About the Play:

Torben Betts Plays One contains three full-length comedies by Torben Betts. From a playwright rated by Alan Ayckbourn and Howard Barker to be the most exciting new voice in British theatre comes three pitch-black comedies: A Listening Heaven, Mummies and Daddies and Clockwatching.

A Listening Heaven, which focuses on one family’s painful inability to grieve for a dead son, was first produced in 1999 to critical acclaim at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where Betts was the resident dramatist. (Cast: 4 women, 2 men)

Mummies and Daddies, developed at the Royal National Theatre Studio, brutally yet hilariously lays bare the soullessness of consumerism. (Cast: 3 women, 2 men)

In Clockwatching, produced at both the Stephen Joseph Theatre and the Orange Tree Theatre in 2001, a despotic man descends into helplessness when his servile wife falls seriously ill. (Cast: 2 women, 3 men)

What people say:

"A wonderfully accomplished first play." — Alan Ayckbourn about A Listening Heaven

"A master of dialogue, of the silences ... a complex writer of misery pockmarked with painful comedy." — Yorkshire Evening Post

"Betts is an immensely promising talent destined for great things." — What's On in London

About the Playwright:

Torben Betts is an award-winning English playwright and screenwriter. He attended the University of Liverpool, where he read English Literature and English Language, and originally trained to become an actor, but later moved to playwriting.