This year’s reading challenge is a bit different and as promised each month we’ll give you a list of suggested books for each category. For May I asked the Cwts Discussion Group to recommend their favourite Play. I received a huge response, here are just a few of those suggestions.
An Inspector Calls – J.B. Priestly
A policeman interrupts a rich family’s dinner to question them about the suicide of a young working-class girl. As their guilty secrets are gradually revealed over the course of the evening, ‘An Inspector Calls’, J. B. Priestley’s most famous play, shows us the terrible consequences of poverty and inequality.
The Crucible – Arthur Miller
The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations.
A Dolls House – Henrik Ibsen
In their stultifying and infantilised relationship, Nora and Torvald have deceived themselves and each other both consciously and subconsciously, until Nora acknowledges the need for individual freedom.
Love Love Love – Mike Bartlett
This play by Olivier award-winning writer Mike Bartlett questions whether the baby boomer generation is to blame for the debt-ridden and adrift generation of their children, now adults but far from stable and settled.
In The Next Room or The Vibrator Play – Sarah Ruhl
In the Next Room or the vibrator play is a comedy about marriage, intimacy, and electricity. Set in the 1880s at the dawn of the age of electricity and based on the bizarre historical fact that doctors used vibrators to treat ‘hysterical’ women (and some men)
A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry
In south side Chicago, Walter Lee, a black chauffeur, dreams of a better life, and hopes to use his father’s life insurance money to open a liquor store.
A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Hansberry was the youngest and the first black writer to receive this award.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – Edward Albee
Middle-aged history professor George, and his wife Martha, are joined by another college couple. The result is an all-night drinking session that erupts into a nightmare of revelations.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf US
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf UK
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Tennessee Williams
‘Big Daddy’ Pollitt, the richest cotton planter in the Mississippi Delta, is about to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a masterly portrayal of family tensions and individuals trapped in prisons of their own making.
A Man For All Seasons – Robert Bolt
A Man for All Seasons dramatises the conflict between King Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More. It depicts the confrontation between church and state, theology and politics, absolute power and individual freedom.
The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James’s Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personæ to escape burdensome social obligations.
The Importance of Being Earnest US
The Importance of Being Earnest UK
Pick a play using our list, or why not try some Shakespeare, all his plays are available to download for free online, or just pick one off your TBR pile. Don’t forget to let us know what you’re reading over on Cwts Club Discussion Group.