Theresa Rebeck: Complete Plays, Vol. 1: 1989-1998
"The only people who write for the theatre these days," quips a character in Rebeck's The Family of Mann, "are people who can't get work in television." Whatever sardonic truth that observation may hold, it certainly does not apply to award-winning playwright and screenwriter Rebeck, whose collected plays are now the latest entry in the publisher's wonderful "Contemporary Playwrights" series. This anthology includes five full-length plays and seven previously unpublished one-acts. Referring to herself as a "comic realist," Rebeck explores contemporary American culture, often using relationships, television, and politics as landscapes against which volatile combinations of sex and power (as in the prophetic pre-Bill and Monica piece View of the Dome) are played out. That Rebeck should now find herself in the company of playwrights like Horton Foote, Romulus Linney, Christopher Durang, Eric Overmeyer, and Lanford Wilson, all of whom have been included in the "Contemporary Playwrights" series, is proof that her theatrical star is in the ascendant. For all contemporary theater collections.ABarry X. Miller, Austin P.L., TXCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.