Six Plays

“Mr. Linney continues to be one of our most perceptive chroniclers of
the folkways of rural America, finding humanity and nobility in the most
remote of places.” –Mel Gussow, New York Times

“Linney’s words do it all, summoning up vistas of scary beauty and passions of elemental force.” –David Richards,Washington Post

“His
output was dazzling in its variety and exceptional for its depth as
well as its breadth of scope. Goering at Nuremberg, Lord Byron’s
daughter, the Washington novels of Henry Adams: Life, literature, and
history were all his materials, not to be milled down into iconic
emptiness, but to be explored for the values they might carry…One of
America’s best playwrights.” –Michael Feingold, Village Voice

Romulus
Linney is one of American drama’s best-kept secrets. Uniquely adept at
capturing the idiomatic poetry of his native South, he maneuvers with
equal grace through the vernacular of New York’s contemporary
intelligentsia and the voices of a wide range of historical figures.

In Childe Byron, the dying daughter of the notorious Lord Byron conjures a confrontation with the father she never knew. In 2, Linney scrutinizes Hitler’s infamous second-in-command, Hermann Goering, behind the scenes at the Nuremberg trials. Tennessee celebrates the indomitability of early Appalachian mountain settlers, while Heathen Valley reveals the same region’s citizens’ subsequent search for faith. In FM, an authentic genius stumbles into the creative writing course of a small Alabama college. Set among SoHo literati, April Snow is a compassionate study of a world-weary screenwriter.

Endowed
with Linney’s lyric intensity, augmented by his rich sense of humor,
the six plays in this volume illuminate a major talent of the American
Theatre.