A theater lover's guide to the dramatic works of one of America's most important living playwrights Edward Albee is without doubt one of the giants of American theater, in the same pantheon with Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, and Tennessee Williams. His prolific career includes three Pulitzer Prizes and the 2005 Lifetime Achievement Tony Award. At the age of eighty, Albee is still producing major works for the theater--most recently a prequel to "The Zoo Story,""" which shocked the country when it first appeared in 1958--and his plays have seen major revivals on and off Broadway in recent years. Yet even with this resurgence of popularity, no up-to-date treatment of his plays is currently in print. With engaging discussions of his most famous plays, such as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and "Three Tall Women,""" as well as his lesser known works, this essential guide reveals the heart of Albee's drama, highlighting the themes of sex, death, loneliness, and time that have occupied the playwright during his almost fifty years in the theater. Toby Zinman is the theater critic for the "Philadelphia Inquirer," She has written for numerous publications, including "Variety,""" "American Theater,""" and "Theatre Journal," She is Professor of English at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

A Student Handbook to the Plays of Arthur Miller provides the essential guide to Miller's most studied and revived dramas. Authored by a team of leading scholars, it offers students a clear analysis and detailed commentary on five of Miller's plays: Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons and Broken Glass. A consistent framework of analysis ensures that whether readers want 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 Miller's artistry. A chronology of Miller's life and work helps to situate his oeuvre in context and the introduction reinforces this by providing a clear overview of his writing, its recurrent themes 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 contextthemescharactersstructure and languagethe play in production (both on stage and screen adaptations)questions for studynotes on words and phrases in the text The wealth of authoritative and clear commentary on each play, together with further questions that encourage comparison across Miller's work and related plays by other leading writers, ensures that this is the clearest and fullest guide to Miller's greatest plays.

"Replay: Classic Modern Drama Reimagined" spans over a century of great theatre to explore how iconic plays have been adapted and versioned by later writers to reflect or dissect the contemporary zeitgeist. Starting with "A Doll's House," Ibsen's much-reprised masterpiece of marital relations from 1879, Toby Zinman explores what made the play so controversial and shocking in its day before tracing how later reimaginings have reworked Ibsen's original. The spine of plays then includes such landmark works as Strindberg's "Miss Julie," Oscar Wilde's comic "The Importance of Being Earnest," Chekhov's "Three Sisters" and "Uncle Vanya," Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," the Rattigan centenary revivals, Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," ultimately arriving at Beckett's "Waiting for Godot." Taking each modern play as the starting point, Zinman explores the diverse renderings and reworkings by subsequent playwrights and artists -including prominent directors and their controversial productions as well as acknowledging reworkings in film, opera and ballet.Through the course of this groundbreaking study we discover not only how theatrical styles have changed but how society's attitude towards politics, religion, money, gender, sexuality and race have radically altered over the course of the century. In turn "Replay" reveals how theatre can serve as both a reflection of our times and a provocation to them.

A Student Handbook to the Plays of Arthur Miller provides the essential guide to Miller's most studied and revived dramas. Authored by a team of leading scholars, it offers students a clear analysis and detailed commentary on five of Miller's plays: All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge and Broken Glass. A consistent framework of analysis ensures that whether readers want 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 Miller's artistry. A chronology of Miller's life and work helps to situate his oeuvre in context and the introduction reinforces this by providing a clear overview of his writing, its recurrent themes 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, and the play in production - both on stage and screen adaptations; there are questions for further study and detailed notes on words and phrases in the text. The wealth of authoritative and clear commentary on each play, together with further questions that encourage comparison across Miller's work and related plays by other leading writers, ensures that this is the clearest and fullest guide to Miller's greatest plays.

A theater lover's guide to the dramatic works of one of America's most important living playwrights Edward Albee is without doubt one of the giants of American theater, in the same pantheon with Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, and Tennessee Williams. His prolific career includes three Pulitzer Prizes and the 2005 Lifetime Achievement Tony Award. At the age of eighty, Albee is still producing major works for the theater--most recently a prequel to "The Zoo Story,""" which shocked the country when it first appeared in 1958--and his plays have seen major revivals on and off Broadway in recent years. Yet even with this resurgence of popularity, no up-to-date treatment of his plays is currently in print. With engaging discussions of his most famous plays, such as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and "Three Tall Women,""" as well as his lesser known works, this essential guide reveals the heart of Albee's drama, highlighting the themes of sex, death, loneliness, and time that have occupied the playwright during his almost fifty years in the theater. Toby Zinman is the theater critic for the "Philadelphia Inquirer," She has written for numerous publications, including "Variety,""" "American Theater,""" and "Theatre Journal," She is Professor of English at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.