LITMIR.BIZ

'I've come across some stories in my time. The things people tell you when they think they're on the brink…' A country doctor recounts a story to an aspiring Russian novelist. The tale is unexpected, short and bittersweet, rather like its subject: a love affair between the doctor and his dying patient, the beautiful and cultured Alexandra Andreyevna. Thrown together by her condition, they find a love imbued with an honesty and an urgency that most would find unbearable. But this young woman's life is particularly fragile and in his desperate bid to cure her the doctor unwittingly prescribes the most dangerous drug of all. The Country Doctor was first published in the Russian literary magazine The Contemporary in the late 1840s. It was one of many tales which would later comprise The Sportsman's Notebook . Simon Day dramatises this enchanting story of frustrated love, bringing the elegance of Turgenev's prose to life in a new way.

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Heinrich von Kleist committed suicide in 1811. His masterpiece, Prince Friedrich von Homburg , is set in the world of Prussian militarism. The young cavalry general of the title achieves swift victory in the field, only to be sentenced to death for rash disobedience. In the comedy, The Broken Pitcher , a visiting judge comes to inspect a small village and finds it rife with corruption. Ordeal by Fire is a beguiling piece about the mysterious love of an armour-repairer's daughter for a young travelling knight.

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The extraordinary career and impressive literary output of the ‘Father’ of Polish comedy, Aleksander Fredro, was the subject of much celebration in Poland in 1993, the bicentenary of his birth. These new translations by Noel Clark of three of Fredro’s best known plays should do much to repair the relative ignorance of his works in this country. Virgins’ Vows – generally regarded as Fredro’s most accomplished comedy – and The Annuity , both reflect the author’s awareness of the disadvantages suffered by young women in a male-dominated society. Revenge is a seemingly innocent social comedy about a property dispute, but the Russian censors of his day were not slow to spot the subversive potential of the play. Noel Clark’s translations of Revenge and Virgins’ Vow’s have been broadcast, to much acclaim, by the BBC World Service

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Don Juan Tenorio is an important and influential Spanish classic which gives a softened, romanticised version of the infamous hero and ends, uniquely, in his repentance and salvation. First seen in 1844, it is Zorrilla's best-known play and is still performed every year in Spain on All Souls' Day. The play, in Ranjit Bolt's stunning rhyming verse translations, was given an extensive tour by the Oxford Stage Company in late 1990.

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In Scribe's Le Puff (1848) – translated here as Believe It or Not – an honourable cavalry officer returns to Paris after five years abroad to find his countrymen happily addicted to exaggeration, dissimulation and downright lying. Can he find happiness and keep his integrity in a world where nothing is what it seems? The enduring qualities of Scribe's work – the complex yet elegant plotting, the quirky characters, the sharply-written dialogue – are all very much in evidence, as with bouyant cynicism he skewers the worlds of letters, finance and politics.

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‘You just get that panic – you just start panicking and you don’t know what to do. It didn’t feel real… Why here? Why me?’ Saturday afternoon. In town with your mates. Doing some shopping. Or maybe watching the match. When the bomb goes off. Then there’s Horror. Fear. Anger. Blame. And perhaps you’re thinking: ‘Not in my name’. Not in My Name uses verbatim interviews to realistically portray the aftermath, community impact and personal consequences of a fictional terror attack from the perspective of over thirty young characters. Suitable for performance by young people or adults, this is a bold and challenging play that allows audiences to openly, safely and productively discuss current issues around terrorism and violent extremism. The play includes a series of comprehensive Teachers’ Notes designed to aid school staff and other adults working with young people in relating its content to topics around Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) within and beyond the citizenship curriculum.

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Includes the plays The Foursome , Alpha Beta , The Sea Anchor and [i]The Punishment. E. A. Whitehead's first play, The Foursome , had its premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in 1971, and subsequently transferred to the West End, winning the George Devine Award and Evening Standard Award for most promising playwright. Ostensibly a play about the battle of the sexes, it is actually an exploration of the assumptions that make such battles inevitable. Whitehead continued his exploration of sexual conflict in his next two plays, Alpha Beta and The Sea Anchor . The plays were widely produced and won Whitehead an international reputation. The Punishment , shown live on BBC2 in 1972, is a one-act play about authority and corruption.

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Arnold Wesker's plays, written over a period of more than fifty years, offer actors, male and female, a remarkable source of monologues covering themes such as friendship, death, old age, political disillusion, failed love, and self discovery fuelled by emotions ranging through anger, joy, hope, fear, outrage, love, bewilderment, guilt, and comic irony. This is Wesker's own selection of them. In addition to definitive versions of famous monologues such as Paul’s speech from The Kitchen and Beatie Bryant’s triumphant speech from the end of Roots , this volume constitutes an introduction to an unknown Wesker. To those already familiar with The Wesker Trilogy and other plays, this volume contains further evidence of this author's power and passion.The volume also includes synopses of the plays from which the monologues come.

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The Bomb: A Partial History is a political history of the nuclear bomb and its proliferation from 1940 to the present day, staged as part of the ‘Tricycle Goes Nuclear’ season. Presented in two parts, FIRST BLAST: ‘Proliferation’ and SECOND BLAST: ‘Present Dangers’, ten leading playwrights tackle the nuclear weapons debate. This collection also includes ANADYR’ by Elena Gremina (translated from the Russian by Sasha Dugdale), which received a reading as part of the festival at the Tricycle Theatre.

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Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert advertise for a boy to help on their farm. Due to a misunderstanding Anne Shirley arrives instead. To stay at Green Gables would be a dream come true for Anne, but she just keeps getting into scrapes. She dyes her hair green, accidentally gets her best friend drunk and smashes her slate over the head of the handsomest boy in school… Impetuous, rebellious and gloriously red-headed, Anne is one of literature's most appealing heroines, brought faithfully and imaginatively to life in Emma Reeves' new stageplay for all the family.

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