Terrence McNally, Vol. 2: Collected Works (Contemporary Playwrights)

I am very grateful to Smith and Kraus for making these uncut versions of two of my earliest plays available. They are essential to the full story of who I am.

Plays, especially produced plays, have a way of getting "lost." So much happens to a text in the stress and strain and trial and error of production that the final "published" version often differs significantly from the play the author originally wrote.

Indeed, my first play, And Things That Go Bump In the Night, was cut and re-written so savagely and so frantically during rehersals and previews -- with my full acquiesence at the time (there is no one more terrified or malleable than a first-time playwright) and to my subsequent regret (there is no one wiser than a seasoned playwright) -- that what opened at the Royale Theatre and was published was not the play I had set out to write.

The early works found in these two volumes are "anti-establishment" in form, content, or both. This is true of all the plays written by Guare and McNally in the 1960s, when they began their careers. Today they are among the most important living American playwrights. Included in the Guare collection are five early works from what has been called his neoabsurdist phase. As the subtitle indicates, Guare, best known for The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, believes that the playwright must eschew "kitchen-sink naturalism" and take the audience into a dangerous terrain, namely, the tension between surface and inner realities. The volume has an important seven-page preface by the playwright, which alone makes it a meaningful purchase for comprehensive modern drama collections. McNally, whose recent award-winning works include Love! Valor! Compassion! and Master Class, generally sticks to a more naturalistic, presentational style and a deeper probing of internal and interpersonal emotions, often among gay men. And Things That Go Bump in the Night (1964) and Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone (1971) are zany and seem a bit dated, but they still probe more deeply than much of that period's dramatic output. They likewise should be available in comprehensive drama and gay studies collections, but libraries that own The Ritz and Other Plays (1976), which contain both, can pass on this edition.?Howard E. Miller, M.L.S., St. Louis
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