Synopsis
Irresistibly attracted to the theater from an early age, Theodore Ryan, a brilliant yet unknown playwright, concocts a daring scheme that will propel him into the world's spotlight and satisfy his need for recognition
Reviews
YA-- Embarrassed by his past, Theo Ryan, professor of Renaissance drama, tries to hide the fact that he is the child of ``show-biz'' parents. He literally and figuratively pursues his own play, Foolscap , when the only copy of his script is stolen by Ford Rexford, American playwright and international scoundrel. As Theo tries to retrieve his masterpiece, he travels to England where he meets the famous and eccentric scholar, Dame Winifred Throckmorton, as well as the equally bizarre Jones Marsh. The novel satirizes the worlds of academe, the theater, and the English privileged class. It is an inviting blend of character study, intrigue, and theater lore. It's a book for those interested in writing, theater, or having a good laugh.
- Patricia Bowers, W.T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A high-spirited romp through the lower depths of academe, as repressed theatrical scion/drama prof Theodore Ryan-- taking inspiration from his sozzled friend Joshua ``Ford'' Rexford, the distinguished playwright whose biography Theo is writing--seizes the day and finds a daring, joyous, illegal way to get his own play on the boards. Theo's play, Foolscap, a historical fantasy about Sir Walter Raleigh's attempt to write a play about himself just before his execution, has been ignored by the few people who've seen it as dated and unplayable, leaving Theo becalmed at North Carolina's Cavendish University, home to senile President General Irwin Kaney, football- coach-turned-Provost Buddy Tupper, Jr., and so on down the line (a long, manic line, in a procession worthy of David Lodge) to the latest high-profile hires, conference perennial Jane Nash-Gantz and fat-cat Marxist Herbert Crawford. Theo's scheme to keep his old nemesis Scottie Smith from taking over as artistic director of Cavendish's theater emboldens him first to audition for the spring production of Guys and Dolls and then to show Ford his dusty manuscript--but Ford, hours after pronouncing the play great, elopes to England with a graduate student, and Theo hatches a plan to pass Foolscap off as Raleigh's work by arranging to have a forged manuscript ``discovered'' with the unwitting help of retired Renaissance scholar Dame Winifred Throckmorton. At story's end, Theo will have completed two wildly successful plays, neither of which he can claim as his own--but he'll also have found (finally) not only true love but a sense of reconciliation with Ford's ghost (which puts in some comically literal appearances), his own trouper parents, and his vocation. Even looser-limbed than Handling Sin (1986)--the logic of Theo's mad dash to freedom won't always stand scrutiny--but thickly planted with hilarious grotesques and gorgeous comic episodes that make scrutiny your least likely reaction. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
A play about Sir Walter Raleigh written by Theo Ryan, literature professor at a small North Carolina college, seems an unlikely vehicle to be at the heart of this very entertaining novel about campus politics, forgery, the American theater, and British aristocracy. In his meandering but pleasant style ( Time's Witness , Little, Brown, 1989; Handling Sin , LJ 4/15/86), Malone weaves a plot filled with wonderful characters, from garrulous playwright Ford Rexford, who has come to the North Carolina hills to dry out; to Ryan's parents, theater troopers to the end; to Dame Winifred Throckmorton, an eccentric Elizabethan scholar whose driving and teaching skills are legendary. The play does eventually go on, as it must, and the trip to the first curtain makes for enjoyable reading. Highly recommended for all general fiction collections.
- C. Christopher Pavek, National Economic Research Assocs. Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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