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One Million Tiny Plays About Britain

Craig Taylor author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:17th Jan '13

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One Million Tiny Plays About Britain cover

Alan Bennett meets Ricky Gervais in these brilliantly observed, incredibly funny and sometimes poignant snapshots of life in Britain today. As featured in the Guardian Weekend magazine

A Wonder Woman and bride-to-be finds herself worse for wear at the end of a hen night; a funeral director's love of Manchester United proves unhelpful when talking to the bereaved; two overly-vigilant mothers wrestle with their paranoia in the queue for Santa's Grotto; a widow recounts her disastrous return to the world of dating and a father realises that his son is growing away from him as he helps him tie his football boots. In these snippets of overheard conversations from across the length and breadth of the country, Craig Taylor captures the state we're in with humour and pathos and perfect timing. Laugh-out-loud funny, and sometimes heartbreakingly moving, these tiny plays in which every one of us could have a starring role are little windows into other people's lives that reveal the triumphs, disasters, prejudices, horrors and joys of twenty-first-century life. Hugely entertaining and utterly addictive, this is book that can be dipped into or feasted upon in one sitting. It will change the way you listen to the world around you, and train journeys will never be the same again.

‘Like the best playwrights, [Taylor's] characters have independent and spontaneous lives of their own contained within a carefully constructed dramatic architecture. Within his little worlds we see glimpses of the oddness, the quiet desperation, and the occasional tenderness of the lives of others. The plays are an original form: dramatic haikus' * Richard Eyre *
‘Taylor's plays are acutely observed, exquisitely crafted tragicomedies, rooted in bitter or absurd truths. Through their tiny aperture they provide a detailed picture that sparks an all-important jolt of recognition which is, by turns, comical, satisfying and highly discomforting. They take all of one minute to read, but will make you think for a great deal longer' * Sunday Telegraph *
One Million Tiny Plays About Britain reads like a digest of the nation's soaps, with a little bit of Alan Bennett and The Vicar of Dibley thrown in' * Times Literary Supplement *

ISBN: 9781408838259

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 190g

224 pages