Welcome to Alistair Faulkner's Web Site

Here you will find both brief and detailed synopses of several original plays

Full-length and One-acts, mixed casts and all-women.

Some are tried and tested in many productions,

some offer the challenge of creating the very first production,

some are funny, some are sad,

some are shorter, some are longer,

some give food for thought -

and some are just pure entertainment!

(P.S.   Some - it has to be said - are better than others...... At least I'm honest)

You probably found this page via a search engine.

If you were looking for plays in general then go straight into the MAIN WEB

If you were looking for particular material or scripts, you might find it on the list below.

Short Plays (mainly aimed at One-Act play festivals)

You can read more detailed information on each play via the   link.

You can view the on-line scripts and sample scenes via the   link. This should open up a new window in your browser. This window can be read, saved, printed, etc. then closed again to get back to the main web.

You can save pages for reading at leisure or printing off by using the File and Save As menus on your web browser.

Bottled Spider (A surreal comedy) 5 m, 2 f + extras. Setting: A court room.

Inoffensive Richard  inadvertently finds himself on trial for being none other than the most villainous villain in all history - Richard III.   Everyone seems against him, particularly the Machiavellian and smiling prosecutor - or is he the defence? And even Richard's mum isn't much help!

The first production of this play won the 1998 Havering One-Act Festival . It also won Best Stage Presentation, Best Original Play and the lead actor won Best Male Performance.

A challenge!

Alas, Poor Geoffrey (A black-ish comedy) 5 f. Setting: a sitting room.

It is Geoffrey's funeral and the female members of the clan  and a few extras are gathering...... But things don't go smoothly - to say the least!

An ideal play for those just starting perhaps. Nothing too complicated, simple set, a good spread of parts and all women. Just learn the lines and keep the pace going good and fast. An experienced group could have fun with it too of course.

Heads (A gentle comedy) 4 f. Setting: an NHS day-room.

The retired headmistress of the County High hasn't spoken to her headmistress daughter for thirteen years, but it can't surely be just because in 1987 she forgot her birthday, can it?

A conversational play between the mother, her two very different daughters and an ex-pupil who is now with the Social Services. Simple setting and all women. Prime festival material, with play-stealing opportunities for an actress of mature years.

Gloria's Angel (a divine comedy) 2 m, 1 f. Setting: Inside Gloria and Trevor's home and also outside.

The first production of this play won the 1993 Havering One-Act Festival. It also won best original play and the script went on to win the National George Taylor Memorial Award. It has now been produced by more than twenty companies up and down the UK.

Lending A Hand (a comedy). 1 m (walk-on), 5 f. Setting: An empty church hall.

Five women and one man (who wonders on now and again saying the odd word) are preparing for a jumble sale. Starting with an empty stage, by the end they have sorted out mountains of jumble, putting the world to right with their natter in the process.

Any Church-based drama group will latch on to the characters and humour immediately. A simple little play that ‘takes the Michael’ in a gentle manner.

Successfully staged in two productions - a popular play with audiences.

Riddle In The Sand (a comedy of the incredible) 5m, 3f, (can be 3m, 1f, with doubling). Settings: various.

A body of a man has been found buried in the sand of a holiday beach. The curious thing is - he's in a pin-stripe suit and a bowler hat, clutching an umbrella in one hand and brief case in the other. If this seems incredible - Inspector Beckett and Sergeant Spade have, by chance, been assigned to the case.

Wake Me When It's Time (a sci-fi play) 2m, 2f. Setting: Sometime, somewhere......

A middle aged couple are playing scrabble and a young couple are wrapped up in their youthfull love for each other. The strange thing is - the two couples seem to take turnes in a common conversation. Also, the scrabble score stands at well over a million. It seems they have been waiting for a very long time for something very special to happen.

Longer Plays

Some may recall that the story of Victor Frankenstein and his creature ends in the frozen wastes of the Arctic, but few know what really happened on their fateful journey north...............

This new and original interpretation of the Frankenstein story, compresses the main themes, conflicts and moral issues of Mary Shelley's epic novel into a single location and a single dramatic episode, yet it also stays entirely true to the book's storyline; the events of the play taking place as Victor pursues his creature to the frozen seas of the Arctic, where both book and play converge in a dramatic climax.

This play won the Chelmsford Theatre Workshop's Essex and Suffolk Play Writing Competition 2000.

"A clear win....... an entertaining and intelligently written piece."

A Different Perspective (a contemporary play) 1 m, 5 f.    Settings: mainly an artist's studio.

Take a whisky swilling, pot smoking art teacher, mix with a reserved academic who is highly protective of her beautiful, talented but autistic daughter, add in the teacher's female American partner and two other female students - one young and impressionable, the other a senior citizen - bring them all together in the intimate atmosphere of a figure drawing weekend, immerse all this in the rich and striking images of Renaissance Art and you have...... A different Perspective.

EAST-WEST  and "Wish You Were Here" (A comedy thriller) 4m, 2f.   Settings: various locations.

A decade on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, and at the dawning of a brand new century, all is quiet on the eastern front, and the cold war is over..... Or is it?

Some unfinished business between the KGB and CIA is somehow mixed up with our hapless hero - Alan Brown - devoted follower of the East London Socialist Environmentalists (ELSE), avid watcher of Star Trek repeats and aficionado of Pink Floyd.

Two For The Tango (a 1920's comedy) 5m, 6f. Setting: The conservatory of the Grand Hotel, Worthing.

A large cast romp with not just one pair of twins played by the same actor, but two!

Masses of comings and goings, eccentric characters, mistaken identities, and a song and dance thrown in for good measure (the music for which can be supplied).

Echoes (a play) 3m, 4f (with doubling) or 6m, 7f. Setting: A nursing home and flash-backs to the Great War.

Even the frailest of old ladies now living in nursing homes up and down the length and breadth of the land were once beautiful young women........ who fell in love.

Our memories make us what we are - and sometimes they hold the secrets of the past.

The Visitors (a play of suspense) 3m, 5f. Setting: The veranda of a villa. 

The location is just south of Naples, and an idylic villa by the sea is occupied by English emigrés Esther Langmore and her slightly strange daughter, Alice. The time is 1938 and it's not only the first rumblings of an impending war that have come to disturb the tranquillity.

Echoes of Somerset Maugham with a dash of Daphne du Maurier.

The Moonstone (A Victorian mystery, adapted from Wilkie Collins novel) 8m, 7f. (6m, 5f with doubling). Settings: Various

"No major novel conforms more perfectly to the central convention of the detective story".......... P.D. James

A mixture of mystery, suspense, drama, tragedy and (as in Dickens) a considerable measure of eccentric characterisations, humour and wit.

It was performed by my drama group at the Queen's Theatre Hornchurch in the summer of 95.

Five years on - the script has recently undergone a major re-work to simplify the staging requirements.

Absalom My Son (an epic drama) 19m, 4f (12m, 2f with doubling). Setting: various.

"Absalom, the son of David, had a fair sister whose name was Tamar; and Amnon, another son of David, loved her."

A powerful tale of lust, seduction, revenge, banishment, rebellion and ultimate tragedy.

A kind of Old Testament Soap? Dallas in Palestine?..... No, but seriously – something for a big group with lots of men to get their teeth into.

For England And King George (a Georgian comedy) 4m, 5f. Setting: a Georgian interior.

This play has had four productions and was published by New Playwrights' Network in 1992. They still hold the amateur rights, but initial contact can be made to me.

This website is under construction - more titles, synopses, and sample scenes will become available in the near future.......... Watch this space.

Site last updated 11-02-01, Alistair Faulkner

To contact me by e-mail....... alfaulk165@aol.com