The World's
Greatest
Plays
Theatre's essential canon — ranked by monthly views
This month's top 3
The full list
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1Dramatic Comedy
Marx in Soho: A Play on History
A furious, funny and unexpectedly human solo play that drags Karl Marx out of history books and drops him directly into the chaos of modern life.
26 views -
2Dramatic 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.
16 viewsWatch -
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.
16 viewsWatch -
415 viewsWatch
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5Epic 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?
14 views -
617th 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.
13 views -
7Tragedy
Death and the King’s Horseman
A thrilling and devastating play about duty, colonial violence and spiritual responsibility that still feels dangerously alive.
13 viewsWatch -
8Noh Theatre
Dōjōji
A hypnotic theatrical ghost story where jealousy becomes sacred terror and every movement feels charged with centuries of emotion.
13 viewsWatch -
9Social 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?
12 viewsWatch -
10Tragedy
King Lear
A terrifying study of power, ageing and human cruelty that strips civilisation down to the bone and somehow finds tenderness there too.
12 viewsWatch -
11Epic Theatre
Mother Courage and Her Children
A furious, darkly funny anti war play that strips conflict down to money, survival and human compromise with terrifying clarity.
12 viewsWatch -
12Political Theatre
The Crucible
A furious and frightening play about fear, power and public shame that still feels dangerously close to the modern world.
12 viewsWatch -
13Morality 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.
11 views -
14Tragedy
Antigone
An unnervingly modern tragedy about political power, moral conviction and the terrible cost of refusing to bend.
10 viewsWatch -
15Tragedy
Hamlet
Possibly the greatest play ever written about grief, paralysis and the terrifying difficulty of knowing what the right thing actually is.
10 views -
16Dramatic Comedy
Man and Superman
Shaw's longest, most argumentative and most exhilarating play — a romantic comedy about a man running from a woman, wrapped around a philosophical debate between Don Juan and the Devil.
10 viewsWatch -
17Social Realism
The Seagull
A beautiful and painfully funny play about artistic failure, unreturned love and the terrible gap between the lives people dream of and the lives they actually live.
10 viewsWatch -
18Dramatic Comedy
Top Girls
A furious, brilliant play about ambition, feminism and the price women pay for success inside systems that were never built for them.
10 viewsWatch -
19Tragedy
Doctor Faustus
A thrilling and unsettling play about ambition, vanity and the terror of realising too late that knowledge cannot save you from yourself.
9 views -
20Dramatic Comedy
The Visit
A viciously funny moral nightmare about money, justice and the terrifying ease with which ordinary people learn to excuse cruelty.
9 views -
21Tragedy
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.
8 viewsWatch -
22Musical 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.
8 viewsWatch -
23Tragedy
Othello
A terrifying study of jealousy, manipulation and prejudice that turns intimate human weakness into full scale tragedy with unbearable precision.
8 views -
24Tragedy
Romeo and Juliet
A play everyone thinks they already know until they see how violent, funny, reckless and emotionally overwhelming it actually is.
8 viewsWatch -
25Dramatic Comedy
Tartuffe
A razor sharp comedy about hypocrisy, vanity and the dangerous pleasure of believing exactly what you want to hear.
8 views -
26Dramatic 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.
8 views -
27Tragedy
A Streetcar Named Desire
A feverish, devastating portrait of desire, class and self deception that still feels dangerous every time it is performed.
7 viewsWatch -
28Tragedy
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.
7 viewsWatch -
29Dramatic Comedy
Lysistrata
A filthy, furious anti war comedy that still feels shockingly alive more than two thousand years after it was written.
7 views -
30Tragedy
Medea
A furious, terrifying tragedy that forces an audience to sit inside betrayal, grief and revenge with absolutely nowhere to hide.
7 viewsWatch -
31Tragedy
Miss Julie
A scorching psychological duel about sex, class and power that still feels dangerous more than a century after it was written.
7 views -
32Tragedy
Oedipus Rex
A terrifyingly precise tragedy about knowledge, power and the human need to believe we control our own lives.
7 viewsWatch -
33Theatre 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.
7 viewsWatch
