Plays

Click on any of the titles below to see more details, or scroll down to view them each in turn.

Albert's Bridge, The Musical | Doctor Love | Up The Feeder, Down the 'Mouth |
The Redcliffe Hermit | Walking the Chains

My theatre career started with ten years' literary work for the Royal Shakespeare Company, then the National Theatre. I have had some 25 plays and music-theatre pieces staged or televised, including Albert's Bridge Extended (co-written with Tom Stoppard) at the Edinburgh Festival; God's Wonderful Railway, Bristol Old Vic; Pericles (reconstruction of Shakespeare), Theater Emory, Atlanta, revived in Bristol by Show of Strength; Up the Feeder, Down the 'Mouth, Bristol Old Vic, revived in Princes Wharf; The Redcliffe Hermit, Bristol L Shed; and Walking the Chains, Bristol Passenger Shed.

Albert's Bridge, The Musical

A musical adaptation of Tom Stoppard's radio play, with composer David Lyon, produced in 1999

Albert's Bridge, The Musical, is a re-adaptation of the stage play, Albert's Bridge Extended, mentioned above. It was the first music-theatre piece I wrote with the composer David Lyon. A full description of it, with musical excerpts, can be found here: www.achsmith.co.uk/albertsbridge/index.html.

Doctor Love

Musical-play script, published by Loxwood Stoneleigh as part of production programme, 2008

After Albert's Bridge, the composer David Lyon and I wrote Doctor Love. I adapted the libretto from Molière's L'Amour Médecin. I was asked if I had taken liberties; the answer was yes, liberties and egalities and fraternities. Read more >

Read an excerpt >

Up The Feeder, Down the 'Mouth

A play about Bristol docks, produced in 1997, revived 2001

Stories and songs about the thousand-year history of the city docks, and the experiences of the men and women who spent their working lives there, gathered in 50 interviews. Read more >

Read excerpts >

... A funny and startlingly encyclopaedic record of the life of the Bristol docks... the perfect anthem for a city on the crest of an unstoppable revival... truly magical moments.
— The Independent. More reviews >

Up the Feeder, Down the 'Mouth was republished in an illustrated edition in March 2012 by the Redcliffe Press. To order a copy, contact www.redcliffepress.co.uk.

The Redcliffe Hermit

Play script, Loxwood Stoneleigh, 2005. ISBN 1-85135-060-8

The Redcliffe Hermit is the most experimental play I have written. I tried to meld a number of preoccupations I had, all my bees in one bonnet. There was the history of the place. In the middle ages, Redcliffe was the residence of great shipping merchants, chiefly the Canynges family. William and Joan Canynges feature in the play, in a bad temper both of them. The hermit was a real one. We know his name, John Sparkes, and that he was installed in his cave in 1346 by Lord Berkeley. Read more >

Read an excerpt >

Walking the Chains

A play to celebrate the 150th birthday of Clifton Suspension Bridge

Stories and songs about the one hundred and fifty year history of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the experiences of the men and women who built it, and work there, and the citizens of Bristol who use it. Read more >

Read script >

... it is the human stories that shine through in ACH Smith's enjoyably rickety play with songs...
— Lyn Gardner, The Guardian. More reviews >