Singular Male Voices: Three Short Plays for a Single Actor (NHB Modern Plays): Mongoose/Cold Comfort/Brazil - Softcover

Peter Harness; Ronan O'Donnell; Owen McCafferty

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1854597604 ISBN 13: 9781854597601

Publisher: Nick Hern Books, 2005

Synopsis

Three distinct and distinctive monologue plays for men from masters of the form.

In Mongoose, Peter Harness's "beautifully written and darkly charming fairytale" (The Times), Ted decribes how Mongoose first came to him and how his seemingly harmless pranks start to turn nasty... Owen McCafferty's Cold Comfort is a last drunken conversation between a man and his recently deceased father full of the writer's trademark "dramatic magic". (Mail on Sunday)... Ronan O'Donnell's Brazil is set in the near future when America is at war with Europe. Trapped in this disorientating world, Doddy hares around the depressed estates and vast rubbish dumps that make up his home town. "Ronan O'Donnell - like Mark O'Rowe and Enda Walsh - is a promising new writer with an ear for dialect-intoxicated writing larded with cynicism." (The Times)

All three plays in this collection provide excellent showcases for actors and original and brilliantly written audition material.

About this title

About the Authors

Peter Harness is a writer for television, film and theatre.

His work for TV includes the Spanish Flu drama The Forgotten Fallen, the Frankie Howerd biopic Rather You Than Me (starring David Walliams), and episodes of City of Vice, Case Histories and Doctor Who. His debut feature, Is Anybody There?, starring Michael Caine and David Morrissey, premiered in 2009. His BBC adaptation of the bestselling book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was broadcast in 2015. He wrote and executive produced the third and fourth seasons of the hit detective drama Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh. His adaptation of The War of the Worlds for BBC One was broadcast in 2019.

Owen McCafferty is a Belfast-based playwright. His plays include: Quietly (Abbey Theatre, Dublin and Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Festival, 2013); an adaptation of JP Miller’s Days of Wine and Roses (Donmar Warehouse, London, 2005); Scenes from the Big Picture (National Theatre, London, 2003); Shoot the Crow (Druid, Galway, 1997; Royal Exchange, Manchester, 2003); Mojo Mickybo (Kabosh, Belfast, 1998); No Place Like Home (Tinderbox, Belfast, 2001) and Closing Time (National Theatre, 2002).

Scenes from the Big Picture won the John Whiting Award, the Meyer Whitworth Award and the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright in 2003, making McCafferty the first writer to win all three awards in a single year.

Ronan O'Donnell is a playwright based in Scotland whose work has been staged by the Traverse Theatre, LLT and Arches/Theatre of Imagination, amongst others.

Edition details

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1854597604
• ISBN 13: 9781854597601
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96