LITMIR.BIZ

Includes the plays They Came to a City, Summer Day's Dream and The Glass CageWith an introduction by Tom Priestley.All three dramas in this second volume of J B Priestley's plays investigate the question of an individual's responsibility towards his or her family and community. In They Came to a City, written at the height of the Second World War, a mixed bag of Britons mysteriously find themselves outside a strange city. What kind of 'New Jerusalem' is this, and will it suit everybody?Summer Day's Dream, first performed in 1949, is set in the future – 1975. In a Britain bombed back into pre-industrial past, three representatives of the new world order disturb the tranquil lives of three generations of an English family. The themes of hypocrisy and redemption are brought to the fore in The Glass Cage, when three black sheep of a respectable Toronto clan are grudgingly welcomed back into the family home.

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Includes the plays Laburnum Grove, When We Are Married and Mr Kettle and Mrs MoonWith an introduction by Tom Priestley and a foreword by Roy Hattersley.These three domestic comedies display J B Priestley's talent for the ordinary situation turned sharply on its head. In Laburnum Grove George Radfern's friends and relations want a share of his wealth – until they find out where it's come from. When We Are Married features three high-minded couples who gather to celebrate their silver wedding anniversaries, only to discover they were never properly married at all.And in Mr Kettle and Mrs Moon an unassuming bank manager turns rebel when a voice tells him to pack in his position and stay at home.In these mischievous depictions of respectability gone awry, the proud and the prejudiced battle against emerging truths and potential scandal. J B Priestley proves himself a skilled craftsman and presents his characters with rich humour, warmth and humanity.

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Stella Kirby spent nine years running away; leaving home to find her freedom as an actress. Now she has decided that the only role left to play is the prodigal daughter returned, hoping to rediscover herself amongst the familiar surroundings of her childhood home, Eden End.Priestley has a special tenderness for Eden End and for it he created some of his most fragile, gentle characters. The stoical Dr Kirby, his younger son Wilfred, desperate to prove himself a man of the world, and Lilian, the daughter who stayed at home, are a sharply observed and instantly recognisable family, with all its dreams and disappointments.

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Nice little houses. Nice people. Quiet, respectable. No brokers' men. No scandals. No screams in the night. Morris Oxfords, little greenhouses, wireless sets.' Ferndale, Laburnum Grove. A quiet, residential address in one of the newer north London suburbs. George Radfern, decent, respectable citizen and householder spends his Sunday evenings in his greenhouse, listening to Handel on the wireless. But when his grasping in-laws and daughter's obnoxious beau try to coax more money from him, George makes an unlikely confession. An exploration of greed and dishonesty in suburban England, Priestley observes the facade of middle class respectability, and its crooked undercurrent with verve and humanity in this immorally comic story of money, family, and criminality.

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JB Priestley described Johnson Over Jordan as an adventure in theatre. Robert Johnson, a timid, meek man lived the most ordinary of lives – until he dies.Suddenly he is capitulated into the strangeness of his afterlife and begins a frightening, lurid and emotional journey. Past memories, secret desires and present regrets and longings mingle with the real, surreal and sublime, threatening to overwhelm him. Johnson Over Jordan is an ambitious, dreamlike piece of theatre and ultimately, a deeply moving account of a very ordinary man's life.

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Two little known Priestley plays, which, while they are quite different, have important features in common. The 31st of June is a comedy set partly in an advertising agency and partly in a medieval castle; Jenny Villiers is a serious play set backstage in an old provincial theatre. But both exploit elements of Time. In the 31st of June scenes switch between modern times and the middle ages, while characters move between both. There are kings, company bosses, princesses, fashion models, dwarves and two rival magicians. causing confusion and romance. Jenny Villiers examines life in the Theatre. The doubts of the present are confronted by players from the past, and a jaded playwright recovers his faith in the Theatre. Both plays were performed on the stage, but later rewritten and published as novels.

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Three plays by J.B. Priestley which illustrate well his desire toexperiment. All three were written between 1938 and 1940, thoughEver Since Paradise[/i] was not produced till 1946. It was a very creativetime for him, but interrupted by the war. There are elements of hiscontinuing interest in Time in each of them. Music at Night centres on a group of people attending a musicalevening to hear a new work. Each act follows a movement in the music,which inspires the listeners to react each in their own way, lookinginside themselves for their true feelings and sometimes rememberingsignificant moments from their past. As often in Priestley’s work, therelations between the sexes play an important part, a theme whichrecurs in the other two plays. The Long Mirror recounts the meetingbetween a composer and a young woman who seems to have beentelepathically connected to him for some time, and has experiencedmuch of his life before actually meeting him. Her knowledge of hispast can help his future as an artist and a husband. It was based on atrue incident. Ever Since Paradise Priestley described as ‘A DiscursiveEntertainment, chiefly referring to Love and Marriage, in Three Acts’.Three couples are made up of The Musicians, the Commentators and TheExample, and together they illustrate various aspects of relationships,accompanied by appropriate music on two pianos. None of the playsare truly conventional but are disguised as such. A fascinating trio.

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"So all the time, while you were pretending to work, you've been having the most astonishing adventures in that corner?"As bankruptcy looms, the ever-optimistic Jim Cornelius, partner at import firm Briggs and Murrison, is fighting to keep his creditors happy and his spirits up. Tensions rise with the arrival of Judy, the beautiful, young typist who shows Cornelius the life he could have led… Written for Ralph Richardson in 1935, Priestley observes the politics and tensions of daily office life with searing wit and humanity in this hilarious and heart-breaking story of friendship, unrequited love and business.

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‘Communism’s all right for a gentleman like yourself, but you’ll get over it.’ The Kettlewells are a dysfunctional family. Richard is an old Etonian whose business ventures are failing. Over one crowded weekend, his daughter Pamela, whom he hardly knows, returns from Russia, a passionate communist; his ex-wife and mistress both turn up; and his butler has a big win at the races. The Roundabout is a funny, touching, highly perceptive look at England in the 1930s, when it looked, just possibly, as if the social order might be changing.

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In these passionate and witty essays on the theatre, J B Priestley distills his experience as a playwright, producer, director and – just once – actor. Relishing the past, analysing the present, and predicting the future, he tells his own 'story of the theatre'. Published as a companion to Oberon's two volumes of Priestley's best plays, this new collection is part defence of theatre, part incisive criticism, and, in the renowned Old Vic lecture The Art of the Dramatist , part instructive guide for would-be playwrights.

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