Theatre and drama gifts

Don't miss the third book in the breathtaking new series from the number one bestselling author Santa Montefiore - coming soon! One final show. A love that defies time... "I started this, but truly, I have no idea how to end it without breaking my heart." When Pixie Tate is sent to solve a mystery at the old Aphrodite Theatre...

Celebrate the genius, passion, and poetry of William Shakespeare with this beautifully bound deluxe edition, featuring his complete plays and poems in one timeless collector's volume. No writer has shaped the English language or the human imagination like William Shakespeare. From the unforgettable tragedies of Hamlet and Macbeth to the wit and romance of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much...

Elphaba, Glinda, Fiyero, Nessarose, and Boq star in this Little Golden Book based on Universal Pictures' blockbuster film Wicked! Welcome to Shiz University, where knowledge meets magic! Meet Shiz students Elphaba, Glinda, Fiyero, Nessarose, and Boq, as they star in this Little Golden Book based on Universal Pictures' Wicked! Little Golden Books enjoy nearly 100% consumer recognition. They feature beloved...

It's time to take to the stage . . . A stunningly drawn fantasy set in a mysterious theatre where godlike creatures run the show and mortals compete for immortality Riven Hesper is running out of time. Cursed by a Player-a godlike performer -she must infiltrate the Playhouse and find a way to break the curse before it kills her....

Sylvanian Families Dream Showtime Babies (5844) Step into the spotlight with the Sylvanian Families Dream Showtime Babies set. Featuring baby figures dressed for a magical performance, this set is perfect for imaginative play inspired by music, dance, and theatre. With charming costumes and themed accessories, Dream Showtime Babies is ideal for creating nursery performances or expanding fantasy play scenes. A...

I Am Fiyero (Universal Pictures Wicked) stars Fiyero in his first-ever Little Golden Book, based on the blockbuster film Wicked from Universal Pictures! Children aged 2 to 5, as well as fans and collectors of Universal Pictures' Wicked of all ages, will love this new Little Golden Book about Shiz University's Fiyero. Discover everything about the fun-loving Fiyero along with...

Martha: Look, sweetheart, I can drink you under any goddamn table you want... so don't worry about me! George: Martha, I gave you the prize years ago... There isn't an abomination award going that you... Martha: I swear... if you existed I'd divorce you... When middle-aged Martha and her husband George are joined by the younger Nick and Honey for...

Lyrical, funny and moving, this is Dylan Thomas's masterwork and a beloved Welsh classic. It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black... Under Milk Wood tells the story of a Welsh village during one spring day. It is populated by some of the best-loved characters in British literature. Lyrical, funny, moving, it is rooted in place...

No Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Romeo and Juliet on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right. Each No Fear Shakespeare contains: The complete text of the original play A line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into everyday language A complete list of characters with descriptions Plenty of helpful commentary. The famous tale of...

Midsummer Night's Dream & Other Classic Tales of the Plays features six illustrated stories from Shakespeare. Six of Shakespeare's most famous plays are beautifully illustrated in this collection of dramatic retellings. It is an inspiring introduction to the intricate comedies of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night, the tragedies of Hamlet and Macbeth, and the contrasting love stories of...

Revised edition The master of ancient Greek comic drama, Aristophanes combined slapstick, humour and cheerful vulgarity with acute political observations. In The Frogs, written during the Peloponnesian War, Dionysus descends to the Underworld to bring back a poet who can help Athens in its darkest hour, and stages a great debate to help him decide between the traditional wisdom of...

Discover the real Judi Dench through a series of intimate conversations about the love of her life — Shakespeare. Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig; cavorting naked through the countryside painted green; acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head... these are just a few things Dame Judi Dench has done in the...

The plays in this volume, each written a decade apart, demonstrate different sides of Henrik Ibsen's genius, but all deal with themes of alienation from society and the breaking down of convention. A Doll's House portrays a woman questioning her duty to her husband and seeking to escape from the stifling confines of her marriage—a theme that shocked contemporary audiences...

An engaging collection of stories and essays by the celebrated author of the internationally bestselling Guido Brunetti series, infused with her ever-present and delightful senses of humour and irony. Donna Leon's memoir, Wandering Through Life, gave her legions of fans a colourful tour through her life, from childhood in New Jersey to adventures in China and Iran, to her love...

All the world’s a stage. Have you ever been trapped in a bad relationship, playing a role that doesn’t suit you? Jen and Sam are also trapped … in a multiverse of Shakespeare’s complete works. On their quest to discover the doorway back to reality, they notice something unusual about Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy. Now Jen and Sam must decide: do...

These three plays focus on the family and how it struggles to stay together by telling and exposing lies. In Ghosts, Osvald Alving returns home only to discover the truth about the father he respected and the horrific effect his father's debauchery has had on him. Ibsen's most provocative drama, it strips away the surface of a middle-class family to...

Sophocles' innovative plays transformed Greek myths into dramas featuring complex human characters, through which he explored profound moral issues. Electra portrays the grief of a young woman for her father Agamemnon, who has been killed by her mother's lover. Aeschylus and Euripides also dramatized this story, but the objectivity and humanity of Sophocles' version provides a new perspective. Depicting the...

Two hilarious best friends create their very own podcast in this feel-good middle grade graphic novel about making the spotlight your own, from the author of Just Pretend.Lights, Curtains Podcast! Best friends Clay and Kyle can t help but inject fun into everything. Whether they re goofing off backstage during a performance or making rib-tickling jokes at an open mic,...

Blood Brothers by Willy Russell is a 1983 play with music that tells the compelling story of twin brothers separated at birth because their mother cannot afford to keep them both. One of the twins is given away to the wealthy Mrs Lyons and they grow up as friends, unaware of their true relationship, until an inevitable quarrel unleashes a...

Bring a little bit of magic to your writing with this Wicked–inspired pen set featuring one pen with a metal topper of Elphaba’s hat and the other with a metal topper of Glinda’s crown. Celebrate your love of Wicked with this set of two ballpoint pens, perfect to use for writing notes, spells, or letters home from your time at...

Embrace your wicked side with this beautifully embroidered cloth-covered journal that features artwork inspired by the Wicked film. With 192 pages of high-quality ruled paper, this journal is the perfect place to record all your thoughts, notes, and magical ideas. 192 PAGES: Filled with 192 ruled pages, the journal provides ample space for all your notes, thoughts, and ideas. QUALITY...

The final volume in the new Penguin Ibsen series: superb modern translations of four of Ibsen's greatest plays. In these four unforgettably intense plays, Henrik Ibsen explores the complex nature of truth, the tension between freedom and responsibility, and the terrible pull that the past exerts over the present. In The Wild Duck, an idealist destroys a family by exposing...

From E. Lockhart, author of the New York Times bestseller and Zoella Book Club 2016 title, We Were Liars. All-round theatre-enthusiast, Sarah—better known by her showbiz name, Sadye—is a girl with ambitions too big for the small and conventional town she lives in. Her life doesn't have the razzle-dazzle she craves. For once she wants to feel special, noticed, and...

Vienna in 1900 was the most vibrant city in Europe, humming with artistic and intellectual excitement and a genius for enjoying life. A tenth of the population were Jews. A generation earlier, they had been granted full civil rights by the Emperor, Franz Josef. Consequently, hundreds of thousands had fled from the Pale of Settlement and the pogroms in the...

At a time when the Russian theatre was dominated by formulaic melodramas and farces, Chekhov created a new sort of drama that laid bare the everyday lives, loves and yearnings of ordinary people. Ivanov depicts a man stifled by inactivity and lost idealism, and The Seagull contrasts a young man's selfish romanticism with the stoicism of a woman cruelly abandoned...

New to Modern Classics When a deranged boy, Alan Strang, blinds six horses with a metal spike, he is sentenced to psychiatric treatment. Dr Dysart is the man given the task of uncovering what happened the night Strang committed his crime, but in doing so, he will open up his own wounds. Dr Dysart struggles to define sanity and justify...

First time in Penguin Classics for Rostand's popular comedy about the love-sick swain with an ear for a fine phrase and an extravagantly large nose. Poet and soldier, brawler and charmer, Cyrano de Bergerac is desperately in love with Roxane, the most beautiful woman in Paris. But there is one very large problem — he has a nose of stupendous...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. When Rosalind is banished by her uncle, who has usurped her father's throne, she flees to the forest of Arden where her exiled father holds court. There, dressed as a boy to avoid discovery, she encounters the man she loves – now a...

The riotous, insanely readable new novel from the author of The Handmaid's Tale. The riotous, insanely readable (Observer) retelling of The Tempest from the 2019 Booker Prize-winning author of The Testaments. 'Riotous, insanely readable and just the best fun...' - Observer Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946 And when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars.

Jez Butterworth’s hugely acclaimed, prize-winning play – a comic, contemporary vision of life in England’s green and pleasant land. On St George’s Day, the morning of the local country fair, Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, local waster and Lord of Misrule, is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his son wants to be taken to...

The Living Room. The Potting Shed. The Complaisant Lover. Carving a Statue. The Return of A. J. Raffles. The Great Jowett. Yes and No. For Whom the Bell Chimes. In these eight plays, Graham Greene, one of the great writers of the twentieth century, demonstrates his considerable skills as a dramatist. Each of them explores themes that were of fundamental...

A collection of three of the sharpest Restoration comedies. The three plays collected in this volume demonstrate Sheridan's unerring ability to create unrivalled comedy out of ingenious plots, witty repartee, farcical situations and flamboyant characters. And while he never overtly moralises, Sheridan uses brilliant comedy to deflate hypocrisy and satirise the manners of his age. In The Rivals, Captain Absolute...

This stylish board book provides a very first introduction to the exciting stories of William Shakespeare. Six famous plays are simply retold, with playful illustrations and fun first words to inspire little storytellers.The First Works of Shakespeare is the first in the charming Little Literary Greats bio series for babies and young readers. This stylish, cased board book provides a...

For film buffs, Disney fans, and animation enthusiasts, a fascinating and personal look at seven men who defined the craft of directing an animated film under the tutelage of Walt Disney. This untold history collection chronicles the progression of the animation director role during the 1920s through the 1970s. For students of filmmaking and management, this book serves as a...

Books and Crooks and Other Plays features four fun-to-act plays for children aged 10+ from the bestselling author Julia Donaldson. Each play includes helpful, simple guidance on running time and cast, and is beautifully illustrated in black and white by Kate Pankhurst! Ranging from adaptations of traditional tales to original and contemporary short plays, Books and Crooks and Other Plays...

In these three unforgettably intense plays, Henrik Ibsen explores the problems of personal and social morality that he perceived in the world around him and, in particular, the complex nature of truth. Hedda Gabler and Other Plays: Popular Penguins offers readers an insight into the intricate dynamics of human relationships and the moral dilemmas of society. Ibsen's compelling storytelling and...

Part of the authoritative and acclaimed Penguin Shakespeare series, now rejacketed in the celebrated Penguin Classics livery. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, must solve a riddle in order to marry the daughter of the King of Antioch, or be put to death. But when the answer reveals a horrific secret, the young man faces his greatest dilemma. Danger and adventure follow...

The plays in this volume all contain Aristophanes' trademark bawdy comedy and dazzling verbal agility. In The Birds, two frustrated Athenians join the birds to build the utopian city of 'Much Cuckoo in the Clouds'. The Knights is a venomous satire on Cleon, a prominent Athenian demagogue, while The Assembly Women deals with the battle of the sexes as the...

This is a definitive collection of Christopher Marlowe's plays. His seven plays dramatise the fatal lure of potent forces, religious, occult and erotic. In the victories of Tamburlaine, Faustus's encounters with the demonic, the irreverence of Barabas, and the humiliation of Edward, Marlowe explores the shifting balance between power and helplessness, the sacred and its desecration. The Complete Plays offers...

A barbed attack on the British class system, Pygmalion both delighted and scandalised its first audiences in 1914. Henry Higgins is the Pygmalion figure who believes he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a duchess at ease in polite society. The one thing he overlooks is that his 'creation' has a mind of her own.

In The House of Bernarda Alba, a tyrannical matriarch rules over her house and five daughters, cruelly crushing their hopes and needs. The other plays here also portray female characters whose desires are tragically and violently frustrated—a woman's longing for a child in Yerma, and a bride's yearning for her lover in Blood Wedding. All appeal for freedom and sexual...

These three great plays by one of the founding fathers of the theatre of the absurd are alive and kicking with tragedy and humour, bleakness and farce. In Rhinoceros, we are shown the innate brutality of people as everyone, except for Berenger, turns into clumsy, unthinking rhinoceroses. The Chairs depicts the futile struggle of two old people to convey the...

A lively and entertaining look at the Auckland Theatre Company - its people, its shows, the backstage crew, the theatre, and the company's ups and downs over the years. Auckland Theatre Company has presented a huge range of plays to enthusiastic audiences since its first show in 1993 - Lovelock's Dream Run. From Shakespeare and Chekhov to Nathan Joe and...