Best of
Plays

1947

No Exit


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1947
    It is the source of Sartre's especially famous and often misinterpreted quotation "L'enfer, c'est les autres" or "Hell is other people", a reference to Sartre's ideas about the Look and the perpetual ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object in the world of another consciousness.

No Exit and Three Other Plays


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1947
    NO EXIT is an unforgettable portrayal of hell. THE FLIES is a modern reworking of the Electra-Orestes story. DIRTY HANDS is about a young intellectual torn between theory and praxis. THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE is an attack on American racism.

A Moon for the Misbegotten


Eugene O'Neill - 1947
    Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, asJim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight. This paperback edition features an insightful introduction by Stephen A. Black, helpful to anyone who desires a deeper understanding of O’Neill’s work.

A Streetcar Named Desire


Tennessee Williams - 1947
    The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the ’40s and ’50s.

Joan of Lorraine


Maxwell Anderson - 1947
    The story of Joan's visions and pilgrimage to court, her restoring faith to the French and the victory she wins, are beautifully dramatized. But Anderson has woven into the Joan story a parallel action, which takes place outside the Joan play proper, in which he shows the meaning of faith today and the necessity of believing in something. The actress who plays Joan claims that the role should show her never compromising her ideals, and she is ready to leave the cast because she thinks the part and the direction of herself shows Joan doing just that. But she learns, from her director and fellow players, that life is a series of compromises, and that she herself, as an actress, like the historical Joan, can and should give in on small things in order to achieve the greatest good in a larger sense. In acting her part through to the end, she learns the lesson that Joan taught the world, of great faith and idealism, tempered by reality and the acceptance of the necessary limitations which are in all of us."