By Tom McGrath
Click image for larger picture
"In Tom McGrath's My Old Man, human connections flicker and sputter between life and death. A woman tries finally to connect with her long lost and now dying father and with someone else who may be a lover, saviour or nemesis. Her son's equally desperate efforts to spark a relationship with his grandfather, and at the same time revive him, terminate in a kind of snuff video phone clip. People appear and disappear: at least as much apparitions, ghosts and fragmented memories as they are flesh and blood. With his gift for focusing on elemental features of life and theatre, Tom McGrath exposes the fragile bones and nerves of human relationships and drama alike in this extraordinary, searing piece."
Bob Tait theatre reviewer and writer on Scottish literature
| Title | Price | ISBN | Availability |
| My Old Man | £8.99 | 0-9551246-1-1 | October 2005 |
By Tom McGrath
Click image for larger picture
"What elevates McGrath's fluid dreamlike play from being just a chucklesome wallow in nostalgia is the sense that this powerhouse is about to crumble. Behind the laughter lies a tremendous sadness that speaks for the passing of this act and for all sublime art. This is why [Stan's] cry at Ollie's death is such a heartbreaker."
Mark Fisher The Guardian 26 April 2005
"It's the genius of Tom McGrath's beautiful 1976 play, Laurel & Hardy, that it grapples in the most profound way with this strange and almost mystical relationship between comedy and mortality."
Joyce McMillan The Scotsman 27 April 2005
"McGrath's play is the most charming of theatre works."
Mark Brown Sunday Herald 4 May 2005
| Title | Price | ISBN | Availability |
| Laurel & Hardy | £8.99 | 0-9551246-0-3 | September 2005 |
By David Greig
'David Greig's fine adaptation produces a clarity of narrative and a simple, resonant language that renders the epic accessible.'
Robert Thomson, Herald
'. . . an incisive exploration of the relationship between character and fate.'
Sue Wilson, Independent
'. . .a clear, sharp, relentless account . . . a strikingly clean, modern text.'
Joyce McMillan, Scotsman
By Tom McGrath
'As a dramatist, Tom McGrath's great strength is to pare things down to the fewest possible words, the sparsest settings, only the most elemental action. His extraordinary stroke with Electra is to seize on the brevities of Greek tragedy and whittle them down even further. The result: a lethal little piece, bristling with menacing meanings and consequences, representing a total minefield. We watch in horror as the characters blunder through it. His Electra is self-righteously correct, mad and disastrous. His Orestes, rather than god-enlightened, is a hesitant teenager blinded by a vision of new beginnings. All the characters have a dubious mixture of self-deluding, self-interested and high-minded motives. All are fatally credulous, believing messengers and messages even less reliably credentialed than CNN, Fox or the BBC. This piece zings with more compressed meaning than many ten times its length. It resonates powerfully for all of us watching similar stories unfolding in the Middle East, Congo, Rwanda, the USA and Northern Ireland.'
Bob Tait, theatre reviewer and literary critic
By Andrew Dallmeyer
'As de Quincey scribbles away in abject poverty, buoyed up by narcotic sustenance, desperately trying to meet deadlines for Blackwood his publisher, he is accompanied by a pickpocket and simpleton, Willy. The brilliant loquacious addict and the affably childish dimwit are drawn together by circumstance and a mutual need. The wonderful mastery of image in the author's work is reflected in the dialogue.'
Robert Gore Langton
'Dallmeyer's play combines an exuberent eccentricity with a genuine passion for words and a powerful economy of expression.'
Time Out
'. . . one of the best things I have ever seen in fringe theatre.'
Martin Cropper, The Times
By Stephen Greenhorn
'The Salt Wound ushers in not only the monumental sea but also an almost oppressive awareness of a close-knit fishing community with all its orthodoxies, traditions and celebrations. Greenhorn does a convincing job of taking the classical passions of Greek tragedy and transposing them to a modern setting. Everyone is right and wrong. No-one can do anything about it . . . It holds an audience gripped.'
The Glasgow Herald
'Doom-laden pride by the dark seashore; hubris and guilt by the heavy netload; the entrapment of the ancient burden of mother-love. It hardly sounds like the work of a young, urban Scottish playwright; but, lo, it is. A powerful perception of individuals ostracised by the closed and pious community . . . We witness real joy here, and real eye-smarting tragedy.'
The Scotsman
'A tough, humane piece. Aims at both the heart and the head and leaves neither unchurned.'
The Times
By Stephen Greenhorn
'Greenhorn has penned a sharp comedy that looks at the government from a very different angle . . . Dissent does not dwell on the personalities of New Labour but focuses on the motives that drive politicians up the greasy pole.
The play fires a broadside at the new generation of pragmatists whom the electoral landslide brought to power . . . What Dissent does very successfully is dramatise the process by which grassroots support is traded for influence inside the party.'
The Guardian
'There are plenty of laughs to be had . . . But the dirty business of politics lends itself naturally to the thriller genre, and it's the clever twists and turns of Greenhorn's plotting that stands out . . . Dissent succeeds in humanising an ongoing struggle and capturing illusions shattered since the last general election.'
Scotland on Sunday
'Dissent's narrative style is pacy, plot-driven and brazenly disputatious, rooted in strongly fashioned characters and breezily iconoclastic humour.'
The Independent
By Isabel Wright
Blooded is a rites of passage play about four sixteen year old girls coming to terms with the loss of childhood and its innocence. The once close bonds between the girls unravel, at times humourously and at times tragically. Wright's vivid portrayal of growing up makes compelling reading.
'Blooded comes as a shattering deconstruction of just how fragile this sense of girl power can be . . . there's no denying the intensity of the writing.'
The Scotsman
'Moving and thought-provoking.'
The List
| Title | Price | ISBN | Availability |
| Oedipus The Visionary | £8.99 | 0-9549625-1-6 | May 2005 |
| Electra | £8.99 | 0-9549625-2-4 | May 2005 |
| Opium Eater | £8.99 | 0-9549625-3-2 | May 2005 |
| The Salt Wound | £8.99 | 0-9549625-0-8 | May 2005 |
| Dissent | £8.99 | 0-9545206-9-6 | May 2005 |
| Blooded | £8.99 | 0-9549625-4-0 | May 2005 |
A selection of plays by some of Scotland's finest playwrights. Ideal for literature and drama students. Introductions by the authors. Covers show paintings by Henry Kondracki.
Reviews below by Hugh Hodgart, Head of Acting at RSAMD, Glasgow.
Click images for larger pictures
Read review ... >
By David Greig
Set in the final, numbered, days of an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. Based on real events, this 'Brechtian' retelling generates an almost unbearable power and pathos through the simple humanity, warts and all, of the central characters who are trapped both by the inexorable forces of Nazi oppression and by our fore-knowledge of the fate that awaits them. The play's 'alienation' device of depicting its characters through the use of dolls, further enhances our painful feeling of powerlessness. Yet, in spite of its tragic outcome, Dr Korczak's Example, like the real life of its protagonist, leaves us exhilarated and uplifted by the indomitable power of love. Read review ... >
By Stephen Greenhorn
The story of a boy who becomes a king, is a simple fable filled with surprisingly complex resonances. In common with the very best in storytelling for children, it confronts the big moral issues surrounding the way in which one makes one's way in the world and through life: self-interest vying with self-sacrifice, the greed of the individual with the needs of the collective. The boy-king Matt is undoubtedly the hero of the tale but it is his human faults and frailties as well as his intrepid spirit that keep us on the edge of our seats right up to the suspense-filled ending. This is a play written for children that children would have great fun playing for themselves. Read review ... >
By Rhiannon Tise
A touching and sensitive exploration of a serious subject. A world of beleaguered single parents and adolescent fears and friendships is reflected in the dark mirror of Sally's experience on her first real date. The garish glamour and hectic motion of the fairground and the Waltzer itself provide a perfect setting for this multi-faceted depiction of the thrills and spills of a teenager's first steps towards the adult world. Written for radio, The Waltzer draws much of its power and point from the complex interaction between past and present events, inner monologue and intercut dialogue. In our film and TV dominated culture we can easily miss out on the imaginative strength of radio drama - the publication of this play is a timely reminder of the real alternatives to the siren call of MTV, Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel. Read review ... >
By Maya Chowdhry
A highly original yet thoroughly accessible insight into what it means to be young, Asian and British. Filled with the powerful and contradictory emotions of adolescence, Kaahini is brightly coloured, full of warmth and feeling, and shot through with the darker threads of frustration and anger at the inflexible and inexplicable adult world. This play, for all its seemingly unfamiliar Asian context, speaks directly to the widest possible audience: anyone with a mother, father, son, daughter, friend or lover will find much to challenge and inspire them here. Read review ... >
By Andrea Gibb and Paddy Cunneen
'Note to self. You are dying.' As a young man's depression turns to despair, suicide seems the only way out - the only way to take control... In spite of the bleakness of its subject, Sunburst Finish is filled with strong and vibrant voices, a rich mosaic of music, wit, warmth, insight, feeling, and a remarkable lack of sentimentality. The central character's struggle to come to terms with himself and the world around him is one that all young (and not so young) people will relate strongly to. Read review ... >
By Simon Donald
Sex, drugs and Frank Sinatra: The Life of Stuff is a brilliantly funny fly-on-the-wall snapshot of eight lives careering out of control as small-time crook and aspirant pharmaceutical entrepreneur Willie Dobie's best laid plans unravel when human nature takes its predictably unpredictable course... In common with a number of first-rate modern Scottish plays The Life of Stuff has, as yet, only received two professional productions. I fervently hope this new publication will lead to the wider recognition it deserves. Read review ... >
| Title | Price | ISBN | Availability |
| Dr Korczak's Example | £5.99 | 0-9545206-1-0 | May 2004 |
| King Matt | £5.99 | 0-9545206-2-9 | May 2004 |
| The Waltzer | £5.99 | 0-9545206-3-7 | May 2004 |
| Kaahini | £5.99 | 0-9545206-4-5 | May 2004 |
| Sunburst Finish | £5.99 | 0-9545206-5-3 | May 2004 |
| The Life of Stuff | £5.99 | 0-9545206-6-1 | May 2004 |