Albert Ramsdell Gurney's Books

THE STORY: Cooper Jones is a middle-aged realtor whose failing marriage and uninspiring job have left him prey to feelings of nostalgia. Over the objections of his wife, Liz, a pragmatic, no-nonsense advocate for the homeless, he is persuaded by hi

THE STORY: The play is set in the dining room of a typical well-to-do household, the place where the family assembled daily for breakfast and dinner and for any and all special occasions. The action is comprised of a mosaic of interrelated scenes--s

Determined to donate almost everything she owns before her life of grace and privilege ends, wealthy widow Cornelia Cunningham’s plan hits a snag when an ambitious and ingratiating young man arrives to claim his alleged inheritance. Renowned playwright A.R. Gurney paints an incisive and hysterical portrait of the trials of class, family, legacy, race, and the power of a good story.

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA In such critically acclaimed plays as The Dining Room and The Cocktail Hour, A. R. Gurney has wittily captured the manners of upper-middle-class WASP America, but never as gracefully or with such dazzling economy as in Love Letters. Tracing the lifelong correspondence of the staid, dutiful lawyer Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and the lively, unstable artist Melissa Gardner, the story of their bittersweet relationship gradually unfolds from what is written—and what is left unsaid—in their letters. A smash hit both off and on Broadway, Love Letters captures Andy and Melissa with a precision of detail and depth of feeling that only Gurney can command. Two other, thematically related plays by Gurney, The Golden Age and What I Did Last Summer, are included, providing a trio of wry and affectionate paeans to love lost, found, and fleetingly glimpsed.

THE STORY: Out with the old and in with the new. Across college campuses in the '70s, teachers and students engaged in a battle of their own--making education relevant. OFFICE HOURS tackles the Great Books curriculum and puts dead white men to the t

Amid the gin and tonics, vichyssoise, and tennis doubles of Buffalo's summer scene, siblings Nick and Peggy must confront their mother's possible infidelity, their father's apparent indifference, and their own increasingly complicated love lives. Family Furniture is a coming-of-age-tale of one certain summer when everything shifts.

THE STORY: John is an established older playwright recovering from a bout with cancer. His latest work, which he views as his best, if possibly his last, has gained the interest of a major regional theatre, the Shubert Organization, and a possible

A romantic comedy on midlife relationships and a pet dog.

THE STORY: The setting is a well-to-do vacation colony on the shores of Lake Erie, the time 1945, during the final stages of World War II. Charlie, an incipiently rebellious fourteen-year-old, is summering with his mother and sister (his father is

SQUASH. A professor of classic literature finds himself questioning his identity when a student presents an intriguing take on Plato’s Symposium. Boundaries are tested and personal lives are upended as teacher and student grapple with sexuality, love, and sport. (2 men, 1 woman.) AJAX. An intrepid student adapts Sophocles’ defining war epic to the amusement of his English professor, a passionate ex-actress, who finds herself entangled with every aspect of the play—including the playwright. (1 man, 1 woman.)

THE STORY: The action takes place in the trophy room of a rather stuffy men's club in a midwestern city. As the play begins we meet Barney, the son of the club president, as a teenager--and already a rebel against the WASP-ish virtues so dear to his

THE STORY: Sam, a successful politician and diplomat, is invited to speak at the dedication of a new building named for his old school friend, Perry, and paid for by Perry's wealthy mother. The knowledge that Perry died of AIDS galvanizes Sam as me

THE STORY: 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

A female professor has been teaching a course on the literature of love with a younger male colleague.

Drama. A politician's return to his prep-school to dedicate a building to a friend dead of AIDS forces a crisis of conscience. 2 acts, 3 men, 3 women, 1 setting.

THE STORY: Austin has spent his entire life convinced that something terrible is bound to happen to him. One night, at a party, overlooking Boston harbor, he has the pleasure of rekindling a romance begun almost thirty years ago with Ruth. Now a mu

With a mixture of gentle comic poignancy and dramatic tension, one of America's leading contemporary playwrights here examines the problems which arise when John, a leading playwright, returns home to ask his parent's permission to produce his latest work, a play about his family. The Cocktail Hour had a long and successful run in New York and successful tours in both the UK and Australia.

Traces epistolary romance from grade school through middle age.

THE STORY: In a parade of government imprisonment, immaculate conception, religion, politics, cocktails and one articulate working girl, HERESY views the not-so-distant-future through the satiric and hilarious lens of A.R. Gurney.

THE STORY: The action of the play is set in Susan's home in a New York suburb--Susan being a romantically-minded, divorced mother of three, and a very successful artist and designer of greeting cards. It is summer and Jake, the Dartmouth roommate of

THE STORY: Father of the groom, Curtis, simply wants to make a memorable toast. But before he is able to raise his glass, he must defend the time-honored ways of his past, including his attire. Cultures clash when a surprise guest is announced, thr

O JERUSALEM centers around an American State Department official who becomes entangled in Middle Eastern politics before and after September 11, 2001. Along the way, the protagonist encounters a Palestinian woman from his past. "It's true that O JERUSALEM, an exhilarating new play by A R Gurney ... seems especially timely because of its subject matter. After all, it touches on many of the issues now preoccupying people around the world: the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East, American foreign policy, terrorism ... Gurney's play manages to reach beyond its topical premise to pack a big, heartbreaking wallop. This is not a story about anything so cold as politics. Above all, it's about a man struggling to balance his ideals and personal relationships against a high-pressure career ... Gurney works with a wider geographic and cultural lens than usual. His previous plays have dealt mostly with domestic turmoil among white, upper-class Protestants; here, although the conflicts are still personal, they have global repercussions. And one of the main characters is decidedly nonwhite: Amira, a Palestinian activist ... Gurney's crackling dialogue. Each scene pulses with ... it has a scattershot energy and an ear for emotionally charged situations that make it totally engrossing. When a play has those assets, it doesn't need current events to be relevant." -Justin Glanville, The Associated Press "Even when he's angry and exasperated, A R Gurney holds on to a respectful air of apology. This most courteous of contemporary playwrights, known for his wry chronicles of upper-crust Protestant mores, has now focused on a fiery subject far from the country clubs of New England. The author of THE COCKTAIL HOUR and THE DINING ROOM has set up camp in Israel and Palestine. And he is the first to admit that, like many a Western diplomat before him, he finds himself lost and bewildered there ... there is something deeply touching in the urgency behind it ... Like the main figures in Mr Gurney's FAR EAST and MIDDLE AGES, Hartwell is haunted by a youthful affair with a woman of another culture. She is in this instance a Christian Palestinian named Amira ... One of the characters from the future in O JERUSALEM wonders if the title is 'a prayer or a sigh.' This exquisite, wistful observation reflects the troubled gaze through which Mr Gurney, like so many Americans, sees a distant land that seems to keep moving closer to home." -Ben Brantley, The New York Times

THE STORY: John Cheever, master chronicler of America's post-war angst and alienation, and how it affected a burgeoning suburban class, left a storehouse of dramatic possibilities in his fiction, largely unexplored purely by dint of his chosen arti

THE STORY: After many years of teaching the classics at a New England university, Henry Harper is not surprised by much--and particularly not by precocious students who want to rewrite his beloved Greek masterpieces to reflect current sociopolitical

A.R. Gurney Bio: Scenes From American Life, Children, The Dining Room, The Middle Ages, Richard Cory, The Golden Age, What I did Last Summer, The Wayside Motor Inn, Sweet Sue, The Perfect Party, Another Antigone, The Cocktail Hour, Love Letter, The Snow Ball (adapted from his novel), The Old Boy, The Fourth Wall, Later Life, A Cheever Evening, Sylvia, Overtime, Let's Do It (a Cole Porter musical), Labor Day, Far East, Darlene and The Guest Lecturer, Ancestral Voices. Opera: Wrote libretto for Strawberry Fields with music by Michael Torke, part of the Central Park Opera trilogy presented by the New York City Opera in the Fall of 1999. Novels: The Gospel According to Joe, Entertaining Strangers and The Snow Ball. Awards: Drama Desk, N.E.A., Rockefeller Foundation, New England Theatre Conference, Lucille Lortel, American Association of Community theatres, American Academy and Institute of arts and Letters. Honorary degrees: Williams College and Buffalo State University, Gurney was on the faculty of M.I.T. until 1996. He is the husband of one, father of four, and grandfather of six.

In this youthful look at the hypocrisy of adult life, an Irish nurse is not permitted to have male visitors: but her mistress is entitled to her own sexual sidelines. The preacher interprets the Bible in a way that the rich are not scandalized or demoralized but actually pacified. A club member blackballs his best friend, a Jew, because he wants to save him from being hurt. Mature people are winos, ticket fixers with the police, order troops to fire into crowds, and are two faced: one mother calls her son at college to find out where he keeps his marijuana, and another asks her daughter at her coming out party if she has her diaphragm. Not all of youth is so innocent. There are the school chums who pray to God with thoughts of malice and concupiscence. Scenes, then, from American life. Produced to critical acclaim at the Forum Theater in Lincoln Center. --

A romantic comedy on midlife relationships and a pet dog.

THE STORY: Tony, a professor of American literature (and a quintessential WASP), has given up his teaching post to stage a party to end all parties. He has invited people from all walks of American life to attend, as if to demonstrate that even if

THE STORY: The scene is a motel outside of Boston: a depersonalized, antiseptic environment into which, one after the other, come five sets of travelers. There is a well-to-do couple on a visit to their married daughter; a lonely salesman looking f

THE STORY: Comprised of a series of vignettes and interrelated scenes, presented with a minimum of props and scenery and flowing together with resourceful theatricality, the story of Richard Cory is that of a wellborn young man who seems to have ev

Book's by Albert Ramsdell Gurney

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email