Plays: One (The Collected Theatre Plays of Tony Stowers, #1)

Tony Stowers is an author, playwright, actor and teacher who was born in North East England in 1963 and now lives in North West France.This collection, one of four volumes, features his hard-hitting but darkly humorous early plays, for theatre companies and actors with small budgets. “The Waiting Room” (1983) is a one-act play. In a deserted railway station waiting room, a stranger contemplates suicide while members of a dysfunctional family try in vain to save him because it can’t even save itself. “1979” (1984) covers the early life of Graham Barlow who leaves secondary school in 1979 aged 15. Unable to find work or adjust to the world forced on him and his class by Margaret Thatcher’s politics, he is sectioned in a psychiatric hospital before escaping to freedom and re-shaping his life. “The Bond” (1984) is about a stranger trying to return to his family and friends to make up for lost time. “The Conformist“ (1985) is adapted as a one-man show from the novel by Alberto Moravia. Young Marcello Clerici accidentally kills an older man, so to redeem himself he endeavours to lead as normal a life as possible. Unfortunately for him, this means adhering zealously to the politics of Mussolini’s Fascist government. “London Cousins” (1988) looks at the new opportunities offered to three migrants to London from different parts of the UK and whose existences brush almost imperceptibly against each other. Each play comes with notes and original publicity, where possible.