This text argues that, haunted by the ghost of Oscar Wilde as gay man, writer and self-invented artist, subsequent gay playwrights, working between Wilde and the dawn of gay liberationist theatre, were unable to rival his celebrated status as "gay playwright". It focuses on the work of Noel Coward, Terrence Rattigan and Somerset Maugham and considers how their repressed and marginalized situation as closeted homosexual writers affected their life and work. Bitter, cynical parodies of heterosexual marriage in crisis, farcical portrayals of the impossibility of monogamous attachment, and slapstick promotion of sexual experimentation feature prominently in the popular social comedies of these writers. This text assesses the role of "sublimation" and looks at how contemporary heterosexual audiences responded to them.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Histories of British gay male playwrights have tended to begin with a nod to Oscar Wilde and then skip right to the transgressive and overtly sexual antics of Joe Orton, Christopher Hampton, and Neil Bartlett. In Straight Acting, Sean O'Connor begins his study with Wilde, but rather than simply use him as a bellwether of witticisms, he boldly charts how Wilde's politics of individualism and sexual disruption influenced gay writers over the next half century. He examines in detail the lives, times, and works of three extraordinarily successful gay playwrights who wrote from the 1920s to the 1950s: Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, and Terence Rattigan. While he is always sensitive to individual lives and careers, O'Connor explores and explicates a gay male tradition in popular theater that--under the nonthreatening rubrics of gentle humor and sentimentality--manages to subvert, challenge, and sometimes even shock. Beautifully written and filled with constantly surprising insights, Straight Acting almost single-handedly reinvents what we think of as the history of modern gay theater. --Michael Bronski
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
