5 New Playscripts to Watch Out For

Ink by James Graham (19 Jun 2017)

I want to tell you a story. And it’s true. That’s what makes it a good fucking story, right, `cause all the best stories are true. Fleet Street. 1969. The Sun rises. James Graham’s ruthless, red-topped play leads with the birth of this country’s most influential newspaper – when a young and rebellious Rupert Murdoch asked the impossible and launched its first editor’s quest, against all odds, to give the people what they want. Ink was first published to coincide with the world premiere of the play at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 17 June 2017, in a production directed by Rupert Goold.

Twilight Song by Kevin Elyot (13 Jul 2017)

A new play from the writer of the classic comedy My Night with Reg. In their sitting room in leafy north London, Isabella and Basil are getting ready to take Uncle Charles out to dinner. It’s summer 1967 and their secrets are starting to crack as the world around them undergoes a revolution.

Tracing one family’s hidden liaisons over half a century to the present day, Kevin Elyot’s evocative final play conjures a heartbreakingly funny tale of fathers and sons, desire and regret, and lives half lived.

Twilight Song received its world premiere at London’s Park Theatre in 2017.

Plays: One by Alexi Kaye Campbell (27 Jul 2017)

The premiere of The Pride at the Royal Court Theatre in 2008 marked the emergence of Alexi Kaye Campbell as a distinctive new talent. With its bold and ingenious structure and its daring take on sexual politics in the 1950s and today, the play combined thrilling dramaturgy with profound insight into the affairs of the human heart. It went on to win an Olivier Award, the Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright, and the John Whiting Award for Best New Play, and was revived in the West End in 2013.

Published here alongside that remarkable debut are Alexi’s four subsequent plays, which together demonstrate his rare ability to harness theatricality in pursuit of emotional truth.

Apologia (Bush Theatre, London, 2009; revived in the West End in 2017), a perceptive look at what has happened to 1960s idealists and their children. ‘Sharp, funny, wise and humane, Alexi Kaye Campbell is a writer to cherish’ Telegraph

The Faith Machine (Royal Court, 2011), an exploration of the relationship between faith and capitalism that asks fundamental questions about the true meaning of love. ‘An urgent play of expansive ambition and largeness of spirit’ Guardian

Bracken Moor (Tricycle Theatre and Shared Experience, 2013), a haunting tale of grief and denial, set against the economic crisis of the 1930s. ‘A superior kind of ghost story… intellectually as well as emotionally haunting’ The Stage

Sunset at the Villa Thalia (National Theatre, 2016), a passionate and deeply personal play about the impact of foreign influence, planned and unintentional, on a nation and its people. ‘This play is a winner, a thought-provoking slow-burn story that works on many levels’ The Times

Follies by Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman (24 Aug 2017)

New York, 1971. There’s a party on the stage of the Weismann Theatre. Tomorrow the iconic building will be demolished. Thirty years after their final performance, the Follies girls gather to have a few drinks, sing a few songs and lie about themselves. Including such classic songs as Broadway Baby, I’m Still Here and Losing My Mind, Stephen Sondheim’s legendary musical is staged for the first time at the National Theatre.

Jitney by August Wilson (24 Aug 2017)

Set in the 1970s, this richly textured piece follows a group of men trying to eke out a living by driving unlicensed cabs (‘jitneys’). When the city threatens to board up the business and the boss s son returns from prison, tempers flare, potent secrets are revealed and the fragile threads binding these people together may come undone.

Jitney is currently on Broadway; it was first produced in New York in the spring of 2000, with a London run following in 2001, winning rave reviews and the accolade of the as the best play of the year. Jitney is the seventh in Wilson s American Century cycle of plays on the black experience in twentieth-century America. He writes not about historical events or the pathologies of the black community, but the unique particulars of black culture. In addition to the essential and insightful preface by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, this edition includes production stills from the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway production, directed by Santiago-Hudson and featuring Harvy Blanks, Anthony Chisholm, Brandon J. Dirden, André Holland (Moonlight), Carra Patterson(Straight Outta Compton), Michael Potts (The Book of Mormon), Keith Randolph Smith, Ray Anthony Thomas and John Douglas Thompson.