The World's
Greatest
Plays
Theatre's essential canon — ranked by monthly views
This month's top 3
The full list
-
1Theatre 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.
9 viewsWatch -
2Epic 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?
9 views -
3Morality 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.
8 views -
4Dramatic 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.
7 views -
5Tragedy
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.
6 views -
6Musical Theatre
Oh! What a Lovely War
A dazzling collision of music hall comedy and historical tragedy that reinvented British theatre while exposing the human cost of war.
6 viewsWatch -
7Tragedy
The Bacchae
A savage and hypnotic tragedy about repression, ecstasy and the terrifying consequences of believing reason alone can control human nature.
6 views -
8Dramatic Comedy
The Visit
A viciously funny moral nightmare about money, justice and the terrifying ease with which ordinary people learn to excuse cruelty.
6 views -
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?
5 viewsWatch -
10Romantic Comedy
Cyrano de Bergerac
A thrilling romantic comedy about wit, pride and longing that somehow feels intimate even at its most theatrical.
5 viewsWatch -
11Tragedy
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 -
12Epic 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.
5 viewsWatch -
13Social 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.
5 viewsWatch -
145 viewsWatch
-
15Theatre 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.
5 viewsWatch -
16Dramatic 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.
4 viewsWatch -
17Dramatic 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.
4 viewsWatch -
18Tragedy
The Glass Menagerie
A fragile, piercing memory play about love, shame and escape that captures the sadness of family life with almost unbearable precision.
4 viewsWatch -
19Tragedy
Woyzeck
A furious, fragmented nightmare about poverty, humiliation and psychological collapse that still feels centuries ahead of its time.
4 viewsWatch -
2017th 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.
3 views -
21Tragedy
Doctor Faustus
A thrilling and unsettling play about ambition, vanity and the terror of realising too late that knowledge cannot save you from yourself.
3 views -
22Dramatic Comedy
Lysistrata
A filthy, furious anti war comedy that still feels shockingly alive more than two thousand years after it was written.
3 views -
23Tragedy
Macbeth
A violent, hypnotic tragedy about ambition, guilt and political chaos that still feels dangerous every time it is performed.
3 views -
24Tragedy
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 -
25Tragedy
Phèdre
A blazing tragedy of forbidden desire and moral collapse that turns private shame into something terrifyingly public and unforgettable.
3 views -
26Political Theatre
The Crucible
A furious and frightening play about fear, power and public shame that still feels dangerously close to the modern world.
3 viewsWatch -
27Dramatic 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.
3 viewsWatch -
28Tragedy
A Streetcar Named Desire
A feverish, devastating portrait of desire, class and self deception that still feels dangerous every time it is performed.
2 viewsWatch -
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.
2 viewsWatch -
30Tragedy
Hamlet
Possibly the greatest play ever written about grief, paralysis and the terrifying difficulty of knowing what the right thing actually is.
2 views -
31Tragedy
King Lear
A terrifying study of power, ageing and human cruelty that strips civilisation down to the bone and somehow finds tenderness there too.
2 viewsWatch -
32Tragedy
Medea
A furious, terrifying tragedy that forces an audience to sit inside betrayal, grief and revenge with absolutely nowhere to hide.
2 viewsWatch -
33Tragedy
Oedipus Rex
A terrifyingly precise tragedy about knowledge, power and the human need to believe we control our own lives.
2 viewsWatch
