An entertaining collection of five emotionally powerful and thought-provoking plays by a contemporary dramatist, namely 'Birthmarks', 'Downtown Paradise', 'Mr Owen's Millennium', 'Playing Burton', including a conversation between the dramatist and Hazel Walford Davies and a selection of review excerpts.

Casgliad difyr o bum drama bwerus i ysgogi trafodaeth gan ddramodydd cyfoes, sef 'Birthmarks', 'Downtown Paradise', 'Mr Owen's Millennium', 'Nora's Bloke' a 'Playing Burton', ynghyd â sgwrs rhwng y dramodydd a Hazel Walford Davies a detholiad bytiau o adolygiadau.

This is an important collection of five of Mark Jenkins’s scripts. It spans writing from 1985 to 1995 and all the plays are based on actual characters, whose own words and histories are his starting point. It contains two monologues: the brilliant recreation and self-exploration of ‘Playing Burton’ (which has played all over the world since 1992) and an affectionate evocation of Robert Owen's ‘Mr Owen’s Millennium’ (which began life as a Welsh TV drama but here appears as an English stage play). Both characters leap from the page and are richly and imaginatively realised.

The two-hander ‘Downtown Paradise’ is a powerful, emotional drama with a terrible message of destruction and waste. It concerns the fatal relationship between a liberal Jewish lawyer and her black client.

‘Birthmarks’, his earliest play, is a tragicomedy on the political and domestic life of a young Karl Marx. This exposes the contradictions at the root of the Communist movement where, already, the idealistic ‘cause’ is undermined by personal limitations, conflict and deceit. Mark Jenkins has an academic and active political background and it is fascinating to compare his depiction of Marx with his portrait of Robert Owen. Owen, if not always successful, comes over as a great, life-affirming character.

The last play, ‘Nora’s Bloke’, is the most conventional and accessible but also the most personal, being based on the wartime experiences of his Irish mother and her friends in London. It is a well-made, attractive and humane comedy which should prove popular with both professional and amateur casts.

The collection is valuable and interesting, both for the quality of the writing and the range of its concerns. It also contains a revealing conversation with Hazel Walford-Davies which places Jenkins in context as a Welsh writer. It is to be hoped that this publication leads to many more productions of the plays, especially in Wales.

Caroline Clark

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatad Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.