A policeman, a doctor and two nurses are trapped in a mental hospital with a visionary psychotic.

A mental hospital run by whites for blacks in pre-independence Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), provides a backdrop for Motocar: a play about the Black experience of oppression.

The production opened at the Cottosloe Theatre (now the Dorfman) at the National Theatre, alongside Richard III Part Two. The production starred Joseph Marcell, who later said in WhatsonStage: “I do remember with great fondness my time with Paines Plough theatre company. We did David Pownall’s plays Motocar and Richard III Part Two, which we took to the National’s Cottesloe for a month.”

Richard III Part II: A play on three time levels: firstly, we meet George Orwell clutching the manuscript of ‘1984’ uncertain to publish it fearing that it may be misunderstood; secondly, we switch to the year 1984 and our introduced to 1985’s monopoly-like game ‘Betrayal’ based on Richard III; lastly, we are in the game itself – in the world of Richard III and his court.

Exploring the question: what does History matter when it is being re-written as it is being lived? 

The production opened at the Cottosloe Theatre (now the Dorfman) at the National Theatre, alongside Motocar. The production starred Joseph Marcell, who later said in WhatsonStage: “I do remember with great fondness my time with Paines Plough theatre company. We did David Pownall’s plays Motocar and Richard III Part Two, which we took to the National’s Cottesloe for a month.”

An American Music critic, Mrs Euterpe, is approached in the gardens of an Italian Café by a man claiming to be Phillip Heseltine (a composer now dead for 40 years). He in turn conjures up the ghosts of the Renaissance musician and composer Carlo Gesulado and his murdered wife Marie. Between them they work out the twisted story of the two musicians entwined lives. 

The moving story of war widow’s return to Liverpool after 50 years exile in USA, and her complex relationships with her grandchildren. 

Crates is the pupil of the great Cynic, Diogenes, living in a barrel in Athens 320 BC, and experiencing regular beatings from Athenian officials for his lectures on the subject of ‘the pursuit of happiness’. The audience acts as a small gathering of Athenians and police spies to listen to his expoundings on the old-age question: “What is happiness?” 

Programme note: “One of them asked if a man recovering from a severe beating by the city officers was the best person to give a lecture on the pursuit of happiness. Are there as many gaps in my philosophy as there are in my teeth? A man must live, even a third-rate philosopher who is persecuted far above his abilities.” 

Saturday night, small town Wales, one pub, one party and three lads stuck with their school reputations- the gimp, the geek and the bully. Their dream-to get the hell out.

With a dead cat stuffed through the letterbox, a soupcon of mindless violence and the perfect girl to die for, Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco bristles with the desperately ordinary, the truly extraordinary and the just plain mad.