Alan Bennett – The History Boys
An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool.
In Alan Bennett's classic play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.
The History Boys premiered at the National in May 2004.
August Wilson – Fences & Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
*Two stunning, intensely powerful modern classics about race in 20th century America from the legendary Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright August Wilson*
In Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the great blues diva Ma Rainey is due to arrive at a run-down Chicago recording studio with her entourage to cut new sides of old favourites. Waiting for her are the black musicians in her band - and the white owners of the record company. A tense, searing account of racism in jazz-era America that the New Yorker called 'a genuine work of art'.
Fences centres on Troy Maxson, a garbage collector, an embittered former baseball player and a proud, dominating father, in 1950s Pittsburgh. When college athletic recruiters scout his teenage son, Troy struggles against his young son's ambition, his wife, who he understands less and less, and his own frustrated dreams.
August Wilson – Joe Turner’s Come And Gone
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences comes Joe Turner's Come and Gone--Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.
"The glow accompanying August Wilson's place in contemporary American theater is fixed."--Toni Morrison
When Harold Loomis arrives at a black Pittsburgh boardinghouse after seven years' impressed labor on Joe Turner's chain gang, he is a free man--in body. But the scars of his enslavement and a sense of inescapable alienation oppress his spirit still, and the seemingly hospitable rooming house seethes with tension and distrust in the presence of this tormented stranger. Loomis is looking for the wife he left behind, believing that she can help him reclaim his old identity. But through his encounters with the other residents he begins to realize that what he really seeks is his rightful place in a new world--and it will take more than the skill of the local "People Finder" to discover it.
This jazz-influenced drama is a moving narrative of African-American experience in the 20th century.