Dear's plays include Power and The Villains' Opera at the National Theatre; The Art of Success, Zenobia and Pure Science for the RSC; In the Ruins at Bristol Old Vic and Royal Court, London (1990); and Food of Love at the Almeida.
Adaptations include Gorky's Summerfolk and Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme at the National; Tirso de Molina's The Last Days of Don Juan at the Royal Shakespeare Company; Arbuzov's The Promise at the Tricycle; Henry James' The Turn of the Screw at Bristol Old Vic; and Ostrovsky's A Family Affair for Cheek by Jowl.
His play The Art of Success premiered at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986 in a production starring Penny Downie and Michael Kitchen, and was nominated for an Olivier Award.
[1] Dear's adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein premiered at the Royal National Theatre in 2011, in a production directed by Danny Boyle.
[2] In November 2012 The Dark Earth and the Light Sky, his biographical play about Edward Thomas, opened at the Almeida Theatre, in a production directed by Richard Eyre.