Archives: Plays

Author: Complicité

Year: 2024

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Synopsis: Mnemonic opens with a meta-theatrical lecture inviting the audience to reflect on memory. It then tells two parallel stories: in one, a man named Virgil tries to find his girlfriend, Alice, who has run away to Europe to hunt for her long-lost father; the other relates the discovery of Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,000-year-old mummified corpse. Through recurring images and situations the play draws parallels between these stories, focusing on the theme of the role of the imagination in recapturing the past.

Publication: Complicité .Mnemonic (2024). In Mnemonic (2024) (pp. 1–89). London: Methuen Drama.

Author: Sami Ibrahim

Year: 2022

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Synopsis: A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain by Sami Ibrahim follows Elif, a migrant sheep-shearer desperate for sanctuary inside city walls. Trapped in endless queues and denied entry, her story mirrors today’s harsh immigration systems. A poetic fable of displacement and resilience, the play premiered in 2022 through Paines Plough, Rose Theatre, and Gate Theatre, including a run at Edinburgh Fringe.

Publication: Ibrahim, S. (2022 2023). A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain. In A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain (pp. 3–69). London: Nick Hern Books Limited.

Author: Chinonyerem Odimba

Year: 2016

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Synopsis: Chinonyerem Odimba’s play Amongst the Reeds is a drama about two friends on the margins of society. Oni (a seventeen-year-old Nigerian girl) and Gillian (a sixteen- to seventeen-year-old Vietnamese girl) scratch out a living. They have made their home in a disused office block, finding ever more precarious ways to stay hidden from the authorities. But now Gillian is heavily pregnant, and visibility might be the only way to give her baby a chance.

Publication: Odimba, C. (2016 2021). Amongst the Reeds. In House + Amongst the Reeds (pp. 47–81). London: A Nick Hern Book.

Author: Shôn Dale-Jones

Year: 2016

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Synopsis: The Duke by Shôn Dale-Jones is a poignant one-man show blending personal family history and global crisis. When his mother accidentally breaks a valuable porcelain figure—once bought by his father as an investment—Dale-Jones reflects on value, sacrifice, and responsibility. Set against the backdrop of the refugee crisis, the play subtly urges audiences to reconsider what truly matters. Performed for free, with donations to Save the Children, it challenges conventional ideas of worth and theatre’s role in society.

Publication: Dale-Jones, S. (2016 2023). The Duke. In The Duke (pp. –63). London: Oberon Books.

Author: Richard Bean

Year: 2010

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Synopsis: The Big Fellah by Richard Bean is a darkly comic play set among Irish Americans in New York. When idealistic Michael joins the IRA and offers his Bronx apartment as a safe house, secrets, betrayal, and shifting loyalties unravel over 30 years. Shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild Best Theatre Play (2011), it’s a gripping tale of identity and disillusionment.

Publication: Bean, R. (2010 2020). The Big Fellah. In The Big Fellah (pp. 8–102). London: Oberon Books.

Author: Dan Rebellato

Year: 2010

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Synopsis: Chekhov in Hell by Dan Rebellato is a sharp, satirical comedy where Anton Chekhov awakes from a century-long sleep to find himself in 21st-century Britain. Lost in a bizarre world of pop culture, consumerism, therapy-speak, and chaos, Chekhov becomes an accidental confessor to modern absurdities. Mixing farce with poignancy, the play reflects on how well-meaning people cause harm in a fractured, fast-paced world.

Publication: Rebellato, D. (2010 2023). Chekhov in Hell. In Chekhov in Hell (pp. 23–106). London: Oberon Books.

Author: Alex Alpharaoh

Year: 2022

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Synopsis: WET: A DACAmented Journey is a monologue play that chronicles the playwright’s struggle to gain legal residency in the United States. It is included in Seeking Common Ground, a curated collection of new Latinx and Latin American plays, monologues, interviews, and critical essays that asks the question: what is the common ground between Latinx and Latin American artists?

Publication: Alpharaoh, A., Boffone, T., Rodriguez, C., & Marrero, T. (2022 2022). WET: A DACAmented Journey. In Seeking Common Ground: Latinx and Latin American Theatre and Performance (pp. 189–212). London: Methuen Drama.

Author: Caryl Phillips

Year: 2019

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Synopsis: This collection contains the following plays
a) Strange Fruit is a powerful exploration of racial identity, generational trauma, and silence within a fractured Anglo-Caribbean family in 1980s Britain. As two brothers seek belonging through radical politics and romanticized roots, their emotionally distant mother remains a mystery, haunted by her past. The play confronts the legacy of migration, assimilation, and the painful disconnect between parent and child, in a society rife with racism and unrest. A gripping, emotionally raw, and essential production.
b) Where There is Darkness (1982) explores the emotional reckoning of Albert Williams, a West Indian man preparing to return to the Caribbean after 25 years in Britain. Following his farewell party, Albert confronts the reality of his fractured family and the life he built—and concealed—in the UK. A poignant meditation on identity, belonging, and generational disconnect.
c) The Shelter (1983) by Caryl Phillips unfolds in two contrasting acts: the first set on a desert island in the late 18th century, where a white noblewoman and a Black man are shipwrecked and must renegotiate power and connection free from society’s gaze. The second act shifts to a 1950s London bar, where a Black man and a white woman confront the collapse of their relationship amid the racial tensions of post-war Britain.

Publication: Phillips, C. (2019 2020). Where There is Darkness. In Plays One (pp. 131–205). London: Oberon Books.

Author: Howard Barker

Year: 2005

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Synopsis: The Fence in Its Thousandth Year is a poetic and darkly humorous epic set amid rising borders and illegal immigration. Inspired by the Gaza fence, it explores monarchy, scandal, and collapse through the story of a blind boy’s search for identity in a deceptive world. Premiered by the Wrestling Company at Birmingham Rep in 2005 before touring the UK.

Publication: Barker, H. (2005 2023). The Fence in its Thousandth Year. In The Fence in its Thousandth Year (pp. 7–79). London: Oberon Books Ltd.