aeschylus to Alan Ayckbourn, from Chekhov to Caryl Churchill, are there common principles by which all plays work? How Plays Work is a masterclass for playwrights and playmakers and a fascinating guide to the anatomy of drama. 'lucid, deeply intelligent... combines theoretical acumen with the assured know-how of a working dramatist' Terry Eagleton, TLS 'Fascinating... Read it. You will learn a lot' The Stage

How Plays Work

A mighty new play about the Nazi High Command based on Gitta Sereny's book.

David Edgar

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