NHB Modern Plays
4 total works
A two-part play presenting two distinct moments in the life of Mary Bell, the eleven-year-old Newcastle girl who was convicted of the manslaughter of two toddlers in 1968.
In the first part, Two Little Boys, two actors play childish games that gradually reveal the facts of the case, stepping in and out of several roles including judges, parents and abusers.
The second part, Superstar, takes place ten years later in 1978. Mary and a friend from the open prison where she is serving her sentence abscond for the weekend to Blackpool, where they meet two young soldiers on leave from Northern Ireland.
Jack Thorne's play Fanny and Faggot was first performed at the Finborough Theatre, London, in January 2007. (A version of the first part of the play, Two Little Boys, was staged at the Lift venue at the Pleasance as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2004).
Richard Burton, the firebrand Welsh actor, newly married to movie star Elizabeth Taylor, is to play the title role in an experimental new production of Hamlet under the exacting direction of John Gielgud.
But as rehearsals progress, the collaboration between actor and director soon threatens to unravel. One of them is the most famous movie star in the world; the other, a patrician from an earlier age of theatre. The stage is set for two titans to collide.
Jack Thorne's The Motive and the Cue is a fierce, funny play which offers a glimpse into the politics of a rehearsal room and the relationship between art and celebrity. Commissioned and co-produced by Neal Street Productions, it opened at the National Theatre, London, in May 2023, directed by Sam Mendes and featuring Johnny Flynn as Burton, Mark Gatiss as Gielgud and Tuppence Middleton as Taylor.
The Motive and the Cue was named Best Play at the 2023 Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
After the breakout success of his early work for stage and screen, Jack Thorne turned for inspiration to his own family for a series of plays about hope, idealism and domestic politics. The work in this collection – five full-length plays and two shorts – showcases his extraordinary ability to combine electrifying dialogue with heartfelt warmth, candour and humour.
Hope (Royal Court Theatre, 2014) is a funny and scathing fable about the leaders of a local council faced with savage funding cuts. 'A surprisingly entertaining state-of-the-nation drama' The Stage
The Solid Life of Sugar Water (Graeae/Theatre Royal Plymouth, 2015) is an intimate, tender play about loss, hurt and rediscovery. 'Startlingly good... an adult play in the very best sense' The Times
Junkyard (Headlong, 2017) is a joyful celebration of imaginative play, a musical drama about a group of young people tasked with building a playground out of junk. 'Genuinely funny and poignant' WhatsOnStage
the end of history... (Royal Court, 2019) is a moving and sophisticated portrait of the impact of political idealism on a family. 'Clever and highly intriguing' Independent
Also included are Burying Your Brother in the Pavement, written for the National Theatre Connections Festival in 2008, which tackles complex themes of grief, violence and sexuality with fierce compassion and wild imagination; and two short plays: Whiff Whaff and Boo.
'I think these plays are about love, about heroes, about trying to understand how to be heroic, about trying to understand how to lead a good life' Jack Thorne, from his Introduction
'Jack Thorne is Britain's hottest playwright and screenwriter' The Times
'Jack Thorne never ceases to stimulate and entertain' Evening Standard
'Thorne is a writer of immense emotional intelligence and his dialogue regularly devastates' The Stage