Entertainment/Theatre
Playwrights
Absurd Person Singular – Alan Ayckbourn (born 1939)
The Norman Conquests trilogy – Table Manners, Living Together, Round and Round the Garden by Alan Ayckbourn
Bedroom Farce, Body Language, Absent Friends, Sisterly Feelings – Alan Ayckbourn
Antigone – play by Jean Anouilh
Becket, Medee – Jean Anouilh
Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance – John Arden
The Admirable Crichton – JM Barrie (1860 – 1937)
The Little Minister – play by JM Barrie
Quality Street is a comedy in four acts by JM Barrie. The play was so popular that Quality Street chocolates and caramels were named after it
One Man, Two Guvnors is a play by Richard Bean, an English adaptation of Servant of Two Masters, a 1743 Commedia dell'arte comedy play by the Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni
Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 – 1799) Figaro plays are Le Barbier de Seville, Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mere coupable (The Guilty Mother)
The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a play by Francis Beaumont, first performed in 1607
Waiting for Godot, subtitled A Tragicomedy in Two Acts, is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett (1906 – 1989), written in the late 1940s and first published in 1952. Beckett originally wrote the play in French. The plot concerns Vladimir (also called Didi) and Estragon (also called Gogo), who arrive at a pre-specified roadside location in order to await the arrival of someone named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon, who appear to be tramps, pass the time in conversation, and sometimes in conflict. Other characters include Pozzo and Lucky
‘Nothing to be done’ – opening line of Waiting for Godot
Endgame, Happy Days – Samuel Beckett
What Where – last play by Samuel Beckett
A Question of Attribution – Alan Bennett (born 1934). Based on Anthony Blunt's role in the Cambridge Spy Ring and, as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, personal art advisor to Queen Elizabeth II
An Englishman Abroad – Alan Bennett. Concerns meetings between Coral Brown and Guy Burgess
Writing Home – Alan Bennett
The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett, about the Queen chancing on a mobile library
The History Boys – Alan Bennett, is about a group of Sheffield sixth formers trying to get into Oxbridge during the eighties
Forty Years On – Alan Bennett’s first play in the West End
The Habit of Art – a 2009 play by Alan Bennett, centered on a fictional meeting between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten while Britten is composing the opera Death in Venice
The Madness of George III – Alan Bennett
GBH – play by Alan Bleasdale
A Man for All Seasons – Robert Bolt. The plot is based on the true story of Sir Thomas More
The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Life of Galileo, Mother Courage and her Children, The Private Lives of the Master Race, Good Woman of Setzuan – Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 1956)
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui – play by Bertolt Brecht
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogonny – Bertolt Brecht. Born in Germany
The Romans in Britain – Howard Brenton
Hobson’s Choice – Harold Brighouse. The plot revolves around Willie Mossop, a gifted, but unappreciated shoemaker employed by the domineering Henry Horatio Hobson. He is bullied by Hobson's eldest daughter, Maggie into marrying her and setting up in a shop of his own
Boeing Boeing is a classic French farce by Marc Camoletti. The London production of the play opened at the Apollo Theatre in 1962 and then transferred to the Duchess Theatre in 1965. It closed after a highly successful run that stretched over seven years and 2035 performances. The play was revived in London in 2007, this time at the Comedy Theatre
Ivanov – first play by Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904)
The Seagull – Anton Chekhov. Tragi-comedy about unrequited love, which revolves around the actress Arkadina
Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard – Chekhov
Olga, Irina and Masha – Chekhov’s Three Sisters
The Duel – Chekhov
Serious Money, Cloud Nine, Top Girls – Caryl Churchill
La Machine Infernale – Jean Cocteau
The Mourning Bride (1697), The Way of the World (1700) – plays by William Congreve
“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” – from The Mourning Bride
Love for Love – William Congreve
Pierre Corneille (1606 – 1684) was a French tragedian. He earned the valuable patronage of Cardinal Richelieu, who was trying to promote classical tragedy along formal lines, but later quarrelled with him, especially over his best-known play Le Cid about a medieval Spanish warrior
Poor Little Rich Girl – Noel Coward (1899 – 1973)
Hay Fever, Private Lives, The Vortex – Noel Coward
Hay Fever – set in an English country house in the 1920s, and deals with the four eccentric members of the Bliss family and their outlandish behaviour when they each invite a guest to spend the weekend
Private Lives – the plot revolves around a divorced couple, Amanda and Elyot, who bump into each other on a honeymoon trip in Deauville with their respective new spouses
Blithe Spirit (1941) is a comic play written by Noel Coward which takes its title from Shelley's poem To a Skylark (‘Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! / Bird thou never wert’). The action of the play centres on socialite Charles Condomine being haunted by the ghost of his first wife Elvira following a seance
There Are Bad Times Just Around the Corner – Noel Coward
Design for Living – Noel Coward
The Family Reunion – TS Eliot
The Vagina Monologues – play written by Eve Ensler
Accidental Death of an Anarchist – Dario Fo (born 1926)
Dario Fo's anti-Iraq war play Peace Mom featured Frances de la Tour as mother Cindy Sheehan
Alphabetical Order – Michael Frayn (born 1933)
Copenhagen is a play by Michael Frayn, based around an event that occurred in Copenhagen in 1941, a meeting between the physicists Bohr and Heisenberg
Headlong, Clouds, Donkey’s Years, Noises Off – plays by Michael Frayn
Noises Off – comedy about a touring theatre company’s struggle to stage a farce
The Miracle Worker – play by William Gibson, based on the work of Helen Keller
The Government Inspector (also translated as The Inspector General) (1836) – Nikolai Gogol
The Lion in Winter is a 1966 Broadway play by James Goldman
She Stoops to Conquer – Oliver Goldsmith
She Stoops to Conquer was initially titled Mistakes of a Night
Six Degrees of Separation is a 1990 play by John Guare. It explores the existential premise that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else in the world by a chain of no more than six acquaintances
Slag – first play by David Hare
Pravda, Plenty, Licking Hitler, The Absence of War – David Hare
The Judas Kiss – David Hare. Concerns Oscar Wilde’s scandal
Skylight – David Hare
Stuff Happens is a play by David Hare, written in response to the Iraq War. The title is inspired by Donald Rumsfeld's response to widespread looting in Baghdad
Billy Elliot, The Pitmen Painters – plays by Lee Hall
Cooking with Elvis is dark comedy by Lee Hall
Rope – play by Patrick Hamilton
The Dresser – Ronald Harwood
Tom & Viv is a play by British playwright, Michael Hastings, which tells the story of the relationship between the American poet, T. S. Eliot, and his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot
The Little Foxes, The Children’s Hour – Lillian Hellman
The Fifth Column – only full-length play by Ernest Hemingway
The Woman in Black – play based on a Susan Hill novel
Ghosts, Hedda Gabler – Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906)
A Doll’s House – Ibsen. Nora Helmer is the tragic heroine
Catalina – first work by Ibsen
The Wild Duck, The Master Builder – Ibsen
An Enemy of the People – play by Ibsen
Peer Gynt – Ibsen. His sweetheart is Solveig
The Alchemist – Ben Jonson (1572 – 1637). Follows three confidence tricksters
Volpone, or The Fox, is a black comedy by Ben Jonson first produced in 1606. A merciless satire of greed and lust, it remains Jonson's most-performed play, and it is among the finest Jacobean comedies
Bartholomew Fair, A Tale of a Tub – Ben Jonson
Every Man in his Humour – Ben Johnson
Exiles – James Joyce’s only play
Blasted, Cleansed, 4.48 Psychosis – Sarah Kane
Chimerica is a play by the British dramatist Lucy Kirkwood. It draws its title from the term Chimerica, referring to the predominance of China and America in modern geopolitics
Up the Junction – Ken Loach
Blood Wedding, The House of Bernarda Alba – plays by Federico Garcia Lorca
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 – 1949) was a Belgian poet (born in Ghent), playwright, and essayist writing in French. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life
Pelleas and Melisande is a Symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck about the forbidden, doomed love of the title characters. It was first performed in 1893
The Blue Bird – Maurice Maeterlinck
Glengarry Glen Ross a 1984 Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning play by David Mamet. A group of Chicago real-estate salesmen try to sell worthless Florida swampland
Speed-the-Plow – David Mamet satire about Hollywood
Tamburlaine the Great, The Jew of Malta – Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593)
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus – Christopher Marlowe. Includes the line “the face that launched a thousand ships”. Helen of Troy, Lucifer and the Pope all appear. Published in 1604. Faust enters a pact with the devil, pledging his soul in exchange for earthly power and knowledge and 24 years of service
Dido, Queen of Carthage – first play by Christopher Marlowe
Edward II, The Massacre at Paris – Christopher Marlowe
The Factory Girls – Frank McGuinness
Borstal Boy is a play adapted by Frank McMahon from the 1958 autobiographical novel of Irish nationalist Brendan Behan of the same title
The Crucible – Arthur Miller (1915 – 2005), inspired by McCarthy witch hunts
Willy Loman – title character in Death of a Salesman
A View from the Bridge, All My Sons – Arthur Miller
After the Fall is a deeply personal view of Arthur Miller's own experiences during his marriage to Marilyn Monroe (1956–1961)
Resurrection Blues – Arthur Miller
Le Malade Imaginaire (1673), Le Misanthrope (1666) – Moliere (1622 – 1673), born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin
Dom Juan is French play based on the tale of Don Juan, by Moliere. It is the last part in Moliere's trilogy of hypocrisy, after The School for Wives and Tartuffe (the hypocrite). It was first performed in 1665
The Bourgeois Gentleman – Moliere. The music was composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully
Moliere had his own troupe of actors
Privates on Parade – farce by Peter Nichols
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg – Peter Nichols
The Shadow of a Gunman is a 1923 play by Sean O'Casey (1880 – 1964). It centres on the mistaken identity of a building tenant who is thought to be an IRA assassin. It is the first in O'Casey's ‘Dublin Trilogy’ – the other two being Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926)
A Moon for the Misbegotten – Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953)
The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill is about an African-American killer who escapes from prison to a Caribbean island where he sets himself up as emperor
Theodore Hickman – title character in The Iceman Cometh
Mourning Becomes Electra – Eugene O’Neill. The story is a retelling of the Oresteia by Aeschylus
Long Day’s Journey into Night – Eugene O’Neill, follows a turbulent day in the life of the Tyrone family in a Connecticut summer house in 1912
Loot – Joe Orton (1933 – 1967). The play is an extremely dark farce which satirizes the Roman Catholic Church, social attitudes to death, and the integrity of the police force
What the Butler Saw, Entertaining Mr Sloane – Joe Orton
Joe Orton was murdered by Kenneth Halliwell
Look Back in Anger – John Osborne (1929 – 1994). Main character is Jimmy Porter
Inadmissible Evidence, A Patriot for me, Deva Vu – John Osborne plays
The Entertainer – John Osborne. Central character is Archie Rice
Harold Pinter (1930 – 2008) was famous for his ‘Pinter pause’ which presents a subtly elliptical dialogue; often the primary things characters should address is replaced by ellipsis or dashes
The Dumb Waiter – Harold Pinter. Two hit-men, Ben and Gus, are waiting in a basement room for their assignment
The Homecoming – Harold Pinter. Play about the disruption caused to an all-male household when a long-absent son brings his glamorous wife home to meet the family
The Hothouse – Harold Pinter
Betrayal – Harold Pinter. Based on his affair with Joan Bakewell. Charts a love triangle in reverse
Davies is a tramp in The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter
Old Times – Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay for The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Servant, The Go-Between, and The Last Tycoon
Blue Remembered Hills, Brimstone and Treacle – Dennis Potter (1935 – 1995)
Lipstick on Your Collar – Dennis Potter
Enron – play by Lucy Prebble
An Inspector Calls, I Have Been Here Before – JB Priestley
An Inspector Calls takes place on a single night in 1912, focusing on the prosperous middle-class Birling family, who are visited by a man calling himself Inspector Goole
Kiss of the Spider Woman – Manuel Puig play about two very different men who share a cell in a South American jail. Manuel Puig was born in Argentina
Jean Racine (1639 – 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the ‘big three’ of 17th century France, along with Moliere and Corneille
Phaedra, Berenice – Jean Racine
Britannicus – Jean Racine
French Without Tears, Flare Path, Cause Célèbre – Terence Rattigan (1911 – 1977)
The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954) – plays by Terence Rattigan
The Winslow Boy is based on a father's fight to clear his son's name after the boy is expelled from Osborne Naval College for stealing a five-shilling postal order
The Cut – play by Mark Ravenhill
Shopping and Fucking – Mark Ravenhill
Cyrano de Bergerac – play by Edmond Rostand. Concentrates on Cyrano's love for the beautiful Roxane
Bergerac wrote proto-science fiction novels in the 17th century. Bergerac is a market town in the Dordogne
In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) – Sarah Ruhl
Educating Rita, Blood Brothers, John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert, Shirley Valentine – written by Willy Russell
Mary Stuart is a play by Friedrich Schiller that depicts the last days of Mary, Queen of Scots
Equus – Peter Shaffer. Stable lad is Alan Strang
The Royal Hunt of the Sun is a 1964 theatre piece by Peter Shaffer that dramatizes the relation of two worlds entering in a conflict by portraying two characters: Atahuallpa Inca and Francisco Pizarro
Amadeus – Peter Shaffer
Major Barbara – George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950). Major in the Salvation Army, based at a shelter in West Ham
Pygmalion was first performed in Vienna. The part of Eliza Doolittle was written for Mrs Patrick Campbell
Dark Lady of the Sonnets – George Bernard Shaw
The Doctor’s Dilemma – George Bernard Shaw
The Apple Cart – George Bernard Shaw
Intelligent Women’s Guide to Socialism – George Bernard Shaw. First Pelican book, 1937
George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan was written with Sybil Thorndike in mind
Mrs Warren’s Profession – George Bernard Shaw. Mrs. Warren was a brothel-keeper
John Bull’s Other Island – George Bernard Shaw
Back to Methuselah – George Bernard Shaw
Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in Literature (1925) and an Academy Award (1938), for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion
The Rivals, The School for Scandal – Richard Sheridan (1751 – 1816)
Anthony Absolute and Lydia Languish are characters in The Rivals. Mrs. Malaprop is Lydia’s guardian
The Critic – Sheridan
Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, the Eugene trilogy (comprised of Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and Broadway Bound), Sweet Charity, Promises, The Out-of-Towners, Murder by Death, The Goodbye Girl – Neil Simon (born 1927)
A Few Good Men – Aaron Sorkin
Tom Stoppard (born 1937) is an Academy Award winning British playwright. Born in Czechoslovakia as as Tomáš Straussler, he is famous for plays such as The Coast of Utopia, The Real Thing and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, and also for co-writing screenplays for Brazil and Shakespeare in Love
Jumpers – Tom Stoppard. Explores and satirizes the field of academic philosophy
The Invention of Love – Tom Stoppard. About AE Housman
Rock ‘n’ Roll – Tom Stoppard. The play is concerned with the significance of rock and roll in the emergence of the socialist movement in Eastern Bloc Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The underground Czech group The Plastic People of the Universe are held up as an ideal of resistance to Communism
Arcadia is a 1993 play by Tom Stoppard concerning the relationship between past and present and between order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge
The Father, Miss Julie, To Damascus, A Dream Play, The Ghost Sonata – August Stringberg (1849 – 1912)
John Millington Synge is best known for the play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey theatre
Riders to the Sea – John Millington Synge. Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams made an almost verbatim setting of the play as an opera using the same title
Lord Dundreary is a character of the 1858 British play Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor. Gave his name to the form of exaggeratedly bushy sideburns called dundreary whiskers
Charley’s Aunt – a farce in three acts written by Brandon Thomas. It broke all historic records for plays of any kind, with an original London run of 1466 performances
Under Milk Wood is a 1954 play for BBC radio by Dylan Thomas, later adapted for the stage. Set in the fictional small Welsh fishing village Llareggub
“To begin at the beginning” – opening line of Under Milk Wood
Ralph Roister Doister is a comic play by Nicholas Udall, generally regarded as the first comedy to be written in the English language, c. 1553
Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell – Keith Waterhouse
The Duchess of Malfi is a macabre, tragic play, written by the English dramatist John Webster (c. 1580 – c. 1634) and first performed in 1614 at the Globe Theatre in London, and published for the first time in 1623
The Kitchen Sink, Jumpers for Goalposts – plays by Tom Wells
Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots, The Kitchen, The Friends – plays by Arnold Wesker
Lady Bracknell is Algernon’s aunt in The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People – Oscar Wilde
Lady Bracknell liked cucumber sandwiches. Jack Worthing’s real name is Ernest
Bunbury – imaginary friend of Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest
A Woman of no Importance – Oscar Wilde. Chief character is Mrs Arbuthnot
Lady Windermere’s Fan is subtitled A Play about a Good Woman
Salome – Oscar Wilde. Originally written in French. Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley
Our Town – play by Thornton Wilder, set in the fictional community of Grover's Corners, modeled on several New Hampshire towns
The Skin of Our Teeth – Thornton Wilder
A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams (1911 – 1983). Desire is a district of New Orleans
The Glass Menagerie – Tennessee Williams. Set in 1930s St Louis. About a mother’s obsessive efforts to marry off her daughter
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is the story of a Southern family in crisis, focusing on the turbulent relationship of a husband and wife, Brick and Maggie (‘The Cat’) Pollitt
The Night of the Iguana – Tennessee Williams. Main character is the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon
The Rose Tattoo, Tennessee Williams. Set in a Sicilian immigrant community in New Orleans
Moon for the Misbegotten, Orpheus Descending – Tennessee Williams
Summer and Smoke – Tennessee Williams
William Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer
London theatres
Richard Sadler opened a ‘Musick House’ in 1683 and the name Sadler's Wells originates from his name and the rediscovery of monastic springs on his property
Sadler's Wells Theatre is a major performing arts venue located in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell in the London Borough of Islington. The present day theatre is the most recent of six theatres that have existed on the same site since 1683
Aldwych Theatre was built as a pair with the Waldorf Theatre (now called the Novello Theatre), both being designed by W.G.R. Sprague. It opened in 1905
Prince of Wales Theatre is on Coventry Street. It was established in 1884 and rebuilt in 1937
National Theatre – Olivier, Littleton and Cottesloe (to be renamed the Dorfman Theatre)
The Royal National Theatre (generally known as the National Theatre) in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company. From its foundation in 1963 until 1976, the company was based at the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo
National Theatre was designed by architects Sir Denys Lasdun and Peter Softley and contains three stages, which opened individually between 1976 and 1977
Artistic directors of the National Theatre – Laurence Olivier (1963–1973), Peter Hall (1973–1988), Richard Eyre (1988–1997), Trevor Nunn (1997–2003), Nicholas Hytner (2003–2015), Rufus Norris (2015–)[
In 1963, Kenneth Tynan was appointed as the new National Theatre Company's literary manager
Old Vic – founded in 1818 by the actor William Barrymore as the Royal Coburg Theatre. In 1833 it was renamed the Royal Victorian Theatre after the heir to the throne Princess Victoria. In 1880, under the ownership of Emma Cons, it became The Royal Victoria Hall And Coffee Tavern
The original Globe Theatre was built in 1599 by the playing company to which Shakespeare belonged, using timber from an earlier theatre, The Theatre, that had been built by Richard Burbage's father, James Burbage, in Shoreditch in 1576. It was destroyed by fire in 1613 during a performance of Henry the Eighth. A theatrical cannon, set off during the performance, misfired, igniting the wooden beams and thatching.
At the instigation of Sam Wanamaker, a new Globe theatre was built according to an Elizabethan plan. The structural design was carried out by Buro Happold with Pentagram as the architects. It opened in 1997 under the name ‘Shakespeare's Globe Theatre’ and now stages plays every summer. Mark Rylance was appointed as the first artistic director of the modern Globe in 1995. Dominic Dromgoole took over in 2006
At the Globe Theatre, members of the general public who paid 1 penny apiece to watch the play while standing in the yard or ‘pit’ were sometimes referred to as ‘stinkards’
Different coloured flags were used to advertise the themes of plays which were to be performed at the Globe Theatre. A black flag indicated a tragedy, a white flag indicated a comedy and a red flag indicated a History
Vaudeville theatre – on The Strand
Young Vic theatre opened in 1970
Alelphi Theatre – founded in 1806 as the Sans Pareil (‘Without Compare’), by merchant John Scott. In 1819 it was reopened under its present name, which was adopted from the Adelphi Buildings opposite, on the Strand
Coliseum Theatre (also known as the London Coliseum) is on St. Martin's Lane. It opened in 1904, designed by theatrical architect Frank Matcham (designer of the London Palladium), for impresario Oswald Stoll
Donmar Warehouse is a small not-for-profit theatre in Covent Garden. Theatrical producer Donald Albery formed the Donmar company in 1953. The Donmar became an independent producing house in 1992 with Sam Mendes as artistic director
Tricycle Theatre is located on Kilburn High Road. During the last 30 years, the Tricycle has been presenting plays reflecting the cultural diversity of its community, as well as political work
Almeida Theatre is located, off Upper Street, in Islington
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The second Blackfriars was an indoor theatre built at the instigation of James Burbage, father of Prince of Wales Theatre in Coventry Street was extensively refurbished in 2004 by Cameron Mackintosh, its current owner
Regional theatres
Bristol Old Vic theatre complex includes the 1766 Theatre Royal, which claims to be the oldest continually-operating theatre in England
Swan Theatre – in Stratford-upon-Avon
Steven Joseph theatre – Scarborough, was the first theatre in the round in Britain
Minack Theatre is an open-air theatre, constructed above a gully with a rocky granite outcrop jutting into the sea. The theatre is located near Porthcurno, four miles from Land's End. The theatre was the brainchild of Rowena Cade
Thorndike theatre – Leatherhead
Annie Horniman established the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founded the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester
Abbey Theatre was founded by Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and W.B.Yeats in 1899
Apollo Theatre in New York is the most famous club associated almost exclusively with black performers
The original The Mousetrap was a 30-minute radio play by Agatha Christie, Three Blind Mice, presented by the BBC in honor of the late Queen Mary's (consort of George V) 80th birthday, in 1947
The Mousetrap – started at Ambassadors Theatre in 1952, now at St. Martin’s
Monkswell Manor guest house – setting for The Mousetrap
The original West End cast of The Mousetrap included Richard Attenborough as Detective Sergeant Trotter and his wife Sheila Sim as Mollie Ralston
Stephen Fry was appearing in Simon Gray’s Cell Mates when he disappeared in 1995
Beyond the Fringe was a British comedy stage revue written and performed by Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. It played in Britain's West End and on New York's Broadway in the early 1960s
The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. It became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air. Inspired by the Folies Bergeres of Paris, the Ziegfeld Follies were conceived and mounted by Florenz Ziegfeld, reportedly at the suggestion of his then-wife, the entertainer Anna Held
Spike Milligan appeared in Frank Dunlop's production of the play Oblomov
Anyone for Denis? – written by John Wells, who plays Denis Thatcher
I’ll Say She Is – Broadway debut of Marx Brothers
Toad of Toad Hall – stage version of The Wind in the Willows, adapted by AA Milne
Theatre of the Absurd – plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of playwrights from the late 1940s to the 1960s, as well as the theatre which has evolved from their work
Playwrights commonly associated with the Theatre of the Absurd include Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and Edward Albee
Theatre of the Absurd – term coined by Martin Esslin
Closet drama – a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group
Proscenium theatre – a theatre space whose primary feature is a large archway (the proscenium arch) at or near the front of the stage
Fourth Wall – originally defined by Denis Diderot as the wall that separates a theatrical performance from the audience. If a character addresses the audience directly, he ‘breaks’ the wall
George Spelvin, Georgette Spelvin, and Georgina Spelvin are the traditional pseudonyms used in programs in American theatre by actors who don't want to be credited or whose names would otherwise appear twice because they are playing more than one role in a production
Walter Plinge is used in London theatre when a part has not been cast, an actor is playing two parts or an actor does not want his or her name in the programme
Tony Awards – named in honour of Antoinette Perry. American theatre awards
French National Theatre awards – named after Moliere
