Williams Plays 4

'[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

This anthology contains four of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright's most brilliant works: Summer and Smoke, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer and Period of Adjustment. "The innocent and the damned, the lonely and the frustrated, the hopeful and the hopeless . . . (Williams) brings them all into focus with an earthy, irreverently comic passion".--Newsweek.

For this volume, originally published in cloth in 1961, William Carlos Williams collected, and revised, four full-length plays and the libretto of an opera on George Washington. As might be expected of the man who did most in our time to create a new and truly "American" idiom for poetry, Dr. Williams' writing for the stage challenges producers and actors to extend the range of modern drama.

THE STORY: A play that is profoundly affecting, SUMMER AND SMOKE is a simple love story of a somewhat puritanical Southern girl and an unpuritanical young doctor. Each is basically attracted to the other but because of their divergent attitudes toward lif

Roy Williams has a deserved reputation as one of the most exciting young writers whose plays have electrified the sort of audiences most theatres rarely see: streetwise urban youth. 'His plays have brought the experience of black urban youth onto the stage' (Observer).This third collection of plays, introduced by the author, showcases the diversity, the moral probing and the fine ear for authentic dialogue characteristic of his writing: Fallout: first produced in 2003 the play focuses on the aftermath of the killing of a teenager. Slow Time was commissioned and developed by the National Theatre's Education Department and toured to London schools. Set in a young offender's institution the play depicts three young men and their fight to survive. Days of Significance was produced by the RSC in 2007 and is revived at the Tricycle Theatre, London in March 2008. It was described by the Daily Telegraph as 'the best new play of the year ... that powerfully caught the debased spirit of our times.' Absolute Beginners - a stage adaptation of the seminal novel of adolescence set in 1958 London - produced at the Lyric Hammersmith May 07: 'bags of energy and highly watchable' Daily Mail.

Second collection of plays by the award-winning young British playwright Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads: Tensions erupt in a South London pub as England lose against Germany at football Clubland: Ben is married to Denise but on the pull, Kenny's looking for someone who's "right", Ade's with Sandra but playing the field and Nate's a proud father, in this urban drama of race and sexual politics in West London. The Gift: Since her childhood, when she left Jamaica for England, Heather's sister has claimed to have the gift of raising spirits from the dead. When her son is murdered, Heather returns to Jamaica and begs her sister to bring him back to life.Winner of the Evening Standard's Most Promising Playwright Award, 2001 - shortlisted for Best Play Award 2003 "Williams' writing snaps and crackles, his characters burst with life, emotion and contradiction" Guardian "Roy Williams shows himself to be a sassy, sophisticated diviner of the human heart" Evening Standard

"Praised as one of the finest American playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) left a legacy of theater classics, including The Glass Menagerie, Sweet Bird of Youth. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire. Although he won two Pulitzer prizes for drama, Williams fell out of favor in the early 1960s, and after The Night of the Iguana his subsequent works suffered both critical and commercial failure. Even worse, several of his plays failed to get produced in his lifetime." "William Prosser directed six productions of Williams' plays, five of which the playwright saw, criticized, and often praised. Determined to liberate the playwright's later works from the literary purgatory to which they had been condemned by critics, Prosser examines the plays Williams produced from the early 1960s until his death. In several thoughtful essays. Prosser discusses such works as The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, Slapstick Tragedy, Kingdom of Earth, The Red Devil Battery Sign, and Clothes for a Summer Hotel a portrait of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Besides offering reevaluations of these plays, each chapter may be seen as research and analysis for potential productions, Throughout the book, Prosser contends that Williams' talent was not destroyed but rather went on in different directions to create extraordinary, if misunderstood, works."--BOOK JACKET.

A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams provides the essential guide to Williams' most studied and revived dramas. Authored by a team of leading scholars, it offers students a clear analysis and detailed commentary on four of Williams' plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth. A consistent framework of analysis ensures that whether readers are wanting a summary of the play, a commentary on the themes or characters, or a discussion of the work in performance, they can readily find what they need to develop their understanding and aid their appreciation of Williams' artistry. A chronology of the writer's life and work helps to situate all his works in context and the introduction reinforces this by providing a clear overview of Williams' writing, its recurrent themes and concerns and how these are intertwined with his life and times. For each play the author provides a summary of the plot, followed by commentary on: * The context * Themes * Characters * Structure and language * The play in production (both on stage and screen adaptations) Questions for study, and notes on words and phrases in the text are also supplied to aid the reader. The wealth of authoritative and clear commentary on each play, together with further questions that encourage comparison across Williams' work and related plays by other leading writers, ensures that this is the clearest and fullest guide to Williams' greatest plays.