Mike Leigh Livres

Three screenplays by Mike Leigh. Naked presents a bleak picture of urban society, Life is Sweet is a gentle comedy in which the pain of everyday life is borne with a wry smile, and High Hopes is a comedy of class-ridden life in contemporary Britain.

The smash-hit National Theatre play by Mike Leigh, one of Britain's great creative directors for both stage and screen. Two Thousand Years, Leigh's first devised stage play for over a decade, follows a fractious Jewish family in contemporary London and has toured nationwide and played in an extended run at the National Theatre.

It's 1957. War widow Dorothy lives in a London suburb with her 15-year-old daughter Victoria and her older bachelor brother Edwin. More and more isolated from her married friends with their successful children, Dorothy tries to cope with Victoria's hostile behaviour. But is she responsible for what threatens to become an unendurable situation?

While teenager Abigail parties a few doors away, the pretentious Beverly and her estate agent husband, Laurence, entertain their neighbours. But as the alcohol flows, tensions in the hosts' barely functional marriage emerge and their obsessions, prejudices, and petty competitiveness are exposed.

THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF 40TH MIKE LEIGH'S CLASSIC PLAY - WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM THE PLAYWRITE. Forty years on from its first performance at the Hampstead Theatre and original screening on BBC1 soon after, Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party - telling of two marriages spectacularly unravelling at an awkward neighbourhood drinks party - remains a pinnacle of British theatre. Here is the original script, complete with a new introduction by Mike Leigh describing the play's unlikely genesis, how it came to be made and where he believes it fits within his oeuvre as one of the country's leading writers and directors. 'The play came from my intuitive sense of the spirit and the flavour of the times, and from a growing personal fear of, and frustration with the suburban existence' Mike Leigh, from his new introduction 'Leigh's play isn't simply about marriage and Essex, but also about the unhappy state of the realm' Guardian

Secrets & Lies was awarded the Palme d'Or for Best Film at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. It tells the story of Hortense, a young black Londoner who goes in search of her birth mother. Hortense's voyage of discovery leads her to Cynthia - a depressed, unmarried, white woman who has uneasy relationships with both her second daughter and her brother. Hortense's attempt to uncover the hidden, almost forgotten, world of her parents fundamentally affects each of the characters. The film culminates in a lunch party at which the characters reveal the secrets that have blighted their lives, and with this outpouring of truth comes the possibility of renewal.