Welcome to the Middle Ages
Today I'd like to introduce you to the 2nd show in our Belwood Season, AR Gurney's The Middle Ages.
As a playwright, AR Gurney came to fame with The Dining Room, a play about the same room over several decades in the Eastern United States. Gurney's favourite target is the WASP - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and the priviledged lifestyle many of them lead (or still believe they lead). In plays like The Cocktail Hour and Love Letters he comically lampoons the elitist, narrow-minded, sometimes racist attitudes of a generation of wealthy people, made richer by war, Cold War and faith (when it was convenient), and who were oblivious to the hardships of those who made possible their good fortune (both in terms of the sacrifices of previous generations and the suffering of the poor and disenfranchised that was necessary for the maintenance of thier lifestyle).
Where Gurney differs from the masses, though, is that there isn't a tone of revolutionary fervour in his plays - they are not calls to rise up and overthrow the bourgeoisie (it's not socialist agit-prop in the slightest), rather they suggest that the time for change has come and gone - and has been successful. The world has moved on, the WASP has not, and the result is comic, not tragic.
The Middle Ages is set in the "trophy room" of a social club - that should be tip-off enough as to what's to come. The play moves seamlessly between the 1940's and the 1970's against the backdrop of a changing America, as one family's "black sheep" tries to come to terms with his past, present and future.
Rehearsals are set to start this week. Next week I'll have more to say about this great little piece of theatre.
As a playwright, AR Gurney came to fame with The Dining Room, a play about the same room over several decades in the Eastern United States. Gurney's favourite target is the WASP - White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and the priviledged lifestyle many of them lead (or still believe they lead). In plays like The Cocktail Hour and Love Letters he comically lampoons the elitist, narrow-minded, sometimes racist attitudes of a generation of wealthy people, made richer by war, Cold War and faith (when it was convenient), and who were oblivious to the hardships of those who made possible their good fortune (both in terms of the sacrifices of previous generations and the suffering of the poor and disenfranchised that was necessary for the maintenance of thier lifestyle).
Where Gurney differs from the masses, though, is that there isn't a tone of revolutionary fervour in his plays - they are not calls to rise up and overthrow the bourgeoisie (it's not socialist agit-prop in the slightest), rather they suggest that the time for change has come and gone - and has been successful. The world has moved on, the WASP has not, and the result is comic, not tragic.
The Middle Ages is set in the "trophy room" of a social club - that should be tip-off enough as to what's to come. The play moves seamlessly between the 1940's and the 1970's against the backdrop of a changing America, as one family's "black sheep" tries to come to terms with his past, present and future.
Rehearsals are set to start this week. Next week I'll have more to say about this great little piece of theatre.
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