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Collected Drama

Wilson Plays: 2 (Vampire; The Gland Hand; The Grass Widow; Sabina)

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TITLE
Wilson Plays: 2 (Vampire; The Gland Hand; The Grass Widow; Sabina)
AUTHORS

Snoo Wilson

SYNOPSIS

This volume gathers six of the author’s plays: “Vampire”, “The Glad Hand”, “The Grass Widow”, and “Sabina”.

 

“Vampire”: On a strict laugh-count the play is funnier than “Bedroom Farce”; it pursues across three generations a conceit – dead ideas sucking the blood of the living – to which it gives wit. (Observer)

 

“The Glad Hand”: Not only one of the best pieces of playwriting yet achieved by Wilson but also one of the funniest first acts I’ve seen in a long while. You leave the theatre refreshed and uplifted, grateful for having rubbed shoulders with genuine talent.  (Financial Times)

 

“The Grass Widow”: Zanily watchable, the play wryly captures the schizophrenia of people who talk and think like Sixties outlaws yet who, when the chips are down, have the shark-like instincts of Wall Street bankers. (Guardian)

 

“Sabina”: With the fathers of modern psychology, Freud and Jung, cast as disturbed megalomaniacs, the play is often disturbing, but in a weird and wonderful way Wilson also captures the waywardness of those minds and times with an eccentric energy.  (Herald)

AVAILABILITY
Available
YEAR
2000
ISBN
978-0-4137-4400-5
TYPOLOGY
Collected Drama
PUBLISHER
Bloomsbury Methuen Drama
biography

 

Snoo Wilson

Snoo Wilson (1948-2013) was born in Reading, studied at the University of East Anglia and was a founding director of the Portable Theatre, Brighton, and London. Wilson was script editor for the “Play for Today” series, BBC TV, dramaturg for the RSC, director of the Scarab Theatre and taught film script writing at the National Film School.

 

In 1980 he was awarded an US/UK Bicentennial Fellowship and worked at Santa Cruz University and with the New York Theatre Studio in New York. In 1989 Wilson was Associate Professor, lecturing in play writing, at University College San Diego.

 

Working as a writer since the 1960’s, Wilson’s place as an important and distinguished playwright was confirmed in his many award-winning plays both in Britain and across America. He received the John Whiting Award in 1978 for “The Glad Hand”, the San Diego Theater Circle award in 1988 for “80 Days” and most recently the Eileen Anderson/Central Broadcasting Premiere Award for Best Night Out for “HRH”.

 

Wilson wrote films, libretti, radio plays and two novels. His libretti include an acclaimed adaptation of Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld” for the English National Opera and the book for “80 Days” at the La Jolla Playhouse in California.

 

Following his sudden death in 2013, the many obituaries honouring both the man and the playwright confirmed that, at their exuberant, inventive, and utterly original best, Snoo’s plays deserve their place in the country’s history of post-war playwriting.

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