55 Days
Brenton’s history play centers on the 1649 trial and execution of Charles I after the English Civil War.
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Brenton’s history play centers on the 1649 trial and execution of Charles I after the English Civil War.
Anne Boleyn’s ghost frames two interwoven histories: her struggle at Henry VIII’s court to advance Protestant ideas through Tyndale’s Bible, and James I’s 1603 efforts to settle religious disputes through the authorized Bible translation. The play follows Anne’s rise, marriage, fall and execution, then returns to James’s encounter with her ghost.
A play about Percy Bysshe Shelley and his circle—Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Claire Clairmont—framed by utopian themes and the revolutionary spirit of its protagonists. Brenton focuses on the group rather than on Shelley alone.
A stark drama about serial killer John Christie’s crimes and capture, staged between a police station and 10 Rillington Place.
During the French Revolution, Georges Danton opposes the Revolutionary Tribunal he helped establish, but Robespierre and Saint-Just turn the government against him. Danton and his supporters are condemned and executed, while Julie poisons herself and Lucile Desmoulins is arrested after her public grief.
During the First World War, Jack Twigg abandons his Oxford scholarship to enlist. After serving in the Battle of Loos and suffering a facial injury, he is treated at Harold Gillies’s hospital, where Gillies’s comic alter ego Dr Scroggy tries to lift patients’ spirits; Twigg ultimately returns to the Western Front.
In 1947, British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe, unfamiliar with India, is tasked with drawing the boundary through Punjab. As he struggles with the assignment, pressures and conflicts mount around the commission’s decisions.
An episodic examination of the history of British involvement in Northern Ireland, presenting different episodes from contrasting perspectives and responding to the Bloody Sunday shootings.
On Derby Day 1977 at Epsom Downs Racecourse, the play presents a panorama of race-goers, horse owners, bookmakers and jockeys in a modern city-comedy style.
A man tries to bring down the government by blackmailing the Prime Minister with a threat to expose an MP’s homosexuality. When the political system defeats him, he turns toward working-class revolution and violence.
After a Conservative election victory, four characters jump into the Thames and awaken 700 years later in a utopia where no one must do anything against their will.
In twelfth-century France, philosopher Peter Abelard and his brilliant student Heloise begin an affair that provokes opposition from conservative churchmen. The play follows their love, forced separation, and monastic lives alongside a public dispute between Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux over reason, faith, and power.
In 1922, T. E. Lawrence retreats from public life at the home of George Bernard Shaw and Charlotte Payne-Townshend, revisiting the aftermath of his role in the Arab Revolt.
A collaborative drama revisits a court case in which Lesley, a struggling drug user and porn model, accuses a van driver of rape. Its shifting perspectives trace the encounter and her difficult life while examining the exploitation of women in the sex industry and criminal-justice system.
Five far-left revolutionaries squat in an empty London house while a Conservative cabinet MP loses faith in himself. Their stories converge when revolutionary Jed accidentally kills both himself and the MP with plastic explosive.
Across four acts, Harold Macmillan’s life moves from his youth and First World War service through his political career, the Suez Crisis and his premiership, whose reputation is damaged by the Profumo affair. Macmillan’s younger self remains beside him, commenting on events.
Howard Brenton portrays Paul the Apostle’s life and career in modern dress. In this revisionist account, Jesus survives the crucifixion, and Paul’s encounter near Damascus is engineered by Mary Magdalene and Peter rather than occurring as the vision Paul believes it to be.
A Fleet Street satire on the British newspaper industry of the Thatcher era, following media power and journalism through a fictional white South African press baron modeled in part on Rupert Murdoch.
In a dystopian England under authoritarian rule, inmates of an internment camp named for Winston Churchill stage a play in which soldiers guard Churchill’s catafalque before he rises from the dead.
Howard Brenton's play links Roman invasion of Celtic Britain in 54 BCE, Britain in 515 CE and Ireland in 1980 to comment on imperialism and abuses of power, drawing a direct parallel between Roman conquest and the contemporary British presence in Northern Ireland.
A strike at a London crisp factory forms the main plot, interwoven with the imagined survival of Czech communist minister Josef Frank in the 1970s and his hallucinations of Stalinist Czechoslovakia. Brenton frames the drama as a British epic theatre work with limited naturalism and long speeches.
Brenton’s history play centers on the 1649 trial and execution of Charles I after the English Civil War.
Anne Boleyn’s ghost frames two interwoven histories: her struggle at Henry VIII’s court to advance Protestant ideas through Tyndale’s Bible, and James I’s 1603 efforts to settle religious disputes through the authorized Bible translation. The play follows Anne’s rise, marriage, fall and execution, then returns to James’s encounter with her ghost.
A play about Percy Bysshe Shelley and his circle—Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Claire Clairmont—framed by utopian themes and the revolutionary spirit of its protagonists. Brenton focuses on the group rather than on Shelley alone.
A stark drama about serial killer John Christie’s crimes and capture, staged between a police station and 10 Rillington Place.
During the French Revolution, Georges Danton opposes the Revolutionary Tribunal he helped establish, but Robespierre and Saint-Just turn the government against him. Danton and his supporters are condemned and executed, while Julie poisons herself and Lucile Desmoulins is arrested after her public grief.
During the First World War, Jack Twigg abandons his Oxford scholarship to enlist. After serving in the Battle of Loos and suffering a facial injury, he is treated at Harold Gillies’s hospital, where Gillies’s comic alter ego Dr Scroggy tries to lift patients’ spirits; Twigg ultimately returns to the Western Front.
In 1947, British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe, unfamiliar with India, is tasked with drawing the boundary through Punjab. As he struggles with the assignment, pressures and conflicts mount around the commission’s decisions.
An episodic examination of the history of British involvement in Northern Ireland, presenting different episodes from contrasting perspectives and responding to the Bloody Sunday shootings.
On Derby Day 1977 at Epsom Downs Racecourse, the play presents a panorama of race-goers, horse owners, bookmakers and jockeys in a modern city-comedy style.
A man tries to bring down the government by blackmailing the Prime Minister with a threat to expose an MP’s homosexuality. When the political system defeats him, he turns toward working-class revolution and violence.
After a Conservative election victory, four characters jump into the Thames and awaken 700 years later in a utopia where no one must do anything against their will.
In twelfth-century France, philosopher Peter Abelard and his brilliant student Heloise begin an affair that provokes opposition from conservative churchmen. The play follows their love, forced separation, and monastic lives alongside a public dispute between Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux over reason, faith, and power.
In 1922, T. E. Lawrence retreats from public life at the home of George Bernard Shaw and Charlotte Payne-Townshend, revisiting the aftermath of his role in the Arab Revolt.
A collaborative drama revisits a court case in which Lesley, a struggling drug user and porn model, accuses a van driver of rape. Its shifting perspectives trace the encounter and her difficult life while examining the exploitation of women in the sex industry and criminal-justice system.
Five far-left revolutionaries squat in an empty London house while a Conservative cabinet MP loses faith in himself. Their stories converge when revolutionary Jed accidentally kills both himself and the MP with plastic explosive.
Across four acts, Harold Macmillan’s life moves from his youth and First World War service through his political career, the Suez Crisis and his premiership, whose reputation is damaged by the Profumo affair. Macmillan’s younger self remains beside him, commenting on events.
Howard Brenton portrays Paul the Apostle’s life and career in modern dress. In this revisionist account, Jesus survives the crucifixion, and Paul’s encounter near Damascus is engineered by Mary Magdalene and Peter rather than occurring as the vision Paul believes it to be.
A Fleet Street satire on the British newspaper industry of the Thatcher era, following media power and journalism through a fictional white South African press baron modeled in part on Rupert Murdoch.
In a dystopian England under authoritarian rule, inmates of an internment camp named for Winston Churchill stage a play in which soldiers guard Churchill’s catafalque before he rises from the dead.
Howard Brenton's play links Roman invasion of Celtic Britain in 54 BCE, Britain in 515 CE and Ireland in 1980 to comment on imperialism and abuses of power, drawing a direct parallel between Roman conquest and the contemporary British presence in Northern Ireland.
A strike at a London crisp factory forms the main plot, interwoven with the imagined survival of Czech communist minister Josef Frank in the 1970s and his hallucinations of Stalinist Czechoslovakia. Brenton frames the drama as a British epic theatre work with limited naturalism and long speeches.