United States Books

August: Osage County

Tracy Letts

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

"A tremendous achievement in American playwriting: a tragicomic populist portrait of a tough land and a tougher people."-Time Out New York

"Tracy Letts' August: Osage County is what O'Neill would be writing in 2007. Letts has recaptured the nobility of American drama's mid-century heyday while still creating something entirely original."-New York magazine

One of the most bracing and critically acclaimed plays in recent Broadway history, August: Osage County is a portrait of the dysfunctional American family at its finest-and absolute worst. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its thirteen characters unscathed. After its sold-out Chicago premiere, the play has electrified audiences in New York since its opening in November 2007.

Tracy Letts is the author of Killer Joe, Bug, and Man from Nebraska, which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His plays have been performed throughout the country and internationally. A performer as well as a playwright, Letts is a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where August: Osage County premiered.

The Crucible (Penguin Classics)

Arthur Miller

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Devil is Precise 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 9 people found this review helpful.

On my walk through the LoA edition of Arthur Miller plays I bypass The Enemy of the People, the Ibsen adaptation, which I think is a waste of everyone's time, and go straight to the Crucible, which I had never read, nor watched on stage or screen. Very odd. It is a truly gripping piece of modern classic stage writing.
Of course AM needed to educate us always, so this story is not just a story about the witch trials of Salem, when perfectly harmless people, including some citizens of standing in the community, got identified as witches and hanged for it. (Which somehow looks like progress over the burnings in Europe.)
No, this is generally about fundamentalism and totalitarianism and theocracy, and more specifically about McCarthy and I wouldn't be surprised if it was also about the Ayatollah Khomeini, whatever you may say regarding anachronisms, and the Taliban. Let's not forget the Cultural Revolution of China.
If I seem to mock the play just a little bit, I haven't made up my mind yet, not quite. There is something strangely wrong in the tone of the dialogues. Can't quite nail it. Anachronistic for sure; is that all? Have to think about it.
The message that AM put into his morality tale is that power and property interests are behind the maddest manifestations of disinterestedness and righteousness. That was sure true in the other historical witch hunts that we know about. Whether it is an accurate reflection of the Salem case, I do not know. (I will definitely look for the DVD and give DDL a chance for redemption in my eyes.)

Editorial Review:

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism.

Introduction by Christopher Bigsby

A Raisin in the Sun

Lorraine Hansberry

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 139 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

What Happens To A Dream Deferred? 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Produced in 1959, A RAISIN IN THE SUN was the first Broadway play written by a black woman: Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), a memorable author who based the central story on an incident that occurred in her own family and which eventually evolved into a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1940 as Hansberry v. Lee.

The play presents us with three generations of the Younger family: the widowed matriarch Lena; her son Walter Lee and daughter Beaneatha; and Walter's wife Ruth and their son Travis. The family resides in a semi-slum apartment building on the south side of Chicago in the 1950s, where each tries to rise above the difficulties of their enviroment and the many social limitations imposed upon African-Americans at that time. But there is hope on the horizon: Lena is about to receive insurance money from her husband's death.

Unfortunately, instead of pulling the family together, the money actually drives them apart. Each member lays claim to it in some form or fashion. Lena dreams of owning her own home; daughter Bea is attending medical school and needs money to finish her degree; and most especially Walter Lee dreams of owning a liquior store. Bit by bit the pressure chips away at the family, already strained by years of frustration, and explodes at the play's climax--although not precisely in a way that one might foresee. When the explosion arrives it does not shatter the family; it unexpectedly reaffirms it.

When I review a play, I like point out that plays are not really intended to be read. They are intended to be seen on stage, where performing artists and designers breathe life into the lines and bring force to the story and its themes. This is true of every play. It may be especially true of A Raisin In The Sun, which on paper feels somewhat dry and slightly preachy. But I have seen the play performed--and let me assure that you that it brings the audience to hysterical laughter, painful tears, a sense of deep outrage, and an affection for its characters that few other modern plays can match. It is indeed a brilliant work and a great classic of 20th century American theatre.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Editorial Review:

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever."--The New York Times.

Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)

Arthur Miller

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 202 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Arthur Miller's 1949 Death of a Salesman has sold 11 million copies, and Willy Loman didn't make all those sales on a smile and a shoeshine. This play is the genuine article--it's got the goods on the human condition, all packed into a day in the life of one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul. It's a sturdy bridge between kitchen-sink realism and spectral abstraction, the facts of particular hard times and universal themes. As Christopher Bigsby's mildly interesting afterword in this 50th-anniversary edition points out (as does Miller in his memoir, Timebends), Willy is closely based on the playwright's sad, absurd salesman uncle, Manny. But of course Miller made Manny into Everyman, and gave him the name of the crime commissioner Lohmann in Fritz Lang's angst-ridden 1932 Nazi parable, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.

The tragedy of Loman the all-American dreamer and loser works eternally, on the page as on the stage. A lot of plays made history around 1949, but none have stepped out of history into the classic canon as Salesman has. Great as it was, Tennessee Williams's work can't be revived as vividly as this play still is, all over the world. (This edition has edifying pictures of Lee J. Cobb's 1949 and Brian Dennehy's 1999 performances.) It connects Aristotle, The Great Gatsby, On the Waterfront, David Mamet, and the archetypal American movie antihero. It even transcends its author's tragic flaw of pious preachiness (which undoes his snoozy The Crucible, unfortunately his most-produced play).

No doubt you've seen Willy Loman's story at least once. It's still worth reading. --Tim Appelo

The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 126 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

No play in the modern theatre has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. Menagerie was Williams's first popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by prominent Williams scholar Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award: "More than fifty years after telling his story of a family whose lives form a triangle of quiet desperation, Williams's mellifluous voice still resonates deeply and universally." This edition of The Glass Menagerie also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes." The cover features the classic line drawing by Alvin Lustig, originally done for the 1949 New Directions edition.

The Clean House and Other Plays

Sarah Ruhl

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Passionate. Show-stopping. Daringly over-the-top and impressively consistent in its delirious excess. The Clean House shines."-New Haven Advocate

"The Clean House is not, by any means, a traditional boy-meets-girl story. In fact disease, death, and dirt are among the subjects it addresses. This comedy is romantic, deeply so, but in the more arcane sense of the word: visionary, tinged with fantasy, extravagant in feeling, maybe a little nuts."-The New York Times

"Touching, inventive, invigoratingly compact, and luminously liquid, Eurydice reframes the ancient myth of ill-fated love to focus not on the bereaved musician but on his dead bride-and on her struggle with love beyond the grave."-San Francisco Chronicle

This volume is the first publication of Sarah Ruhl, "a playwright with a unique comic voice, perspective, and sense of theater" (Variety), who is fast leaving her mark on the American stage. In the award-winning Clean House-a play of uncommon romance and uncommon comedy-a maid who hates cleaning dreams about creating the perfect joke, while a doctor who treats cancer leaves his heart inside one of his patients. This volume also includes Eurydice, Ruhl's reinvention of the tragic Greek tale of love and loss, together with a third play still to be named.

Sarah Ruhl received the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in 2004 for her play The Clean House, which has been produced at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia, South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC. Her play Eurydice has been produced at Madison Repertory Theatre and Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

The Crucible (Penguin Plays)

Arthur Miller

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 190 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A+ 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This will remain, in my opinoin, one of the best pieces of literature ever written.

Absolutely AMAZING work of art! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Crucible is my absolute FAVORITE piece of literature. It definitely is one of the best pieces of literature ever written. It's moving and beautiful in every way.

Clear and Effective but Dull 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Arthur Miller's Crucible is an eloquent rebuttal of the Red Scare and the McCarthyism of the time period in which this work was written. But it does not bear the mark of brilliance. Straightforward and simple in both its story and language, The Crucible is an effective albeit unremarkable work on the Salem witch trials.

Both the plot and the characters perform the necessary tasks, but are also basic. Trying to describe the plot and characters, my mind immediately wanders to some more curious topic. The story is typical. Evil is in the form of those prosecuting innocent men and women, falsely accusing others in the hope of acquiring land. Good comes in the form of those who resist. John Proctor plays a protagonist, with supporting protagonists, Abigail a sort of seductress, and the court fills in the role of of villain. People hang others, people resist those doing the hanging. Paranoia dominates. Miller succeeds in critiquing the hysteria over communism during the 1950s. But the story is plain and unmoving.

In Miller's case, style mimics the plot and characters. The play's style is also plain, reminiscent of the King James Bible. Miller's diction is simple and unaffected, and in light of many other books, this is an asset. However, in the light of great books, The Crucible is lacking.

Though it makes its point, Arthur Miller's Crucible is an unremarkable work.

Editorial Review:

A drama based on the witch trials in Salem Village.

Doubt: A Parable

John Patrick Shanley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"A superb new drama written by John Patrick Shanley. It is an inspired study in moral uncertainty with the compellingly certain structure of an old-fashioned detective drama. Even as Doubt holds your conscious attention as an intelligently measured debate play, it sends off stealth charges that go deeper emotionally. One of the year's ten best."-Ben Brantley, The New York Times

"[The] #1 show of the year. How splendid it feels to be trusted with such passionate, exquisite ambiguity unlike anything we have seen from this prolific playwright so far. Blunt yet subtle, manipulative but full of empathy for all sides, the play is set in 1964 but could not be more timely. Doubt is a lean, potent drama . . . passionate, exquisite, important, and engrossing."-Linda Winer, Newsday

Chosen as the best play of the year by over 10 newspapers and magazines, Doubt is set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, where a strong-minded woman wrestles with conscience and uncertainty as she is faced with concerns about one of her male colleagues. This new play by John Patrick Shanley-the Bronx-born-and-bred playwright and Academy Award-winning author of Moonstruck-dramatizes issues straight from today's headlines within a world re-created with knowing detail and a judicious eye. After a stunning, sold-out production at Manhattan Theatre Club, the play has transferred to Broadway.

John Patrick Shanley is the author of numerous plays, including Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Dirty Story, Four Dogs and a Bone, Psychopathia Sexualis, Sailor's Song, Savage in Limbo, and Where's My Money?. He has written extensively for TV and film, and his credits include the teleplay for Live from Baghdad and screenplays for Congo, Alive, Five Corners, Joe Versus the Volcano (which he also directed), and Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for original screenplay.

The Book of Liz

David Sedaris, Amy Sedaris

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

It is an acting edition of a stage play 4 out of 5 stars.
18 of 21 people found this review helpful.

It seems rather odd that several of the below reviewers are not familiar with acting editions of plays---or, for that matter, with stage plays in general. The "Dramatists Play Service" on the front cover certainly tells us that that is what this is! Not a pamphlet! Not a short story! While reading it,you should try to envision it being performed by actors on a stage, live, in front of an audience (if some of you know what that means...) And, as such, it is really quite entertaining. I don't see it as more than that, but, then again, neither was "Strangers with Candy"

A Quick Chuckle 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Another Sedaris chuckle fest. This short script is a view into his twisted mind.

Great Play 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I saw the play in San Francisco a few years ago. It was very funny. The bit about the AA members running the restaurant is very tongue in cheek.

It's Sedaris 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

How could other people find this reading too short. IT'S A PLAY. What's more, It's Amy AND David Sedaris. In other words, funny funny funny-you can't go wrong with those two.

Gift 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The delivery was quick. This was something my daughter had on her Christmas list. She was very happy I was able to get it and read it the next day. Thank You!

The Pillowman

Martin McDonagh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

excellent! Play... 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Is very dynamic theater play, dramatic and fascinating... The suspense keep you with the eyes open until the end.

Stunning! Entertaining! Brutal! The year's best!! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is perhaps the most brutal, most tragic play this side of Don't Pet the Zookeeper! Furiously theatrical and not the least bit forgiving, this play will sear itself into your mind. It will forever change the way you look at theatre.

I Was a Good Writer 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Martin McDonagh is one of the living legends of British theatre, a voice so brutal and yet so moving that we, the audience, find it very difficult to respond. I give The Pillowman five stars, but that does not mean I "like" this work--it makes himself immune to being liked. Rather, I give it five stars because, like a virus, it works his way into the cells of my being and refuses to leave me unchanged.

This is the only one of McDonagh's seven famous plays which is not associated with a real place in Ireland, or part of a longer arc of plays. Unlike The Beauty Queen of Leenane or The Cripple of Inishmaan, it is not necessary to be familiar with any other plays to understand this one. But the author does assume you're a literate person, familiar with the likes of Kafka's The Trial or Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, both of which it heavily alludes to.

Even if you've never seen this play, reviews and publicity have already told you that Katurian is a frustrated amateur writer who is being questioned by a pair of police who don't answer to anyone. His brother is being tortured down the hall. Katurian is the ultimate unreliable narrator, even though he only narrates at the very end of the play: he has no idea the effects he has on everyone around him. Like a hurricane, he is blind to the devastation he leaves in his wake. You can't trust a word that comes out of his mouth, even as you can't help feeling sorry for his predicament.

But he's not the only unreliable character in the play. Alliances are made and broken in the space of a sentence. Promises are only worth the air they're made of. As Detective Tupolski says, "I am a high-ranking police officer in a totalitarian f***ing dictatorship. What are you doing taking my word for anything?"

The play challenges you to come into its world and answer its questions. Does free speech extend to cover lies? How about Katurian's gruesome stories--are they free speech? Are they "speech" when someone, maybe Katurian himself, starts acting them out? And why is the interplay between the characters so bleakly funny?

This is not a light or frivolous drama, not something you'll ever see in a school play. And its staging, with multiple locations and remarkable on-stage violence, will require a very heightened sense of theatricality which will push many producers to their limits. But it is also an experience which will not leave you unchanged in your seat. One of the top dramatists of his generation, Martin McDonagh is a force to be reckoned with, a force of nature, like a hurricane--blind to the devastation in his wake.

Editorial Review:

While still in his twenties, the Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has filled houses in New York and London, been showered with the theatre world's most prestigious accolades, and electrified audiences with his cunningly crafted and outrageous tragicomedies. With echoes of Stoppard and Kafka, his latest drama, The Pillowman, is the viciously funny and seriously disturbing tale of a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child-murders occurring in his town.