April de Angelis's second collection covers six plays written between 2011 and 2021, including the previously unpublished short play Rune and her first musical, Gin Craze!

Jumpy

'The funniest new play the West End has seen in ages. It's not only funny, it's painfully acute; and its wit is of a piece with its insight.' - Daily Telegraph

The Village

'A great piece of storytelling . . . flat-out wonderful.' - The Times

A Laughing Matter

'De Angelis's writing is even funnier than it is stimulating. . Comedy needn't be soft and comforting. It can be mischievous and subversive. You see the bind in which Garrick finds himself, trapped as he is by the economic, social and moral pressures. It's a bind his descendants know even today. I haven't seen it dramatised before with such infectious brio.' - The Times

Rune

'A gorgeous little nugget of a show in which a bored teenager on a school trip to see the hoard at the Potteries Museum suddenly discovers a power within her when she gets to hold a piece of it.' - Guardian

Extinct

'Builds its drama with its own gripping truth ... Necessary and urgent.' - Guardian

Gin Craze!

'It's terrifically vivid and exciting. . A Brechtian message delivered with the most glorious, full-throated ebullience: an intoxicating show that leaves your head spinning, your spirit soaring and a fire in your belly.' - The Times

April De Angelis's plays include Kerry Jackson (National Theatre), My Brilliant Friend (adapted from Elena Ferrante's novels for Rose Theatre, Kingston, and NT), House Party (BBC4 and Headlong Theatre), Gin Craze!, a musical with Lucy Rivers (Royal & Derngate), Extinct (Stratford East), Rune (New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme), The Village (Stratford East), Wild East (Royal Court), A Laughing Matter (Out of Joint/NT/tour), The Warwickshire Testimony (RSC), The Positive Hour (Out of Joint/Hampstead/Old Vic; Sphinx), Headstrong (NT Shell Connections), Playhouse Creatures (Sphinx Theatre Company), Hush (Royal Court), Soft Vengeance (Graeae Theatre Company), The Life and Times of Fanny Hill (adapted from the James Cleland novel), Ironmistress (ReSisters Theatre Company), Wuthering Heights (adapted from Emily Brontë's novel for Birmingham Rep), Jumpy (Royal Court and Duke of York's Theatres), Gastronauts (Royal Court), and After Electra (Theatre Royal, Plymouth). Her work for radio includes Visitants, The Outlander, which won the Writers' Guild Award 1992, Cash Cows for the Woman's Hour serial (all BBC), and adaptations of Jane Austen's Emma, Grace Metalious's Peyton Place and Stratis Myrivilis's Life in the Tomb. For opera: Flight with composer Jonathan Dove (Glyndebourne), and the libretto for Silent Twins (Almeida).