Book dossier

Later life

by A. R. Gurney

Playwright A. R. Gurney has become a national treasure with his portrayals of that quintessential American type, the New England WASP, and with his witty, unexpectedly heart-hitting dialogue. This collection of three recent plays, all produced in the 1990s, brings us incomparable Gurney - mature, masterful, and hilarious. In the hugely successful Later Life, a Boston banker and a woman he had a romantic interlude with thirty years earlier reunite at a cocktail party. In The Snow Ball, a play with music and dancing, another couple tried to recapture their youth with poignant results. And in The Old Boy, an Under Secretary of State returns to his prep school alma mater for a graduation day speech - and a stunning confession. All three works skillfully juxtapose conflicting emotions to blend wit with sadness, self-realization with self-delusion, and barren interior lives with the facade of prosperous middle-class existences. The result in each case is first-rate theater - comedic drama that works its magic on the stage and inside the audience's hearts.