If classic novels scare you, try this

A starter guide to reading plays for the theatrically curious

This week I posted a note suggesting anyone intimidated by classic novels could try reading classic plays instead. Lots of people seemed interested, so I’m now doing a full post here for anyone curious about reading plays. Consider it a how-to-guide for getting into reading theatre scripts, complete with classic and modern play recommendations, plus a list of authors to avoid at all costs.

But let’s start with why you should fall in love with reading plays in the first place. Well, I’m a playwright, so I’m biased - but plays are great. Often it’s better to read them than watch them, because let’s face it, a script can easily be ruined by bad acting or a shoddy production (and I’m an actor as well, so I’m allowed to say that). Plays are short - you can read one in an afternoon - but they normally follow a complete narrative arc, so I find them more satisfying and moving than short stories, which can be fragmentary. Plays are also (obviously) mostly dialogue, which is what makes them so much lighter and more accessible than heavily descriptive classic novels. However, they’re still beautifully written, full of memorable lines, complex characters and shocking twists. In fact, the action of a play is often far more propulsive and well-structured than that of a novel, because a play pretty much has to be plot and character driven, otherwise it doesn’t work. Plus, if you’re the kind of person who has a classical literature ‘bucket list’ - the kind of person who feels they should have read Tolstoy - well, plenty of our cultural heritage comes from theatre, too. The narrative principle of Chekhov’s Gun, for example: the idea that you should never introduce a story element unless it’s going to be relevant later. Or Oscar Wilde’s oft-quoted one-liners: ‘being natural is such a difficult pose to keep up’; ‘morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike’. Classic plays are excellent windows into the society and concerns of their historical period, so they’re a kind of gateway into novels written around the same time (as well as being great works of art in their own right). And a play fits in your handbag. Really, what’s not to like.

How will you ever understand this cartoon if you don’t read Chekhov?

So, where to start, and what to look for. Well, the very easiest place to begin would be with some modern classic plays. Lucy Prebble, one of the writers of the TV show Succession, is also a phenomenal playwright. Her play The Effect is a love story about two strangers who fall in love while undergoing a clinical drug trial - but how can they know if their growing attraction is real, or just a side effect of the new medication they’re on? It’s a thrilling, moving story about instinct, neurology and the limits of medicine. I think it would be impossible not to enjoy reading it.

The extremely funny Lucy Prebble

If you’re into sci-fi, a very different contemporary play I’d recommend is X by Alistair McDowall. It’s a thriller about four astronauts marooned on a space craft near Pluto. They’ve lost contact with Earth, and just have to wait, hoping someone will remember them… although it’s funny at first, as all sense of time/reality/perspective breaks down, this turns into one of the scariest plays I’ve ever read - and one of the most moving. I read it late at night and genuinely felt like I was watching a horror movie. But it also made me cry.

Both of these plays work well as texts to read because they have a fairly limited cast of characters and clear but concise stage directions. I would avoid reading anything with a huge cast - Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt, for example; because there are so many characters that it gets confusing on the page. That kind of big play is better seen live. Scripts for musicals are equally uninspiring written down, which makes sense, because the focus is on song - so don’t bother reading the script, just listen to the soundtrack. And modern playwrights like Caryl Churchill or Sarah Kane often do away with stage directions altogether, so the scripts can look a little confusing to the eye (even though both women write plays that can be stupendous live). Basically, when you’re flicking through the first few pages of a script, take note: is it clear which lines belong to who? Is it clear where the characters are and what they’re doing? If not, maybe save this one for when you’re feeling more familiar with the genre overall. Playwrights I love who tend to write really clear and brilliant scripts include Nick Payne, Mike Bartlett, Nina Raine, Branden Jacobs Jenkins and Lucy Kirkwood (whose play NSFW is a fascinating look inside the office of a lads-mag, for anyone who’s missing the sleazy world of Rivals).

But, you may rightly counter, you promised us classic plays. I did. So here we go: my favourite classic play is probably The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, a tragicomedy set on a country estate in late 19th century Russia, which deals with the romantic misadventures and thwarted ambitions of its anxious, unsatisfied protagonists. It’s very sad and extremely funny and it’s a good way into reading Tolstoy and other Russian authors who Chekhov was influenced by. Have you ever heard a pretentious theatre kid say ‘I’m in mourning for my life’? That’s from The Seagull. For a classic translation, I like Peter Carson’s, but if you’re looking for one that feels more modern I really really love Simon Stephen’s version too.

My other recommendation would be Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Famously, it’s a play in which ‘nothing happens, twice’ (as a critic wrote after its first 1956 production) and it’s also not totally clear where the action takes place - so I’ve already broken two of the rules I set up for choosing scripts to read. However: there are only really two characters, so I think it’s easy to follow, and all the joy of it lies in the words, so it’s great to read. Plus, it revolutionised theatre. It’s about two friends, Vladimir and Estragon, who are… waiting. For someone called Godot. Will he ever arrive? A meditation on the futility of life, the uncertainty of existence, and the inevitability of suffering, it’s also extremely funny. You can clearly see Beckett’s influences in vaudeville theatre and classic ‘double act’ comedy. The opening - with its comic misunderstanding between two protagonists - deftly demonstrates exactly where this play sits; on a precarious tight-rope between humour and despair. And, if you have a reading speed of three hundred words per minute, it would take you less than an hour to read the whole thing.

Oscar Wilde plays are also really fun to read because they take such delight in language. The Importance of Being Earnest is a fast-paced farce which satirises the Victorian institution of marriage; it also contains lots of good puns. I’m a bit less keen on classic American plays but if you want to go in this direction I’d recommend Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. It’s a fictional dramatisation of the Salem witch trials, which took place in Puritan New England in the late 17th century. It’s a play about hysteria, intolerance and group-think which somehow always feels relevant. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams is also a nice play to read due to the limited cast and contained setting. You might have seen the Marlon Brando movie already, or the recent much-hyped Paul Mescal/ Patsy Ferran/ Anjana Vasan production. If so, the script will feel even more accessible, and I find it interesting to think about the choices actors make which seem to play against, or lean into, the text of the play itself.

Final notes. Unless you already like Shakespeare, I wouldn’t start with Shakespeare. It’s really beautiful but it is hard to understand if you’re not familiar with it. I think the best way into Shakespeare is by seeing a really good production like the Andrew Scott Hamlet, which you can find streaming links for online with a little investigation (though I could not possibly endorse this). Once the plot is familiar, reading an edition that has good textual notes will be fun and satisfying if you have the time and energy.

If you live in London like me, the best place to buy plays is from the National Theatre Bookshop, but the Calder Bookshop and Theatre in Waterloo is also wonderful. If you live in a large city in the U.S. or indeed in a large city anywhere, major theatres that produce new writing are normally a good place to go to for play scripts. Normally the staff there can give you recommendations too. Then, of course, there’s Amazon; on which you can buy Kindle versions and paper copies of all the plays I’ve listed, although of course ethically it is better to shop almost anywhere else, and I have provided purchase links in this piece for alternate vendors. Most of these plays you can also get second hand from online sites like World of Books. You can also get play-in-the-post subscriptions from theatres like The National and The Royal Court, which are an exciting way to receive new scripts without the faff of choosing.

That’s all for now. Happy reading!

And thanks to

Petya K. Grady

,

Maria (Linnesby)

,

Hridaya

and

Angela Marrant

for encouraging this idea on notes!