A LIGHT LUNCH is a post-Bush cautionary tale about the price paid for legacy. When a young lawyer from Texas invites a literary agent for lunch in a New York City restaurant, more than a production is on the table. "The gentlemanly playwright A R Gurney casually tosses his own metaphorical shoe ... in the direction of our departing president in his latest politically minded play, A LIGHT LUNCH. Mr Gurney take s] jovial, self-deprecating jabs at his own foibles, and the follies of the theater business too." -Charles Isherwood, New York Times "A R Gurney's jokey new play, A LIGHT LUNCH, is...

In an attempt to account for the family inheritance, the scion of a wealthy Buffalo, New York clan and her willful, college-aged son visit their long-lost cousin Mary. The catch: Mary is living in an asylum for the wealthy insane and has barely spoken in years, forcing mother and son to employ radical ends to get through. "Comparisons between playwrights and novelists are almost always misleading, but I'd say it's more or less accurate to think of A R Gurney as the John P Marquand of American drama. Like Marquand, Mr Gurney writes about WASPs and their discontents, and his ruefully funny...

POST MORTEM is set in the not-too-distant future when the Christian Right holds power. Alice, a lowly lecturer in drama at a faith-based state university in the Midwest, and Dexter, an enthusiastic student more interested in his teacher than the theatre, become embroiled in the discovery of a play by an obscure late 20th century playwright named A R Gurney. When the authorities destroy the script, these two must piece together the play and with it the future of the world gone mad. "A R Gurney has written a play that, as accurately appraised by one admirer, has 'turned the world upside down.'...

INDIAN BLOOD is the story of an adolescent boy trying to stretch his wings in a large and traditional family. "A R Gurney's latest play, INDIAN BLOOD, is like a snow globe for the stage, in this case a memento of wintry Buffalo in the mid-1940s ... Written with delicacy and old-school craftsmanship, INDIAN BLOOD is a modest memory play that is endowed with a measure of emotional heft." -Charles Isherwood, The New York Times "In INDIAN BLOOD, his delightful and touching memory play, A R Gurney takes a break from his recent anti-Bush salvos (MRS FARNSWORTH, SCREENPLAY) and returns to his...

"Politicians poised to sling mud might take a pointer or two from A R Gurney: Good manners can be lethal weapons, and a glancing sideswipe may cause more damage than a punch in the nose. An expert demonstration of such tactics is on ... in Mr Gurney's disarming new play, MRS FARNSWORTH ... Though it deals with revelations that are the stuff of smear campaigns, MRS FARNSWORTH is as polite and sweetly subversive a political attack as you're likely ever to come across. ...Mr Gurney's latest offering feels as if it's spoken out of the side of the mouth, sotto voce through a firmly locked jaw....

..". this poignant new play is a welcome reminder of A R Gurney's gliding dialogue and structural elegance, as well as the troubled, rueful heart that informs all his work." Ben Brantley, The New York Times "A play that does everything right. The new drama by A R Gurney looks at who Americans were in the mid-1950s-a few Americans, anyway-and how they behaved out in those vast stretches of the world over which they had sway, and what their songs and movies and slang expressions and values were. The story centers on four U S Navy people (one a Navy wife) stationed at a base in Japan in 1954 and...

BIG BILL captures tennis player William Tilden's turbulent life in a series of scenes that shift back and forth in time. Performed on a set that resembles a tennis arena, the play illuminates the sportsman's distinguished career, extravagant style, personal travails, and, ultimately, his calamitous downfall. A fascinating look at the glory of sport, the power of fame, and the anguish of being an outcast. "BIG BILL is one of A R Gurney's most affecting plays. When Gurney began writing in the early '70s - the era of Rabe, Babe and Bullins - playwrights were supposed to do quasi-Marxist screeds....

Amanda is a once successful television personality whose star is now fading. Life imitates art as she returns to her hometown of Buffalo to star in Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD. Just as she is connecting with her roots - both onstage and off - she is called back to Hollywood for a role that could recharge her career. Will her love of theater be enough to keep her in Buffalo? "The collected works of A R Gurney make up what may be the longest goodbye in American theater, a sustained cry of farewell to an endangered life form. Make that forms. Though Mr Gurney is best known for his chronicles of...

This collection includes two short plays: THE GUEST LECTURER and THE PROBLEM. THE GUEST LECTURER: Mona runs a financially strapped regional theatre and takes "diabolical steps" to keep the venue going. THE PROBLEM: A husband and wife learn of each other's extramarital affairs. "For many years, as he was forging his reputation as a playwright, A R Gurney was also a college professor, and in recent plays like HUMAN EVENTS and THE FOURTH WALL he has portrayed campus denizens in not-so-flattering terms. The academic life he depicts is an insular one, the academics themselves self-absorbed and...

This collection includes two one-act plays: DARLENE and THE GUEST LECTURER. In DARLENE a mysterious woman puts a strain on a suburban couple's marriage. In THE GUEST LECTURER, Mona runs a financially strapped regional theatre and is willing to take "diabolical steps" to keep the venue going.

"Wild. Weird. Wacky. And rather wonderful. That's DARLENE & THE GUEST LECTURER. A R Gurney's new pair of one-acters. For the past fifteen years, Gurney has been a strong presence in the American theater. He's incisively exposed the feeling lurking beneath the stolid WASP exterior in such plays...