Ruby Cohn

Ruby Cohn assumes realism to be the dominant mode in English theatre since 1956, the year of John Osbourne's Look Back in Anger. She argues, however, that the most provocative plays of the last few decades have departed from realism and she traces certain patterns of departure which are familiar in the long tradition of English drama. The patterns, which form the chapters of the book, include the theme of England as dramatic metaphor, modernisations or adaptations of Shakespeare, stage verse, theatre within theatre, explorations of madness, dreams, ghosts and the reviewing of history through a contemporary lens. Among the playwrights who avail themselves of these devices are John Arden, Edward Bond, Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill, David Edgar, Pam Gems, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Peter Nichols, Tom Stoppard, David Storey, Heathcote Williams and Charles Wood.

The provocative notion of a contemporary cross-cultural exchange within the medium of theatre is here imposed upon a dozen contemporary Anglo-American dramatists: Alan Ayckbourn and Neil Simon, Edward Bond and Sam Shepard, David Mamet and Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill and Maria Irene Fornès, David Hare and David Rabe, Christopher Hampton and Richard Nelson. In each pairing, Ruby Cohn unites a British with an American playwright, exploring similarities both apparent and embedded - similarities which serve as a springboard for the exposure of a more profound, culturally based difference. A certain transatlantic double focus thus illuminates both the composition and the interpretation of dramatic works in an increasingly globally minded age.

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