New French plays - Catherine Anne

Published in conjunction with the Royal Court Theatre, this volume includes translations of five extraordinary new plays from France which were presented as part of the French Theatre Season in London during 1997

One More Wasted Year by Christopher Pellet presents two young men who inhabit a world of cafes and rented bed-sits, in their late twenties they already seem to old for a youth-obsessed world; Agns by Catherine Anne is a play that gradually reveals the details of a father's obsession for his daughter and the way he emotionally blackmails her into satisfying his lust; The Northern Fox by Noelle Renaud contains several dramatic developments including that of the infidelities of Maxime Fuyard and the marital infidelities of Mr and Mrs Kuhn and Otto's bored and feverish bed-hopping; In Mickey The Torch by Natacha de Pontcharra Mickey works as a nightwatchman in a bleak contemporary cityscape; A Desire to Kill on the Tip of the Tongue by Xavier Durringer is the story working-class youth adrift and prey to the needs for sex, drink or drugs, it shows the shifting relationships between a group of friends hanging about outside a disco.

The translators are Martin Crimp (One More Wasted Year); Nigel Gearing (Agnes); Annabel Arden (Mickey the Torch); A Desire to Kill on the Tip of the Tongue (Mark Ravenhill); Gillian Hanna (The Northern Fox)