Books by Martin Sherman

Beau, a pianist expat living in London, meets Rufus, an eccentric young lawyer, at the dawn of the internet dating revolution. After a life spent recovering from the disappointment and hurt of loving men in a world that refused to allow it, Beau is determined to keep his expectations low with Rufus. But Rufus comes from a new generation of gay men who believe happiness is as much their right as anyone else's, and what Beau assumed would be just another fling grows into one of the most surprising and defining relationships of his life.A remarkably moving, brilliantly funny love story, Gently Down the Stream is the latest play from acclaimed playwright Martin Sherman. The play reflects the triumphs and heartbreaks of the entire length of the gay rights movement, celebrating and mourning the ghosts of the men and women who led the way for equality, marriage and the right to dream.It received its world premiere at the Public Theatre, New York, on 14 March 2017 in a production starring Tony-award winner Harvey Fierstein.

New York's Playwrights Horizons had a success starring Elizabeth Ashley as the legendary Isadora Duncan. The acclaimed author of Bent brings us Paris 1923, and Duncan's desperate attempts to keep herself financially solvent to realize her dream of retirement: a school in Italy to teach young dancers her art while distracted by her mercurial husband, a poet who only speaks Russian, as well as various acolytes, through whose eyes we glimpse the greatness of Isadora "when she danced".5 women, 3 men

California, 1973. Rick, a musician and dancer, is shot dead. Was it Gideon, his drug-happy co-performer? Maggie, his older lover, an actress? Roberta, Rick''s transsexual bodyguard? Or one of the other oddball guests? As Rick''s friends investigate one murder follows another ... no one is safe!|4 women, 5 men

Orpheus Descending is a love story, a plea for spiritual and artistic freedom, as well as a portrait of racism and intolerance. When charismatic drifter Valentine Xavier arrives in a Mississippi Delta town with his guitar and snakeskin jacket, he becomes a trigger for hatred and a magnet for three outcast souls: storekeeper Lady Torrance, "lewd vagrant" Carol Cutrere, and religious visionary Vee Talbot.Suddenly Last Summer, described by its author as a "short morality play," has become one of his most notorious works due in no small part to the film version starring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, and Montgomery Clift that shocked audiences in 1959. A menacing tale of madness, jealousy, and denial,the horrors in Suddenly Last Summer build to a heart-stopping conclusion.With perceptive new introductions by playwright Martin Sherman - he reframes Orpheus Descending in a political context and explores the psychology and sensationalism surrounding Suddenly Last Summer - this volume also offers Williams's related essay, "The Past, the Present, and the Perhaps," and a chronology of the playwright's life and works.

The first collection by a seminal contemporary gay playwright

Before deciding whether to marry Chandrapore's local magistrate, Adela Quested wants to discover the "real India" for herself. Newly arrived from England, she agrees to see the Marabar Caves with the charming Dr Aziz. This adaptation explores the absurdity of Anglo-Indian life in the 1920s.

Drawing on the political writings of Kant, the rationale of Churchill's anti-appeasement policy, and the most up-to-date empirical research in international relations, the author forges a rigorous decision-theoretic model to account for the international interactions between despotic and democratic regimes.

Onassis portrays the last years of the life of the wealthy shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who, after a notorious affair with Maria Callas, married Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of US President John F. Kennedy, in 1968.Passing By, first performed in New York in 1975, is both a brave and a charming romantic comedy about a love between two men whose hearts pull them together as their lives pull them apart. "One of the most radical plays ever written. Quirky, funny, touching, romantic and revolutionary. It overturned my life. Perhaps it will do the same for others." Simon Callow The Miser is Moliere's satirical masterpiece about obsession and status endures. Fast, funny and full of energy, this sparkling new version by Martin Sherman is as pertinent today as it was when first written and performed by Moliere in the seventeenth century. Sherman's adaptation received its world premiere at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, on 11 April 2013.

Onassis portrays the last years of the life of the wealthy shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who after a notorious affair with Maria Callas, married Jacqueline Kennedy, widow of US President John F. Kennedy, in 1968.

Martin Sherman''s worldwide hit play Bent took London by storm in 1979 when it was first performed by the Royal Court Theatre, with Ian McKellen as Max (a character written with the actor in mind). The play itself caused an uproar. "It educated the world " Sherman explains. "People knew about how the Third Reich treated Jews and, to some extent, gypsies and political prisoners. But very little had come out about their treatment of homosexuals." Gays were arrested and interned at work camps prior to the genocide of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped, and continued to be imprisoned even after the fall of the Third Reich and liberation of the camps. The play Bent highlights the reason why - a largely ignored German law, Paragraph 175, making homosexuality a criminal offense, which Hitler reactivated and strengthened during his rise to power.