Williams Plays: 3


Book Description

Roy Williams has a deserved reputation as one of the most exciting young writers whose plays have electrified the sort of audiences most theatres rarely see: streetwise urban youth. 'His plays have brought the experience of black urban youth onto the stage' (Observer).This third collection of plays, introduced by the author, showcases the diversity, the moral probing and the fine ear for authentic dialogue characteristic of his writing: Fallout: first produced in 2003 the play focuses on the aftermath of the killing of a teenager. Slow Time was commissioned and developed by the National Theatre's Education Department and toured to London schools. Set in a young offender's institution the play depicts three young men and their fight to survive. Days of Significance was produced by the RSC in 2007 and is revived at the Tricycle Theatre, London in March 2008. It was described by the Daily Telegraph as 'the best new play of the year ... that powerfully caught the debased spirit of our times.' Absolute Beginners - a stage adaptation of the seminal novel of adolescence set in 1958 London - produced at the Lyric Hammersmith May 07: 'bags of energy and highly watchable' Daily Mail.




The Theatre of Tennessee Williams


Book Description

Volume III of the series includes Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957), and Suddenly Last Summer (1958). The first, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Award, has proved every bit as successful as William's earlier A Streetcar Named Desire. The other two plays, though different in kind, both have something of the quality of Greek tragedy in 20th-century settings, bringing about catharsis through ritual death.




The Magic Tower and Other One-act Plays


Book Description

This new volume gathers some of Williams' most exuberant early work and includes one-acts that he would later expand to powerful full-length dramas, including "The Pretty Trap," a cheerful take on "The Glass Menagerie," and "Interior: Panic," a stunning precursor to "A Streetcar Named Desire."




Williams Plays: 4


Book Description

'[Williams's] plays have brought the experience of black urban youth onto the stage' Observer Sucker Punch: 'As usual with Williams, the dialogue is crisp and bespoke: motives are mixed, nobody is a hero, nothing is just black and white.' The Times Joe Guy: 'Williams's dialogue ricochets around the stage like gunfire . . . energetic, exciting and entertaining.' Stage Category B: 'Category B is a harrowing play, but one shot through with both dark humour and tentative flickers of hope'. Daily Telegraph Baby Girl: 'The shocking thing about Roy Williams's Baby Girl is that it argues that there is a cyclical pattern to teenage pregnancy . . . Williams paints a rivetingly plausible picture of a world in which mothers and daughters are sexual rivals, 'virgin' is the ultimate peer insult and the school gates are a fertile hunting ground for male predators.' Guardian There's Only One Wayne Matthews: 'Williams's writing is punchy . . . Wayne's gradual understanding of the realities of the world make this a touching coming-of-age drama.' Guardian







American Blues


Book Description

THE STORIES: MOONY'S KID DON'T CRY. A short play about a worker, his wife and child. (1 man, 1 woman.) THE DARK ROOM. A tragic sketch about an Italian woman and a welfare worker. (1 man, 2 women.) THE CASE OF THE CRUSHED PETUNIAS. A delightful, hum




Mister Paradise and Other One-act Plays


Book Description

Thirteen previously unpublished short plays now available for the first time.




The Red Devil Battery Sign


Book Description

This book is William's symbol for the military-industrial complex and all the dehumanizing trends it represents from mindless cocktail party chatter to bribery of officials to assassination plots directed against those who won't play the game, to attempted coups by right-wing zealots.







Days of Significance


Book Description

Written in response to Much Ado About Nothing and performed by Dominic Cooke's Pericles and The Winter's Tale Company, Roy Williams' Days of Significance is set in market-town England and the deserts of Iraq. Two young soldiers join their friends to binge drink the night before they leave for active service. Their complex love lives and mortal fears directly impact on their tour of duty. Roy Williams looks at how the naive and malformed moral codes of these young men have catastrophic reverberations for the West's moral authority.