Cyprus by Peter Arnott
Cast: 3, 2 male and 1 female
"Arnott's fascinating play questions the morality of Britain's spies and the spooky underworld of intelligence agents. Ever since the Iraq war, David Kelly's suicide and that deceptive dossier about weapons of mass destruction, spies and their masters have incurred suspicion about their motives and honesty.
Cyprus fuels these anxieties by suggesting that the intelligence services' secret, unaccountable and duplicitous procedures may incite, not diminish, terrorism. The dramatic noose tightens thrillingly as the tables turn to devastating effect, and family ties are frailer than loyalty to the old ministerial firm."
Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard (Critics Choice)
"Serious points about the way intelligence makes the world a less safe space, and the conundrum of how we can possibly believe a word of anything told us by spies who make their living by lying."
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
ISBN: 9781906220013
Price: £6.99
Losing Alec by Peter Arnott
Cast: 6, 3 male and 3 female
"This fine, subtle play allows us to see those things not appreciated by the luckless characters, and perhaps to understand and forgive. The work uses a fantasy situation to dissect reality in a way realism never could, offering a dissection of the inadaquacy if the emotional vocabulary in use in Scotland and voicing a protest against those responsible for that situation. And if it is set in Scotland its resonances can be felt far beyond."
Joseph Farrell, literary critic
"Calls to mind no less a dramatist than Arthur Miller."
Allen Wright, The Scotsman
ISBN: 9780955124631
Price: £6.99
The Breathing House by Peter Arnott
Cast: 9 +, 4 male and 5 female
"As brothels and old-time religion nestle up in the back streets, auld reekie's well-heeled self image is chillingly blighted by death and disease. Obvious gothic antecedents here are Stevenson and Conan Doyle, but there are nods too at David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick. In its brutal depiction of how sexual plague decimates societies great and small, however, it shows that even Trainspotting's darker roots go way back."
Neil Cooper, The Herald
"The play's dramatic power comes from the passion with which it traces the story of two middle-class friends ... this big, fast-moving filmic show unleases some rich, still topical arguments about class and sex, social reform, economics, Darwinian rationalism and religious fundamentalism, even the distant prospect of socialism."
Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman
"Peter Arnott has cleverly given The Breathing House space for ensemble playing, with practically every role a star part in this Upstairs Downstairs world with a twist. It is a scenario that provides what must be one of the most incisive demolitions of so-called respectability ever seen on the boards."
Kenneth Speirs, The Scottish Daily Mail
ISBN: 9780955124648
Price: £6.99