Meredith Oakes: 7 books

Includes the plays The Neighbour, The Editing, Faith, Her Mother and Bartok, Shadowmouth, Glide and The Mind of the Meeting Two highly regarded early plays, The Neighbour and The Editing Process (here presented in a revised version) present a study in contrasts: the first a battle of wills...

Mr Modernsky tells a story about two heavyweights of twentieth-century classical music: Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg.It traces the gradual change there has been in the way these two great rivals are perceived, looks in their music for the reasons and reflects on the nature of modernity in...

Set in the offices of a magazine publishers, Meredith Oakes’ comedy of fragile values in the media will not restore your faith in human nature, but it is guaranteed to help you get on in publishing without really succeeding. First performed at the Royal Court Theatre, directed by Stephen Daldry.

The Greek fleet bound for Troy is becalmed. For the sake of a wind, Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces, is persuaded that he must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. But as the priest raises his knife to slit the child’s throat, the goddess Diana spirits her away. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife,...

A vision of military conflict as a testing-ground for English values. Nightmarish contradictions face a group of soldiers in an isolated farmhouse on the edge of battle. Premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1997

Bill is sustained by his deep sense of a wider culture and an improving world. The only thing the human race needs to do is learn. When he meets a person who embodies this idea, he naturally likes them. Especially if his wife doesn't. Set at the end of the 1950s, Scenes from the Back of Beyond...

Love, loneliness and longing in the twilight hours - in cities which never sleep, night hawks are falling in love, out of love and over the edge. Inspired by the photography of Nan Goldin, Shadowmouth is about people trying to connect in a landscape of disconnection, the power of desire, and...