When a young woman shoplifts for the first time, the store detective decides to give chase, but just how far is he prepared to go?David Harrower's short play 54% Acrylic was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 8 July 1998. It was staged at Òran Mór, Glasgow, in April 2006 as part of the lunchtime A Play, a Pie and a Pint season.

'I have no name for the thing which is in my head. It is not envy. It is more than envy. It does not scare me. I must look close enough to look at what it is.'A ploughman and his wife live a simple existence in a pre-industrial time until they, along with the hated local miller, are drawn into a struggle of knowledge, power and attraction.David Harrower's haunting play established him as one of the UK's leading contemporary playwrights. This new edition is published ...

A new version of one of the most influential plays of the 20th centurySix people arrive in a theatre during rehearsals for a play. But they are not ordinary people. They are the characters of a play that has not yet been written. Trapped inside a traumatic event from which they long to escape, they desperately need a writer to complete their story and release them. Intrigued by their situation, the director and his company of actors listen as the characters begin to describe and ar...

When Valerie and Euan's car breaks down in remote countryside near the Antonine Wall they have a problem. With their mobiles left at home and an evening out arranged in Glasgow, they have to find help fast.This comes in the form of Petey and Ida and their twenty-year-old daughter Christine, a farming family who live and breathe the history and traditions of the small area of earth they've made their home. Dark Earth premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in July 200...

Ivanov, a driving force in local government and a visionary landowner, feels burnt out at thirty-five. Once the pioneer of scientific farming methods and of education for the peasants, he now drowns in bureaucracy and debt, his large estate neglected. While his wife is dying, Sasha, a young, educated woman, falls in love with Ivanov and determines to save him.Set in a country suffering from political, ideological and spiritual stagnation, Chekhov's first full-length play anticipates...

When Dr. Stockmann discovers that the waters of a new public spa are toxic, he expects gratitude and glory. Instead, his revelation makes him the most hated man in town.Henrik Ibsen's timeless story of corruption, pollution and courage opened in David Harrower's powerful new version at the Young Vic, London, in May 2013.

'I'm taking your eyes', he'd say, 'and keeping them safe.''I'm taking your ears and keeping them safe.'Ciara's father Mick kept her as his hidden treasure, making sure his only daughter was shielded from what he did and the men and women with whom he associated.Now Mick is dead and his legacy, so bound up in the landscape of Glasgow, that infamous no mean city, must be faced.As Ciara seeks to further the reputation of her art gallery, her wo...

*The village has lied. William has lied. It is not because I am undeserving. Not because I am young and they are old. God has given them nothing. I know this now.Knives in Hens* is a brutal fable set in a timeless spartan rural community. First staged at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in June 1995, before transferring to the Bush Theatre, London, in November 1995, the play was playwright David Harrower's first professionally produced work. It has been staged in twenty-five countri...

Kill the Old Torture their Young is an urban tragi-comedy from the acclaimed writer of Knives in Hens, one of Scotland's most talented new playwrightsA documentary maker returns to the city of his birth. His task, to film his impressions. An old man remembers a time when eagles flew over the city. A TV executive reaches breaking point in the city he loves. A struggle actor seeks fame in a city that doesn't seem to want him. A young woman ends her artistic dreams in a city that elud...

One of European theatre's major plays, Schiller's masterpiece hinges on a brilliantly imagined meeting between Mary, Queen of Scots - focus of simmering Catholic dissent and her cousin Elizabeth, Queen of England, who has imprisoned her. Isolated by their duplicitous male courtiers, the women collide headlong, each wrestling with the rank, ambition and destiny their births have bestowed, against a thrilling background of intrigue, plot and counter-plot.David Harrower's version of

The news that a government inspector is due to arrive in a small Russian town sends its bureaucrats into a panicked frenzy. A simple case of mistaken identity exposes the hypocrisy and corruption at the heart of the town in this biting moral satire.David Harrower's version of Nikolai Gogol's Government Inspector premiered at the Warwick Arts Centre in May 2011 and transferred to Young Vic, London in June.

A young man has an affair with a married woman. He is terrified her husband will challenge him to a duel and kill him. Meanwhile he toys with the affections of another and, for a moment, life seems full of joy.The doorbell rings. The husband enters the room.Based on Schnitzler's play Liebelei, David Harrower's Sweet Nothings captures the power of sexual longing, the cruelty of tradition and the vulnerability of those in love. The play premieres at the Youn...