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Summary
Summary
A.R. Gurney Bio: Scenes From American Life, Children, The Dining Room, The Middle Ages, Richard Cory, The Golden Age, What I did Last Summer, The Wayside Motor Inn, Sweet Sue, The Perfect Party, Another Antigone, The Cocktail Hour, Love Letter, The Snow Ball (adapted from his novel), The Old Boy, The Fourth Wall, Later Life, A Cheever Evening, Sylvia, Overtime, Let's Do It (a Cole Porter musical), Labor Day, Far East, Darlene and The Guest Lecturer, Ancestral Voices. Opera: Wrote libretto for Strawberry Fields with music by Michael Torke, part of the Central Park Opera trilogy presented by the New York City Opera in the Fall of 1999. Novels: The Gospel According to Joe, Entertaining Strangers and The Snow Ball. Awards: Drama Desk, N.E.A., Rockefeller Foundation, New England Theatre Conference, Lucille Lortel, American Association of Community theatres, American Academy and Institute of arts and Letters. Honorary degrees: Williams College and Buffalo State University, Gurney was on the faculty of M.I.T. until 1996. He is the husband of one, father of four, and grandfather of six.
Summary
A.R. Gurney Bio: Scenes From American Life, Children, The Dining Room, The Middle Ages, Richard Cory, The Golden Age, What I did Last Summer, The Wayside Motor Inn, Sweet Sue, The Perfect Party, Another Antigone, The Cocktail Hour, Love Letter, The Snow Ball (adapted from his novel), The Old Boy, The Fourth Wall, Later Life, A Cheever Evening, Sylvia, Overtime, Let's Do It (a Cole Porter musical), Labor Day, Far East, Darlene and The Guest Lecturer, Ancestral Voices. Opera: Wrote libretto for "Strawberry Fields" with music by Michael Torke, part of the Central Park Opera trilogy presented by the New York City Opera in the Fall of 1999. Novels: The Gospel According to Joe, Entertaining Strangers and The Snow Ball. Awards: Drama Desk, N.E.A., Rockefeller Foundation, New England Theatre Conference, Lucille Lortel, American Association of Community theatres, American Academy and Institute of arts and Letters. Honorary degrees: Williams College and Buffalo State University, Gurney was on the faculty of M.I.T. until 1996. He is the husband of one, father of four, and grandfather of six.
Author Notes
Albert Ramsdell Gurney was born in Buffalo, New York on November 1, 1930. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts, served for several years as an officer in the Navy, and then enrolled in the playwriting program at the Yale School of Drama. After graduation, he taught English at a private school and then joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught American literature and the humanities until the early 1980s.
He was a prolific playwright and an author. His plays included The Dining Room, The Middle Ages, The Cocktail Hour, The Perfect Party, Another Antigone, Love Letters, The Old Boy, Later Life, Labor Day, Far East, Sylvia, The Fourth Wall, O Jerusalem, Mrs. Farnsworth, Screen Play, and Post Mortem. His novels included The Gospel According to Joe, Entertaining Strangers, and The Snow Ball. He died on June 13, 2017 at the age of 86.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Albert Ramsdell Gurney was born in Buffalo, New York on November 1, 1930. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts, served for several years as an officer in the Navy, and then enrolled in the playwriting program at the Yale School of Drama. After graduation, he taught English at a private school and then joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught American literature and the humanities until the early 1980s.
He was a prolific playwright and an author. His plays included The Dining Room, The Middle Ages, The Cocktail Hour, The Perfect Party, Another Antigone, Love Letters, The Old Boy, Later Life, Labor Day, Far East, Sylvia, The Fourth Wall, O Jerusalem, Mrs. Farnsworth, Screen Play, and Post Mortem. His novels included The Gospel According to Joe, Entertaining Strangers, and The Snow Ball. He died on June 13, 2017 at the age of 86.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Booklist Review
One of the most prolific contemporary American playwrights is also one of the most unusual, for Gurney's plays are populated primarily by a waning breed, fairly well-off WASPs--people in business, academia, and government who give cocktail parties, send their children to boarding schools, and serve in the military as officers. Usually, the plays are comedies, but like the comedies of Gurney's most obvious forebear, Philip Barry, author of Holiday and Philadelphia Story, they are concerned with matters of considerable moral weight, such as family and marital loyalty, conflicts of love and personality, and discrepancies between ideals and behavior. The new installments in the ongoing collection of Gurney's dramas offer thirteen plays in all. Among the seven in volume 3 are two of his most-performed works, The Cocktail Party and the two-person, read-rather-than-enacted piece, Love Letters. Of the six in volume 4, half take the cue of Love Letters' success and are two-person or readers' plays. Their wit, sympathy, honest if often restrained emotion, and their literary distinction are Gurney hallmarks. --Ray Olson
Library Journal Review
Since at least the late 1960s, the term WASP has often been used in a derogatory manner to refer to the blandness, if not repressive tendencies, of the traditionally dominant American culture. In recent literary study, significant and deserved attention has been devoted to the "emerging" literary voices of racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. Perhaps, as our sense of diversity and multiculturalism matures, and as the WASP cultural dominance recedes, we can now read and study the work of white, heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male writers as reflective of one of many literary viewpoints present in contemporary American culture. If so, within the dramatic genre the preeminent voice since the early 1970s has been that of Gurney, whose plays probe the issues and realities of mostly upper-middle-class American life, particularly between family members. Although these plays are frequently satirical, the satire is from the inside, making it both more effective and more realistic. These volumes comprise 13 plays, including three of Gurney's most frequently performed works: The Cocktail Hour and Love Letters (both 1988), and Sylvia (1995), whose eponymous talking dog is an exception to the predominant realism of Gurney's oeuvre. His best work belongs in all academic, public, and high school libraries. These editions are a bit pricey, but they offer convenient collections of essential playwrights.DRobert W. Melton, Univ. of Kansas Libs., Lawrence (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
One of the most prolific contemporary American playwrights is also one of the most unusual, for Gurney's plays are populated primarily by a waning breed, fairly well-off WASPs--people in business, academia, and government who give cocktail parties, send their children to boarding schools, and serve in the military as officers. Usually, the plays are comedies, but like the comedies of Gurney's most obvious forebear, Philip Barry, author of Holiday and Philadelphia Story, they are concerned with matters of considerable moral weight, such as family and marital loyalty, conflicts of love and personality, and discrepancies between ideals and behavior. The new installments in the ongoing collection of Gurney's dramas offer thirteen plays in all. Among the seven in volume 3 are two of his most-performed works, The Cocktail Party and the two-person, read-rather-than-enacted piece, Love Letters. Of the six in volume 4, half take the cue of Love Letters' success and are two-person or readers' plays. Their wit, sympathy, honest if often restrained emotion, and their literary distinction are Gurney hallmarks. --Ray Olson
Library Journal Review
Since at least the late 1960s, the term WASP has often been used in a derogatory manner to refer to the blandness, if not repressive tendencies, of the traditionally dominant American culture. In recent literary study, significant and deserved attention has been devoted to the "emerging" literary voices of racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities. Perhaps, as our sense of diversity and multiculturalism matures, and as the WASP cultural dominance recedes, we can now read and study the work of white, heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon Protestant male writers as reflective of one of many literary viewpoints present in contemporary American culture. If so, within the dramatic genre the preeminent voice since the early 1970s has been that of Gurney, whose plays probe the issues and realities of mostly upper-middle-class American life, particularly between family members. Although these plays are frequently satirical, the satire is from the inside, making it both more effective and more realistic. These volumes comprise 13 plays, including three of Gurney's most frequently performed works: The Cocktail Hour and Love Letters (both 1988), and Sylvia (1995), whose eponymous talking dog is an exception to the predominant realism of Gurney's oeuvre. His best work belongs in all academic, public, and high school libraries. These editions are a bit pricey, but they offer convenient collections of essential playwrights.DRobert W. Melton, Univ. of Kansas Libs., Lawrence (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
