Lydie Breeze (Acting Edition for Theater Productions) - Softcover

John Guare; Guare, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822218151 ISBN 13: 9780822218159

Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 2001

Synopsis

An extensive reworking of two earlier (1981) plays by John Guare about a nineteenth-century commune in Nantucket, Lydie Breeze is a two-play, six-hour cycle about four seekers who come to the island to create a special model for a better world in the ashes of the Civil War and end up as a model for the corruption of twentieth-century idealism. The result is an almost surreal saga of American life, with allegorical meditations on the contradictions and interconnectedness of all things and the chaotic nature of the universe.

About this title

About the Author

John Guare is the author of numerous plays, including: Six Degrees of Separation (New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play), and The House of Blue Leaves (New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play). His film work includes the Oscar-nominated Atlantic City, (New York, Los Angeles, and National Film Critics Circle Awards for best screenplay.)

From Booklist

Guare's plays are customarily both a pleasure to read and good theater--a trick he manages by balancing the demands of literature and of drama. In his well-structured, well-written plays, there are wonderful wordplay and characters as compelling and real as those in a good novel. Yet Guare never loses sight of the obligation of drama to be, because of the requirements of performance, more efficient than novels. In the epic, two-part Lydie Breeze, he packs 20 years into approximately five hours of stage time, and you never feel he has stinted on storytelling. His account of a likable but misguided group of Civil War veterans, who want to create a perfect society but run afoul of human nature, is spare but never anorexic. Like a Zen painter, Guare delivers just enough information to keep an audience engaged and drive the story forward. Consisting of two previously produced full-length plays, Gardenia and Lydie Breeze, welded into a seamless whole, this new Lydie Breeze is wonderful theater and satisfying, compelling reading. Jack Helbig
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About this edition

• Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0822218151
• ISBN 13: 9780822218159
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 72