The World's
Greatest
Plays
Theatre's essential canon — ranked by monthly views
This month's top 3
The full list
-
1Tragedy
Death and the King’s Horseman
A thrilling and devastating play about duty, colonial violence and spiritual responsibility that still feels dangerously alive.
5 viewsWatch -
2Morality Play
Everyman
A strange, powerful medieval drama that strips a human life down to its essentials and asks what, if anything, remains when death arrives.
5 views -
3Tragedy
The Glass Menagerie
A fragile, piercing memory play about love, shame and escape that captures the sadness of family life with almost unbearable precision.
5 viewsWatch -
4Tragedy
The Bacchae
A savage and hypnotic tragedy about repression, ecstasy and the terrifying consequences of believing reason alone can control human nature.
4 views -
5Dramatic Comedy
Every Brilliant Thing
The funniest play about depression you will ever see, and one of the most honest things theatre has done with mental health in a generation.
3 viewsWatch -
6Tragedy
Miss Julie
A scorching psychological duel about sex, class and power that still feels dangerous more than a century after it was written.
3 views -
7Social Realism
A Doll’s House
A play that changed theatre forever by asking a terrifyingly simple question: what happens when a woman decides her own life matters more than the role she has been assigned?
2 viewsWatch -
817th Century
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare’s most joyful play becomes stranger and wiser with age, a romantic comedy that understands how irrational love can feel and how fragile happiness really is.
2 views -
9Tragedy
Antigone
An unnervingly modern tragedy about political power, moral conviction and the terrible cost of refusing to bend.
2 viewsWatch -
10Social Realism
Dancing at Lughnasa
A tender and devastating memory play about family, freedom and the brief moments of joy that survive even in lives shaped by sacrifice.
2 viewsWatch -
11Noh Theatre
Dōjōji
A hypnotic theatrical ghost story where jealousy becomes sacred terror and every movement feels charged with centuries of emotion.
2 viewsWatch -
12Theatre of the Absurd
Six Characters in Search of an Author
A thrillingly strange play that tears theatre apart in front of the audience and asks whether stories can ever capture the truth of a human life.
2 viewsWatch -
13Dramatic Comedy
The Cherry Orchard
A quietly heartbreaking masterpiece about people watching their world disappear in real time. Funny, delicate and far more savage than its reputation suggests.
2 viewsWatch -
14Epic Theatre
The Good Person of Szechwan
A brilliant, unsettling play that asks one impossible question with complete clarity: how do you remain good in a society that punishes kindness at every turn?
2 views -
15Dramatic Comedy
The Visit
A viciously funny moral nightmare about money, justice and the terrifying ease with which ordinary people learn to excuse cruelty.
2 views -
16Tragedy
Doctor Faustus
A thrilling and unsettling play about ambition, vanity and the terror of realising too late that knowledge cannot save you from yourself.
1 views -
17Tragedy
Hedda Gabler
A chilling and darkly funny study of boredom, power and repression, with one of the most fascinating women ever written for the stage at its centre.
1 viewsWatch -
18Tragedy
Long Day’s Journey into Night
A devastating family drama that strips away every illusion about love, addiction and forgiveness until all that remains is raw human need.
1 views -
19Tragedy
Macbeth
A violent, hypnotic tragedy about ambition, guilt and political chaos that still feels dangerous every time it is performed.
1 views -
20Social Satire
The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole
A deceptively simple play that turns one bureaucratic problem into a devastating portrait of grief, authority and the absurdity of modern systems.
1 viewsWatch -
21Dramatic Comedy
The Misanthrope
A razor sharp comedy about the exhausting performance of social life and the danger of demanding absolute honesty from a world built on politeness.
1 views -
22Social Realism
The Power of Darkness
A suffocating, morally ferocious drama in which greed, lust and fear poison an entire household from the inside out.
1 viewsWatch -
231 viewsWatch
-
24Dramatic Comedy
Uncle Vanya
A painfully funny portrait of wasted years, buried desire and the terrifying feeling that life may already have passed you by.
1 views -
25Theatre of the Absurd
Waiting for Godot
A strange, hilarious and deeply human play about time, companionship and the terror of waiting for a life that never quite arrives.
1 viewsWatch -
26Tragedy
Woyzeck
A furious, fragmented nightmare about poverty, humiliation and psychological collapse that still feels centuries ahead of its time.
1 viewsWatch -
27Tragedy
A Streetcar Named Desire
A feverish, devastating portrait of desire, class and self deception that still feels dangerous every time it is performed.
-
28Romantic Comedy
Cyrano de Bergerac
A thrilling romantic comedy about wit, pride and longing that somehow feels intimate even at its most theatrical.
-
29Tragedy
Death of a Salesman
A brutal, compassionate portrait of a man destroyed by the dream he spent his life chasing, and still one of the greatest plays ever written about work, masculinity and failure.
-
30Musical Theatre
Hamilton
A thrilling reinvention of the historical musical that turns the founding of America into a story about ambition, legacy and the unbearable pressure to matter.
-
31Tragedy
Hamlet
Possibly the greatest play ever written about grief, paralysis and the terrifying difficulty of knowing what the right thing actually is.
-
32Tragedy
King Lear
A terrifying study of power, ageing and human cruelty that strips civilisation down to the bone and somehow finds tenderness there too.
-
33Dramatic Comedy
Lysistrata
A filthy, furious anti war comedy that still feels shockingly alive more than two thousand years after it was written.
