John Godber

It's the end of year 2022, and Salty, Gail and Hobby are about to present a play which they have been working on for their B.Tech performance exam. It's the first time they have performed live; their other exams were held on Zoom. What follows is a funny, fast-moving, caustic and hard-hitting account of how Miss Nixon, a newly qualified drama teacher changed their lives. As Salty, Gail and Hobby prepare to leave state education, it appears that Miss Nixon is moving on too, to the local private school. "Joyously energetic and bitter about educational inequalities." - The Guardian

SHAFTED moves forwards and backwards over time, starting after the miners strike in 1984. Act One demonstrates the depression and hopelessness which engulfed a West Yorkshire mining village post the strike and the plethora of menial jobs which HARRY found in order to try to make a living. By the late 1990's DOT had suggested they move to Bridlington to start a new life running a Boarding House. Act Two starts in 2016 with DOT suffering from cancer, immobile in a wheelchair, the act moves backwards thought to success of the boarding house and their new life together, to the time they left UPTON to run the boarding house in the 1990's.

Godber Plays: 4 brings together four recent plays by one of Britain's most prolific, popular playwrights. The author is the artistic director of Hull Truck Theatre and the publication is timed to coincide with the opening of Hull Truck's new theatre building in the heart of Hull. In Our House May, a widow, mother and grandmother, is packing up her home of 45 years and heads for a life in the sun. However, trading neighbourhood hell for the Costa del Calm is no easy task as memories are harder to let go than possessions. First produced in 2007, the play was revived and toured the UK in 2008. In Crown Prince (2007) Godber finds comedy in a bowls club, and against the backdrop of the advancing years of its members, issues of redundancy, bereavement and guilt emerge. Sold is the author's most politically charged play to date, exposing the misery of people-trafficking and women sold into the sex-trade in Britain. Christmas Crackers follows overworked A&E nurses Holly and Kath on a shopping and booze trip to Prague where things take an unexpected turn. 'John Godber's work is unique; he is able to speak to a very broad audience in a way that is thought-provoking, exciting and always very funny.' Hilary Strong, Executive Director of Greenwich Theatre

Mark and Sally are travelling to Amsterdam to celebrate Mark's fiftieth birthday at a Bruce Springsteen concert. Mark is not the success he wants to be, Sally feels neglected and lonely - and the journey across the Channel makes their unhappiness worse. For one thing, their old friend Gill is travelling with them and arouses conflicting emotions in Mark, who always had a soft spot for her; for another, she has brought along Karl, her rough and all-too-ready new boyfriend who knows a little too much about Amsterdam's seedier side...From these beginnings John Godber has crafted another salty comedy of social angst and the clash of cultures in his inimitable style and with much near-the-knuckle language.

Relief drama teacher, Mary faces an uphill struggle when she tries to interest sixteen-year-olds Stacey, Kelly and Maggie in dance. She isn't helped by the science-obsessed headmaster, nor by the girl's patent lack of commitment, nor by the lack of funds and resources, but she ploughs doggedly on. A trip to London to take part in a dance competition proves to be a turning point; the girls, though they don't win, gain confidence, and Mary nearly becomes romantically involved with Stacey's dad, Jimmy. With an energetic score by John Pattison and opportunities for dancing, singing and acting, "Thick as a Brick" is all-round entertainment laced with John Godber's characteristic insight and humour.

Preparing for a mystery trip to Scarborough ("she wouldn't book till Dennis told her where we were going") three Northern coach drivers pass the time remembering more exciting trips from the past, such as the last one, down the Rhine Valley to Heidelberg. Stick hates his passengers and wishes he was doing the Spanish run instead of Johnny Mac. Larry is a Mario Lanza fan who's been making trips for as long as anyone can remember and Frank ("don't ask...it'll only shock you!") is their female counterpart. These three actors take turns playing an assortment of passengers, from the dotty old complainers to the retired miners seeking excitement too late and on too little money. Escape is on everyone's mind but no one knows quite what they're escaping from and how to go about it. As Sissy says, it is "better going somewhere when you're seventy-nine than going nowhere". A touching, often hilarious, bitter-sweet play, full of John Godber's usual clever, perceptive view of "men of the world".

The departure lounges of ten airports across Europe and America provide a backdrop of delays, dangers and frustration as two business executives, Jim and Steve, embark on a journey of self-discovery. While the easy-going Steve spends time on the mobile running a number of love interests with the morals of a cat, Jim is determined to remain faithful to his wife Claire. The arrival of young Zoe changes all that...The anxiety of the departure lounge becomes all to personal for all involved, leading to a sad yet hopeful ending.

A third collection of plays by one of Britain's most popular and widely performed playwrights UP'N'UNDER (winner of the Laurence Olivier Comedy of the Year Award 1984): Five unfit lads strive for sporting glory against the local pub-rugby champions, Men Behaving Badly meets The Full Monty. PERFECT PITCH: Ron & Yvonne are seasoned caravan holidaymakers. Every weekend they head for the coast to get away from it all. Snug in a prized four-berth, theirs is the perfect pitch, until Grant and Steph set up camp beside them...APRIL IN PARIS (nominated for Laurence Olivier Comedy of the Year 1994): Al is a builder - well he was until he got laid off. Bet sells trainers. Al spends hours in his shed painting while Beth is addicted to entering competitions in magazines. Neither has any faith in the other. Until one day, Beth win "a romantic break in Paris for two"..."John Godber is one of the unsung heroes of British theatre, reaching the giddy heights of number three in the most-performed playwrights league table, nestled in behind Shakespeare and Ayckbourn" - Guardian

Ron, a retired headteacher and his wife Yvonne, a middle-aged would-be marathoner, have purchased their first caravan and are trying it out in Yorkshire. Then an elderly caravan appears next to theirs and the sounds of noisy love-making cause Ron and Yvonne to blush. Steph and Grant have arrived!

When Dennis, a hen-pecked IT manager stuck in a boring marriage with Anabelle, goes on a rare business trip to Amsterdam with colleagues Bob and Gary his eyes are opened to a world in which every sexual fantasy is available. This is a comedy of sexual manners and an exploration of male desire.

"John Godber is one of the unsung heroes of British theatre, reaching the giddy heights of number three in the most-performed playwrights league table, nestled in behind Shakespeare and Ayckbourn" - GuardianTeechers: "In a class of its own ...Godber takes a hard-hitting look at life in a modern comprehensive where class conflicts, teacher tantrums and cavorting chaos runs riot through the corridors" (The Express); Happy Jack: "Godber manages with an affectionate and unerringly accurate ear for the tongues of the pit village to turn these two into a Chaucerian kind of celebration of life. At the end of the line the play is a sad, bruised but richly comic love story" (Guardian); September in the Rain: "The work of a genuinely talented playwright" (Evening Standard); Salt of the Earth: "John Godber has a special gift for capturing the lives and inner turmoil of the working class ...In the most subtle and incisive ways, he suggests how the combination of innate personality and a changing society determines individual destiny" (Chicago Times)

In the late 70s, five students on a drama teaching course at a northern college discover sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Spanning a period of a few years, the play follows the relationships between the five as they fall in and out of love and start their careers.

"John Godber is one of the unsung heroes of British theatre, reaching the giddy heights of number three in the most-performed playwrights league table, nestled in behind Shakespeare and Ayckbourn" - Guardian Bouncers, a play about nightlife: "A show that's worth braving any front of house, however formidable ...simply spellbinding" Guardian; Happy Families: "The inseparable contradictions of family love and oppression are carefully held in this fine comedy ...superb characterisation ...the rhythms of Godber's dialogue are freshly funny, the pace precise" (Independent); Shakers, a play about party-goers: "This is one of those slices of life that everyone can recognise and laugh at" Liverpool Daily Post

Don and Shirley Weston have come to the Scardale Hall Health Hydro to relax, pamper themselves and just possibly rescue their ailing marriage. Don's experiences with exercise and therapy are far from positive and the rifts in the marriage widen as his mid-life crisis becomes more and more evident, and moments of reconciliation do little to improve the situation.3 women, 3 men, 4 women or men

Martin Dawson, a 33-year old theatre studies teacher, separated from his wife and children after an affair, has invited his parents, Joan and Len, to visit him in the Lake District. This "enjoyable" weekend break evolves into an opportunity to release the pent-up frustrations of a lifetime.