ISBN: 9780375412035

Through the flashpoints of its glorious history, Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright chart the evolution of modern theatre in English over the course of the century. From Pygmalion's first E… Plus…

Through the flashpoints of its glorious history, Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright chart the evolution of modern theatre in English over the course of the century. From Pygmalion's first Eliza Doolittle (Mrs. Pat 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 Noel Coward in his Private Lives (their performance as dazzling as the play itself), to Michael Frayn's Copenhagen -- this stylish, astute, richly pictorial volume (with more than 150 photographs) brings us the actors, directors, and playwrights that have shaped a century of the theatre and the productions that stand as milestones in our minds.Lotte Lenya in The Threepenny Opera, Laurence Olivier in the British production of O'Neill's viscerally American Long Day's Journey into Night, Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun, Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth, Miller's Salesman, Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern . . . Here is the essential mixture of Irish magic, American vitality, and Russian pathos, not to mention the "miraculous accident" of Shakespeare, that converges on the British stage -- the locus of theatre in English -- 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 their deep love and understanding of the theatre. Media > Book, [PU: Random House]<