 | The Winslow Boy by Terrance Rattigan
Buy new: £6.75 / Used from: £0.32 Rattigan is everything the angry young men railed against. He is though one of the most subtle and skillful of British playwrights.
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 | The Devils (Acting Edition) by John Whiting
Buy new: £7.43 / Used from: £0.22 John Whiting was writing plays before the angry young men. His early death was a great loss and his work is criminally ignored.
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 | Look Back in Anger by John Osborne
Buy new: £5.36 / Used from: £0.01 A legend! Jimmy Porter has the best words to speak in any post-war play. Shame about the cardboard cutouts he shares the stage with!
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| Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (Methuen Student Editions) by John Arden
Buy new: £8.99 / Used from: £0.01 Thoughtful and provocative. Possibly the only British play inspired by Brecht worthy of comparison with the German master. Arden's later plays descend into infantile agit-prop though.
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 | A Taste of Honey (Methuen Student Editions): With Commentary and Notes by Shelagh Delaney
Buy used from: £3.33 Warm and human (there are not many British plays you can say that about). Later work a severe disappointment.
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 | Saved (Methuen Modern Plays) (Modern Classics) by Edward Bond
Buy new: £6.59 / Used from: £1.43 Historically important in the battle against censorship, but a simplistic play that uses shock value to get by. Bond is the most overrated writer here.
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 | Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Buy new: £4.95 / Used from: £3.29 Stoppard is very, very clever. His work is also very, very shallow.
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 | Plenty by David Hare
Buy new: £8.99 / Used from: £3.64 Hare has atendency to impose his views on his plays to the point that no drama is possible. This is his best work and avoids the didacticism.
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 | Blasted (Methuen Modern Plays) by Sarah Kane
Buy new: £7.64 / Used from: £4.30 Kane's suicide is in danger of destroying critical insight into her work. This is quite clearly an immature piece of work. It has flashes of talent and humanity though.
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 | Top Girls (Methuen Student Editions) by Caryl Churchill
Buy used from: £0.01 Churchill's play is easily her best. Other pieces (ie Serious Money) can be very, very smug.
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 | The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £0.99 Pinter is head and shoulder above his contemporaries, and those that came later. My favourite but 3 or 4 other plays of his are close.
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 | Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts by Samuel Beckett
Buy new: £5.96 / Used from: £3.02 Not a British play but included so that there is at least one truly great play. The only play here that will still be around in 100 years.
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