Orchids in the Moonlight (NHB Modern Plays)

A dream play about two Mexican women exiled in Hollywood's maze of mirrors. Set in Venice the day Orson Welles died, this extraordinary play relentlessly stretches the imagination with artistic reveries and supernatural fantasies. Taken from the collection, Latin American Plays, an essential introduction to the fascinating but largely unexplored theatre of Latin America, Orchids in the Moonlight by Carlos Fuentes is 'rich in language and movement, fantasy and reality, sensuality and cruelty; as iconoclastic as the magic realist boom of the 1960s' (Scotland on Sunday). The full collection features new translations of five contemporary plays written by some of the region's most exciting writers. Each play is accompanied by an illuminating interview with its author conducted by the theatre director, Sebastian Doggart, who has also selected and translated the plays and provided an introductory history of Latin American drama. The collection also includes: Rappaccini's Daughter by Octavio Paz A play by the Mexican Nobel laureate. Night of the Assassins by José Triana A controversial Cuban play in which three siblings plot the murder of their parents. Saying Yes by Griselda Gambaro A grotesque comedy from Argentina about man's inhumanity to man. Mistress of Desires by Mario Vargas Llosa Peru's most acclaimed writer interweaves reality and fantasy in an erotically charged tale.

Carlos Fuentes Macías (November 11, 1928 - May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), Terra Nostra (1975), The Old Gringo (1985) and Christopher Unborn (1987). In his obituary, The New York Times described Fuentes as 'one of the most admired writers in the Spanish-speaking world' and an important influence on the Latin American Boom, the 'explosion of Latin American literature in the 1960s and '70s', while The Guardian called him 'Mexico's most celebrated novelist'.