A. R. Gurney

A humanities professor hires a young professor from oxford to try to improve the intellectual tone of his university. The new man turns out to be a genteel monster who masterminds the ruin of the man who hired him.

"Sometimes, all the right elements come together to make a production that's just delightful. In Two Class Acts, those include forbidden romances, identity questions, academic debates, and an intriguing blend of classical themes in contemporary contexts." -- Review from backcover.

"In 1948, playwright A.R. Gurney, then a young boarding-school student, traveled to New York where he attended a performance of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, going backstage afterwards to meet the production's star, the great stage actress Katharine Cornell, who was dubbed "The First Lady of the American Stage" by the legendary critic Alexander Woollcott. A mix of remembrance and imagination, The grand manner is a love letter to this fabled actress and a heartfelt look back at the glorious heyday of the Broadway theatre"--Page 4 of cover.

Set on the campus of an unnamed liberal arts college in the early 1970s, "Office hours" depicts the relationships between the teachers and students of an embattled class called "The Western Tradition." The course's status as a requirement for graduation is being called into question as the radicalized culture of the time takes root in academia.

Playwright A. R. Gurney has become a national treasure with his portrayals of that quintessential American type, the New England WASP, and with his witty, unexpectedly heart-hitting dialogue. This collection of three recent plays, all produced in the 1990s, brings us incomparable Gurney - mature, masterful, and hilarious. In the hugely successful Later Life, a Boston banker and a woman he had a romantic interlude with thirty years earlier reunite at a cocktail party. In The Snow Ball, a play with music and dancing, another couple tried to recapture their youth with poignant results. And in The Old Boy, an Under Secretary of State returns to his prep school alma mater for a graduation day speech - and a stunning confession. All three works skillfully juxtapose conflicting emotions to blend wit with sadness, self-realization with self-delusion, and barren interior lives with the facade of prosperous middle-class existences. The result in each case is first-rate theater - comedic drama that works its magic on the stage and inside the audience's hearts.

Set in 1970s upstate New York. Playwright comes in conflict with elderly father when he writes play about his family. 2 acts, 2 men, 2 women, 1 interior.