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Joe Penhall

JOE PENHALL

  (1968 - )
Nationality:    British
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    Judy Daish Associates Ltd  

Joe Penhall's latest play Haunted Child opened at the Royal Court in December 2011. Previous plays include his debut Some Voices, which won him the John Whiting Award and which he later adapted for film, premiering at Cannes in 2000, and Dumb Show in 2004. His other credits include Blue/Orange at the National Theatre, which transferred to the West End and for which he received Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards and Landscape with Weapon at the National Theatre. For film, he most recently adapted the Road by Cormac McCarthy. He also wrote the screenplay for Enduring Love and wrote the BBC2 detective series Moses Jones.

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below is a list of Joe Penhall's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         Birthday         Blue/Orange         Bullet, The         Dumb Show         Haunted Child         Landscape With Weapon         Love And Understanding         Pale Horse         Road, The         Some Voices         Sunny Afternoon         Wild Turkey

Birthday

Birthday
the birth of their daughter should be one of the happiest days of Ed and Lisa's life. An NHS maternity ward and their somewhat unusual circumstances make for an unsettling and satisfyingly comic sequence of events that tests their relationship to the core, and raises intrinsic questions about the nature of birth and renewal, fear and isolation. Subverting the received gender roles to darkly comic and disturbing effect, the play charts Ed and Lisa's personally fraught experience at the behest of an NHS labour ward. Penhall expertly weaves an acutely funny and emotionally charged sequence of events: he pitches wryly observed gender perceptions of a quite literal life and death situation against an indictment of the NHS system. the beautifully observed writing is at once vicious and searingly tender. Birthday achieves an intensely comic counterpoint to teh visceral domestic Drama sutured to bigger issues of aspiration, sacrifice, who we are, how we communicate, the triumph of tolerance, nature and ultimately love.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-1408172919

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Blue/Orange

Blue/Orange
In a London psychiatric hospital, an enigmatic patient claims to be the son of an African dictator-a story that becomes unnervingly plausible. BLUE/ORANGE is an incendiary tale of race, madness and a Darwinian power struggle at the heart of a dying National Health Service.

Notes:
Return

1st Produced:

Organisations:
National Theatre, London

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-0413752703

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
comedy Drama Comedy

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Bullet, The

Bullet, The
A Death of a Salesman for Britain in the nineties, and it is typical of Penhall's grace as a writer that it consciously echoes Arthur Miller while also emerging as an entirely distinctive work' (Daily Telegraph)

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-0413731500

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Dumb Show

Dumb Show
Barry's fifteen minutes of infamy are overdue, and when laughter's your living . . . that's no joke.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-0413774804

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Haunted Child

Haunted Child
We have the tools to enlighten and yet our world is darkening. We live in an era of pessimism and worry; we are hollowed out, lurching from crisis to crisis, with no faith that anything will improve, and no great hopes to sustain us. So what's the answer? A small boy is driving his mother to distraction - waking at night, hearing phantom noises and fixating on his absent father. Douglas attends an innocuous motivational course involving esotEric philosophy and mysteriously abandons his family to "live in a specific, pre-ordained way according to the tenets of a spiritual leader."Is it a predatory cult or the solution to all their problems?And how can a small child be expected to understand adult thinking at its most complex and self-destructive?

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-1408159651

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Landscape With Weapon

Landscape With Weapon
Qualms?' Oh yeah, sure, I have qualms'. Everybody has qualms. But I'll overcome them. To his family's horror, Ned reveals he's the brains behind a new military technology so sophisticated, so extraordinary, it will revolutionise the nature of warfare. It's only when the Ministry of Defence demands intellectual ownership that Ned begins to question himself, resisting the might of the weapons industry with frightening consequences. Landscape with Weapon is a wry account of private anguish, public responsibility and a problem with no solution. the play premiered at the National theatre on 20 March 2007.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
National Theatre Company

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-0713688054

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Love And Understanding

Love And Understanding
Live-in lovers Neal and Rachel are overworked doctors. they rarely see each other, and their relationship suffers for it. Enter Neal's old good-for-nothing friend, Richie, for a surprise visit, straight from South America-or somewhere. He needs a place to stay and Neal is too weak to say no. Rachel doesn't want him either, but Richie manipulates her, creating a sexual tension between them. Richie immediately uses this charge to stir up trouble between the couple, insinuating that Neal is boring and that Rachel needs a good time with a black sheep like himself. And while he works on Rachel, Richie steals drugs from Neal's office. By the end of Act One, Richie has declared his interest in Rachel, but she resists. In Act Two, she tells Neal about the pass, but Richie denies it. Thinking Neal doesn't care, Rachel sleeps with Richie, but the couple is caught by Neal. Richie almost delights in the trouble he's caused, and with more drugs, ends up comatose from an overdose. the strain of all that's happened causes Rachel and Neal to split up. Richie recovers, and takes off for Wales, leaving Neal and Rachel with a new-found understanding of one another which may or may not lead to reconciliation.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Bush Theatre, London >>>    01 May 1997

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-0413731500

Music:
in Penhall Plays: 1, Methuen Drama, London

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Pale Horse

Pale Horse
the story of Charles, who, disillusioned by the sudden death of his wife, propels himself into a world of urban alienation and self-destruction in an attempt to assuage the private demons that haunt him. Along the way he encounters the cApricious Lucy and is forced to examine the nature of his own mortality, identity and beliefs.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-0413704405

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  7            Female:  5            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Road, The

Road, The
Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. Released shortly after his No Country for Old Men was turned into an Oscar-winning film, the Road's cinema version of the novel is directed by John Hillcoat, stars Viggo Mortensen and Charlize theron and is an official selection for the 66th Venice Film Festival 2009. Joe Penhall's adaptation is a faithful, careful crafting of the book for the screen, fully evoking the atmosphere of menace and desperation. the Road is set a few years after an unexplained cataclysmic world disaster has left the earth poisoned, barren and hostile. While ash blocks out the sun and the earth no longer fosters plant or animal life, men either starve or join the maruading gangs of cannibals. the plot follows an unnamed Father and son on a bleak epic across the wasteland and features a series of horrifc encounters in a merciless world starved of life and hope.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
USA    25 Nov 2009

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-1408127421

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
screenplay

Parts:
Male:  10            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Some Voices

Some Voices
focuses on Ray, a young schizophrenic trying to reassimilate after a spell in a mental hospital. He is sent to live with his overworked brother where he is happy until he falls in love. When Ray finds himself increasingly frustrated by a maladjusted community and an illness he'll never control, events spiral towards inevitable tragedy.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Methuen Drama    978-0413694300

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Sunny Afternoon

Synopsis:
30 July, 1966, as Bobby Moore lifts the world-cup trophy, a hundred thousand fans in Wembley are singing Sunny Afternoon in unison; the number one hit which rocked the nation that summer. But how did that happen? And how did The Kinks end up not only invading America but also being banned from playing there at the height of their career? Ray Davies extraordinary life story told with Music and Lyrics by Ray Davies, a new Book by Joe Penhall, Direction by Edward Hall and Design by Miriam Buether, Sunny Afternoon explores the rise to stardom of The Kinks. Set against the back-drop of a Britain caught mid-swing between the conservative 50s and riotous 60s, this production explores the euphoric highs and agonising lows of one of Britains most iconic bands and the irresistible music that influenced generations.

Notes:
Music and Lyrics by Ray Davies, a new Book by Joe Penhall

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
musical

Parts:
Male:  9            Female:  6            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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Wild Turkey

Wild Turkey
explores themes of violence and envy on the fringes of East London's murky restaurant trade. Two small businessmen struggle to keep their flagging burger bar afloat, in the face of increasingly savage and bizarre forces.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
in Best Of the Fest, ed. Phil Setren, Aurora Metro Press, London, UK>>>, 06 Jun 1998
Methuen Drama, London   978-0951587781

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:

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