Two Plays (Sun & Moon Classics). This item is unavailable.Two Plays (Sun & Moon Classics)

Book by Wellman, Mac

Wellman, author of over 30 plays, achieved some notoriety (and praise) for infuriating the censorious Senator Helms with the biting 1990 work, Sincerity Forever (available in New American Theatre, Grove, 1993). While this playwright is given to kicking up the political and anthropological dust, he transcends tedious didacticism. Wellman's vision is bleak yet pious, his dialog rich with quirky and affecting poetry. In this recent diptych, he explores America's climate (social as well as meteorological) through a family, riddled with history and the inescapable momentum of dysfunction, who live "just downwind of the big reactor." The characters have passed the point of dread and now indulge in a sort of armchair existentialism. Philosophy to them is like birdseed: It's always there if they want it, but they can't really make a meal of it. Central to the action is the journey of the daughter who, bolstered by her desperate belief that there will be some cathartic change in the weather, absconds to live among the "the crows." With these plays, Wellman has evolved into a playwright whose work functions as literature even without the obvious benefit of being staged. Recommended for all contemporary drama collections.
Douglas McClemont, New York
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