'Tell me, please - is this a dream?' The night before he leads his troops into battle, the prince of Homburg strips off his uniform and goes sleepwalking. Moonstruck, his mind races with a young man's fantasies - love, ambition and victory. But when the morning comes, a single reckless act of disobediance sets in motion a chain of events that leads inexorable to the one thing he never dreamt would happen; his own death. Heinrich von Kleist is one of the most enigmatic figures in theatre history. Driven to suicide at the age of 34, he left behind him seven extraordinary plays. Unperformed during his own lifetime, The Prince of Homburg is now regarded as von Kleist's masterpiece and is one of the most mysterious and beautiful plays of the nineteenth century. Neil Bartlett's production opened at the RSC Stratford in January 2002, and transferred to the Lyric Theatre.

On the night of 24th March 1895, Mrs Robinson, a society palm-reader, agreed to see Oscar Wilde in her London flat. Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, 'Bosie', was urging him to sue the Marquis of Queensberry (Bosie's father) for criminal libel. But Wilde's friends, wary of Queensberry's power, were warning him to leave town. In Extremis reveals the strange turmoil of that night, as a man at the height of his fame turns to a complete stranger for advice about a potentially life-changing decision. In Extremis was first presented in November 2000 at the National Theatre alongside De Profundis to mark the centenary of Oscar Wilde's death.

It is 3 a.m. in The City, and in a dark corner of The Bar, two lovers collide in the beginnings of a passionate and violent affair. Boy: nineteen, beautiful, ready for anyone to take him home, and 'O': the Older Man, cynical, unpredictable, and at the mercy of his personal demons. Their romance is orchestrated and observed by the owner of The Bar, Madame, who looks after her boys and ensures that their haven remains inviolate. At once a joyful celebration of homosexual love and culture, and a devastating evocation of the homophobic climate which stemmed from the 80s AIDS crisis, Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall offers a decisively contemporary recasting of the traditional love story. First published in 1990 and immediately acclaimed as the work of a bold new voice in English fiction, Neil Bartlett's powerful debut continues to shine with an ageless wisdom and wit.

Paris, 1870. Adultery ought to be a serious business... but it's hard to keep your dignity when the cleaning lady has a fireman in your kitchen and she suspects that something is up. Not to mention the fact that your lover is not only stuck halfway up a drainpipe but is also your husband's very best friend. And as for the blackmailing taxi driver - he knows everything! The Threesome is a feast of finely tuned extra-marital mayhem from the master of French farce. This version was produced at the Lyric, Hammersmith in March 2000.

In the winter of 2036, in a shabby apartment in Port Elizabeth, two old men search for a way to say goodbye after a lifetime spent together. In the perfect summer of 1971, in a very different South Africa, their handsome younger selves search for the courage to fall in love. And poised halfway between these two stories – one imagined, one remembered – their real-life counterparts bear witness to both the beginning and ending of an incredible journey. Neil Bartlett returns to The National in collaboration with the award winning War Horse team to create an intimate history of two very private lives, lived in extraordinary times.

Reggie Rainbow has found the perfect profession for someone who likes to keep himself to himself: it's his job to make sure that some things stay out of sight and out of mind. Reggie Rainbow is an angry young man who treads the backstage corridors of down-at-heel theatres for a living. Childhood polio has left him with a limp, but his strong arms and nimble fingers are put to perfect use behind the scenes, helping the illusionist Mr Brookes to 'disappear' a series of glamorous assistants twice nightly. But in 1953, bookings for magic acts are scarce, even in London. So when Mr Brookes is unexpectedly offered a slot at the Brighton Grand, Reggie finds himself back out on the road and living in a strange new town. The sea air begins to work its own peculiar kind of magic, and, as the bunting goes up in the streets outside the theatre for the Grand's forthcoming Coronation spectacular, Reggie begins to wonder just how much of his own life is an act - and what might have happened to somebody who disappeared from that life long ago. Set in the tarnished world of 1950s Variety, The Disappearance Boy is a masterful and dark tale of love lost and found; of blood, sweat - and all the other secrets that are kept hidden away behind those red velvet curtains.

Collected for the first time in print, over a decade of texts from one of British theatre’s fiercest and most individual voices, documenting the extraordinary site-specific solo performances which have run parallel to Bartlett’s acclaimed work as a mainstream director. Neil Bartlett was Artistic Director of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith for a number of years. Many of his adaptations for the stage are published by Oberon Books, including Oliver Twist, The Prince of Homburg and Don Juan.

Although his mainstream career has recently included majorwork for the RSC and the National, the five new pieces collected here show just how close playwright and director Neil Bartlett has stayed to the radical queer cultural roots that first brought him to prominence in the early 1980s. Commissioned to be performed in spaces as various as South London’s notorious Vauxhall Tavern, Brighton’s Theatre Royal and the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, these hit-and-run dramatic monologues bring all of his trademark wit and passion to bear on the issues that run throughout his work – the power of love, and the necessity for anger. Together, they make up a trenchantly personal take on what it feels like to have spent nearly thirty years standing up and speaking one’s mind. The collection also includes his 2011 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Remarkable Rocket, which uses the diamond-sharp text of one of Wilde’s children’s stories as the springboard for a haunting meditation on the enduring power of Wilde to inspire, dazzle and move. A follow on from his earlier collection Solo Voices, this new collection is vivid, fierce and tender, with five provocative and highly actable new works from one of British theatre’s most idiosyncratic voices. www.neil-bartlett.com

Roman.

The most famous of the hilarious, heartbreakingcomedies with which Marivaux shocked and delighted eighteenth-century Paris. A wickedly funny translation, as performed at the Royal National Theatre.