Plays: 4: Joe Guy / Category B / Sucker Punch / Baby Girl / There’s Only One Wayne Matthews

by Roy Williams

‘[Williams’s] plays have brought the experience of black urban youth onto the stage' Observer

Sucker Punch: 'As usual with Williams, the dialogue is crisp and bespoke: motives are mixed, nobody is a hero, nothing is just black and white.' The Times

Joe Guy: ‘Williams's dialogue ricochets around the stage like gunfire . . . energetic, exciting and entertaining.’ Stage

Category B: ‘Category B is a harrowing play, but one shot through with both dark humour and tentative flickers of hope’. Daily Telegraph

Baby Girl: ‘The shocking thing about Roy Williams's Baby Girl is that it argues that there is a cyclical pattern to teenage pregnancy . . . Williams paints a rivetingly plausible picture of a world in which mothers and daughters are sexual rivals, ‘virgin’ is the ultimate peer insult and the school gates are a fertile hunting ground for male predators.’ Guardian

There’s Only One Wayne Matthews: 'Williams's writing is punchy . . . Wayne's gradual understanding of the realities of the world make this a touching coming-of-age drama.' Guardian

Genres: Plays

420 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 10, 2013

About the author

Born and brought up in Notting Hill, London, Roy Samuel Williams became a full time writer in his 20s after he took a theatre-writing degree at Rose Bruford College. His first full-length play was The No Boys Cricket Club, which premiered in 1996 at Theatre Royal Stratford East, since when he has had plays produced at the Royal Court, The Bush Theatre, The Hampstead Theatre and the National Theatre.

Williams has done work in television, including adapting his own play Fallout and also co-wrote the script for the 2014 British film Fast Girls. He has also written a police procedural series for BBC Radio The Interrogation.

In 2011, Williams received the best play award for Sucker Punch at the Writers Guild Awards. In 2020, he received an RTS nomination for Best Writer for Drama and BAFTA nomination for best short form Drama, both for Soon Gone, A Windrush Chronicle. In 2018 Williams was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.