The World's
Greatest
Plays
Theatre's essential canon — ranked by monthly views
Updated monthly · resets each month
This month's top 3
The full list
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1Tragedy
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.
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2Theatre 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.
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3Epic 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.
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4Tragedy
Antigone
An unnervingly modern tragedy about political power, moral conviction and the terrible cost of refusing to bend.
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5Tragedy
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.
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6Tragedy
The Glass Menagerie
A fragile, piercing memory play about love, shame and escape that captures the sadness of family life with almost unbearable precision.
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7Tragedy
Medea
A furious, terrifying tragedy that forces an audience to sit inside betrayal, grief and revenge with absolutely nowhere to hide.
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8Social 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.
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9Dramatic 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.
21 viewsBuy -
1017th 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.
20 viewsBuy -
11Dramatic 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.
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12Tragedy
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.
18 viewsBuy -
13Social 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.
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14Romantic Comedy
Cyrano de Bergerac
A thrilling romantic comedy about wit, pride and longing that somehow feels intimate even at its most theatrical.
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15Dramatic Comedy
Lysistrata
A filthy, furious anti war comedy that still feels shockingly alive more than two thousand years after it was written.
17 viewsBuy -
16Tragedy
Miss Julie
A scorching psychological duel about sex, class and power that still feels dangerous more than a century after it was written.
17 viewsBuy -
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.
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18Theatre 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.
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19Tragedy
A Streetcar Named Desire
A feverish, devastating portrait of desire, class and self deception that still feels dangerous every time it is performed.
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20Epic 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?
16 viewsBuy -
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.
16 viewsBuy -
22Tragedy
Oedipus Rex
A terrifyingly precise tragedy about knowledge, power and the human need to believe we control our own lives.
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23Tragedy
Phèdre
A blazing tragedy of forbidden desire and moral collapse that turns private shame into something terrifyingly public and unforgettable.
14 viewsBuy -
24Tragedy
The Bacchae
A savage and hypnotic tragedy about repression, ecstasy and the terrifying consequences of believing reason alone can control human nature.
14 viewsBuy -
25Dramatic Comedy
Uncle Vanya
A painfully funny portrait of wasted years, buried desire and the terrifying feeling that life may already have passed you by.
13 viewsBuy -
26Musical 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.
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27Tragedy
Hamlet
Possibly the greatest play ever written about grief, paralysis and the terrifying difficulty of knowing what the right thing actually is.
12 viewsBuy -
28Noh Theatre
Dōjōji
A hypnotic theatrical ghost story where jealousy becomes sacred terror and every movement feels charged with centuries of emotion.
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29Social 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?
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30Romantic Comedy
The Merchant of Venice
A brilliant and deeply uncomfortable play about prejudice, money and power whose greatest strength lies in its refusal to offer easy moral certainty.
10 viewsBuy -
31Social 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.
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32Morality 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.
9 viewsBuy -
33Dramatic 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.
