doollee banner
The Playwrights Database
contact doollee


Peter Hamilton

PETER HAMILTON

  (1943 - )
Nationality:    British
email:    Click here to contact     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a

Peter Hamilton was born in armley, Leeds and educated at Leeds Modern School, Coventry College of education and Birkbeck College, London. after teaching for some years he became an actor and trained at Drama Studio, London. Later he decided to devote himself to writing. His first play 'sWITCHBOaRD' was produced in 1999 at the Latchmere and was awarded two (out of three) stars in the evening Standard. His second play DaNeLaW, based on Combat 18's attempt to establish a white supremacist homeland in east anglia, was produced at the White Bear Theatre, Kennington in 2005, quickly followed by the ReaPPeaRaNCe OF CHRIST IN the eaST eND at the same Theatre. This play was Critic's Choice in the Sunday Telegraph. His latest play SKaRa BRae was produced at the White Bear in November 2007.

Buy Plays with Doollee

Each page of doollee.com has links to play/book outlets, either directly to the Publisher, through Stageplays.com and Amazon to the second hand and 1st editions of AbeBooks. These links will automatically take you to the relevant area obviating the need for further search.
AbeBooks.co.uk   AbeBooks.com   Stageplays.com   amazon.com   amazon.co.uk   amazon.ca
whether you are a Playwright who wishes to make their entry definitive, an unlisted Playwright or a User with a tale to tell - we want to hear from you.
download WORD submission template

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

         Basildon         Bridlington         Danelaw         Last Job Together, The         Playground         Reappearance Of Christ In the East End, The         Skara Brae         Switchboard

Basildon

Synopsis:
Depicts the denizens of essex as either thick or criminal.
- Nina Caplan, Time Out London

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Clockschool Theatre Company

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:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  6            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Bridlington

Synopsis:
Hamilton's gritty yet humorous play combines disappointment and disillusionment in a plot that follows a doomed affair in a psychiatric hospital. Showing both the therapeutic and destructive power of literature thorough one patient's infatuation with Wuthering Heights, Hamilton weaves grisly realism with the surreal wanderings of the unstable minds of characters struggling between real and fictitious worlds. Long-term psychiatric patient Ruth has read Wuthering Heights forty-nine times and is the star of the Therapy Unit's poetry workshop. As she nurses her teddy-bear, Heathcliffe, in a psychiatric hospital in York, she recalls her former life in a ward in Bridlington, and her doomed affair with Bernard Whittaker, a thirty-seven year-old fellow patient from Leeds. Ten, (or is it twenty?) years earlier, Bernard is obsessed with anti-submarine warfare in WW1 and hallucinates that he is being visited by a young German submariner called Wulf, who keeps trying to persuade him to join him on his U-boat. Bernard is very tempted but is constantly drawn back by his deep attachment to the hospital cuisine.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Rosemary Branch, 2 Shepperton Road London N1 3DT     14 Apr 2015

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:
comedic play

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Danelaw

Synopsis:
CLIFF, a genial, psychotic football hooligan, and PAUL, a serial Hell's angel biker-type thug, are languishing in their prison cell when they are visited by WARBOYS, an aristocratic englishman with powerful friends in business and politics. He proposes to set up a white supremacist homeland in east anglia, with Chelmsford as the capital and with CLIFF and PAUL in high places of command. they agree to join. WARBOYS slowly also draws CLIFF's fiancee, ROWeNa, and half-brother, JASON into the plot, together with a young girl, TaRa, who wants to become an actor, three Dutch neo-Nazis, and another prisoner GRaHaM, in prison for defrauding the DHSS. CLIFF's scrapyard on the River Lea in Bow is chosen as a good base from which to launch attacks on the black and Muslim communities because it is on the border of the old 9th Century Danelaw, ruled by the Vikings. Happily, this plot goes badly wrong, and many of the protagonists are killed in a police shoot-out.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Lucid Theatre

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:
Black comedy Comedy

Parts:
Male:  8            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Last Job Together, The

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

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:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
National Library of Scotland ref: Traverse - Dep.256/Box 28/1

Top of Page Top of Page

Playground

Synopsis:
Playground is about the fragmented or broken society. It's about the lost, the damaged and the disappointed. About rattling about in the nightmarish modern world. It takes the form of a murder mystery. It takes place in a park. Someone's been decapitating children with a fret-saw. Someone's been reading Enid Blyton. Something has gone badly wrong. Two detectives struggle to solve a spate of child murders in Victoria Park, East London. Small bodies found beheaded with a Famous Five novel lying open on top of them. Suspects are readily available: previous and current patients at Bow Road Psychiatric Unit; Danny, a night cleaner at Canary Wharf; Stuart, a rough-sleeper from Walthamstow; private school drop-out-turned-Communist Tamsin; or frayed and failed Carolyn who teeters on the brink of another suicide attempt. Then there's Bella, the proprietor of canal-side Drop-In Cafe, who just happens to go about with a ferocious looking knife in her shoulder-bag.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Clockschool Theatre Company

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:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Reappearance Of Christ In the East End, The

Synopsis:
the play is set in the Religious Studies Department of an east end comprehensive and is concerned with religious faith as an individual pilgrimage or quest for enlightenment versus the notion of religion in schools being basically about cultural studies. "Learning about others versus learning about yourself" as one character, BaRRY, puts it, who stands for the pilgrimage view, as opposed to PaT BaXeNDaLe, who embodies the cultural studies and politically-correct viewpoint, and aILISH, a dithering, sex-starved, irresolute anglican. BaRRY is flirting with the Roman Catholic Church and the arrival of ROGeR, a nerdy evAngelist seems to be about to nudge him further down this road, until he balks at the level of commitment needed. In any case, ROGeR ruins everything by murdering his mother VIOLeT, and her boyfriend, FRaNK in a fit of religious fervour.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Clockschool Theatre Company

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:
Comedy

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Skara Brae

Synopsis:
Serial day dreamer, Roy Bletchley, finds himself odd-man-out at his multi-racial Mile End comprehensive, where he feels persecuted by an officious Citizenship Studies teacher and mocked by his class-mates, whilst at home, his self-confidence is even further undermined by a dysfunctional father, Dean, uttering doom-laden warnings about hereditary mental illness. So Roy withdraws into a fantasy world where he is by turns 'Zac', Director of Social Services in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and 'Orac', warrior-king of Skara Brae, the Neolithic settlement on Orkney. Hope, however, seems to arrive in the form of Louise McCormack, folklorist fellow pupil who confides in Roy that her dearest wish is to return to the Selkie-folk, or Seal People, from whom, she claims, the McCormacks are descended. Together, Roy and Louise plan to pursue their dreams and escape to Skara Brae . . .

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Clockschool Theatre Company

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:
Comedy

Parts:
Male:  8            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page

Switchboard

Synopsis:
COLIN, the night telephonist at the London Womens Hospital in the euston Road, is a deeply disturbed man who believes that the Loch Ness Monster is a giant snail and dreams of saving the whale from extinction. He becomes obsessed with STEVE, a young student who comes to work at the hospital as Night Porter and seems to remember that they have know each other in many past lives. eventually he overpowers and rapes the boy, using Chloroform, but overdoes it and reduces STeVe to a permanent vegetative state. the story is told in retrospect by Colin in his cell at Rampton High Security

Notes:
-

1st Produced:

Organisations:
Clockschool Theatre Company

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:
Black comedy Comedy

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

Top of Page Top of Page