Changing Stages (First American Edition)

Through the flash points of its glorious history, Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright, two of today's most distinguished men of the theatre, celebrate the British and American stage as it has evolved over the course of the twentieth century. From Pygmalion's first Eliza Doolittle (Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who enchanted playwright George Bernard Shaw in 1914) and her equally piquant successors, to Uta Hagen in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; from Gertrude Lawrence and Noël Coward in his Private Lives (their performance as dazzling as the play itself), to Michael Frayn's Copenhagen—this stylish, astute, richly pictorial volume brings us the actors, directors, and playwrights who have shaped one hundred years of the theatre and the performances that live on in our minds
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Lotte Lenya in The Threepenny Opera, Laurence Olivier in the British production of Eugene O'Neill's viscerally American Long Day's Journey into Night, Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun, Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead . . . Here is the essential mixture of Shakespearean heritage, Irish magic, American vitality, and Russian pathos that converged on the stage in an efflorescence of dramatic innovation. Eyre and Wright's survey of this brilliant period is allusive, intelligent, and intimate, rich in anecdote and infused with a deep love and understanding of the theatre.

Richard Eyre, the celebrated director of numerous classic and new plays, was for ten years the artistic director of the Royal National Theatre. The winner of many awards, including a Tony and a Peabody, he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in 1997 and was knighted the same year. He lives in London.

Nicholas Wright is the author of the plays Mrs. Klein and Cressida, among many others. He was the first director of the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs and an associate director of the Royal National Theatre from 1984 to 1998. A native of South Africa, he lives in London.