The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays

A fantastic introduction to Irish drama offering award-winning plays by five of the great Irish playwrights. The Steward of Christendom is seen as a masterpiece: 'not even O'Casey or Synge wrote better than this.' Guardian The Hostage is a set text for AQA A level English Literature from 2008. The Cripple of Inishmaan will be revived by Druid Theatre Company from September 2008, touring Ireland and the UK and playing at the Dublin Theatre Festival. Barry's new novel, The Secret Scripture, was published in May 2008 and he has a new play in September.

A scintillating collection of five plays from the last sixty years of Irish drama featuring work by Behan, Barry, Reid, Murphy, and McDonagh, and introduced by Patrick Lonergan.Introduced by Patrick Lonergan, The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays brings together five major works from the Irish dramatic canon of the last sixty years in one outstanding collection. Behan's The Hostage, depicting the capture and death of a British soldier by the IRA, was first produced by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in 1958 and was declared 'a masterpiece' by The Times. Murphy's Bailegangaire (1985) portrays a senile old woman's recitation of an epic tale to her two granddaughters who struggle to free themselves from her and exorcise the past. Reid's The Belle of the Belfast City, winner of the George Devine Award in 1986, examines the tensions present in three generations of women in a Belfast-Protestant family during the week of an anti-Anglo-Irish rally. Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom won the London Critics' Circle Award for Best Play 1995 and was heralded by the Guardian as 'an authentic masterpiece'. McDonagh's 1996 play The Cripple of Inishmaan is a strange comic tale in the great tradition of Irish storytelling. McDonagh was awarded the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.