Some Americans Abroad
Description
A group of American college professors and their students is making an annual summer pilgrimage to London and indulging in an orgy of theater-going (28 plays in 28 days!) The group’s itinerary has been programmed for the Complete British Experience. With dazed and eventually flagging enthusiasm, the group goes from seeing a farce at the National Theatre to “Les Miz” in the West End, from Shakespeare in Stratford to “something very Royal Court-ish” at the Royal Court. When the group is not at the theater, this band of wandering academics is playing out a few dramas of their own. For example, no one can find the courage to tell an untenured associate — who paid his own way to come on the trip — that he isn’t being asked back next year. And there is a panicky attempt to hush up a few sexual indiscretions. SOME AMERICANS ABROAD appeals to both the mind and the funny bone. The result is a sometimes harsh, sometimes hilarious view of America’s love affair with everything English, the politics of academia, morality in art and life, intellectual pomposity, and penny-pinching tourists.
Production Info
Full Length Comedy (about 130 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
Press Quotes
“… fond memories of being a culturally high-minded American abroad are Inevitably revived by SOME AMERICANS ABROAD, Richard Nelson’s very funny comedy about Yankee tourists on an obsessive-compulsive playgoing tour of England … It’s Mr. Nelson’s despairing point that these tourists, college professors and students on a tight budget, don’t remember the content of the plays either. They are culture vultures who devour everything and digest nothing … Mr Nelson’s play is a sequel to The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain’s caustic view of pretentious Americans abroad in the last century: both works indict the well-educated American middle class for its supine and superficial relationship to Old World culture in general. Mr Nelson’s characters are particularly marked by a late-20th-century affliction, the ‘Masterpiece Theater’ syndrome: they find it easier to worship all things British than to investigate the intellectual life of their own immediate surroundings …” —Frank Rich, The New York Times
“Richard Nelson’s SOME AMERICANS ABROAD remains a felicitous comedy about the American penchant for all things English. Mr Nelson is scathing in his satire, mocking arrogant intellectuals as well as pence-pinching tourists (same people) … the wit and mordancy of Mr Nelson’s observations …” —Mel Gussow, The New York Times
“… a witty and erudite play that emphasizes the ironic contrast between cultural snobbishness and amoral behavior …” —Humm., Variety
“… scabrous comedy …” —Jan Stuart, 7 Days
Author
Richard NelsonRichard Nelson's plays include the four-play series, THE APPLE FAMILY (THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING, SWEET AND SAD, SORRY, REGULAR SINGING (Nominated for Outstanding Play in Drama Desk Awards 2014; Public Theater, 2010 – 2013), NIKOLAI AND THE OTHERS (Lincoln Center Theater, 2013), FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE (Hampstead Theatre, 2012), HOW SHAKESPEARE WON THE WEST, (Huntington Theater, 2008), CONVERSATIONS AT TUSCULUM (Public Theater, 2008), FRANK'S HOME (Goodman Chicago, Playwrights Horizons, 2007), RODNEY'S WIFE (Playwrights Horizons, 2004), WHERE I COME FROM (National Theatre Connections), MADAME MELVILLE (which ran in the West End starring Macaulay Culkin and Irene Jacob and opened in May 2001 Off-Broadway); GOODNIGHT CHILDREN EVERYWHERE (winner of Olivier Award for Best New Play, 2000), KENNETH'S FIRST PLAY (with Colin Chambers, RSC), THE GENERAL FROM AMERICA (at the RSC and the Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York), NEW ENGLAND (RSC and Manhattan Theater Club), MISHA'S PARTY (with Alexander Gelman, RSC and Williamstown Theater Festival), TWO SHAKESPEAREAN ACTORS (Tony nomination for Best Play, RSC and Broadway), COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY OF JAPAN (RSC Barbican), SOME AMERICANS ABROAD (Olivier nomination, Best Comedy; RSC, Lincoln Center and Broadway), LEFT, BETWEEN EAST AND WEST (Hampstead), PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORAE (winner of Time Out Award, RSC and Manhattan Theater Club), THE RETURN OF PINOCCHIO, AN AMERICAN COMEDY, BAL, CONJURING AN EVENT, RIP VAN WINKLE, JUNGLE COUP, THE KILLING OF YABLONSKI, THE VIENNA NOTES (Obie Award). His musicals include JAMES JOYCE'S THE DEAD (starring Christopher Walken and Blair Brown; Playwrights Horizons, Belasco Theatre, Broadway, Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, Kennedy Center, Washington; for which he received a Tony Award in 2000 for Best Musical Book), CHESS (the book for the Broadway musical), PARADISE FOUND (dir: Harold Prince and Susan Strohman), MY LIFE WITH ALBERTINE (with Ricky Ian Gordon; Playwrights Horizons), UNFINISHED PIECE FOR A PLAYER PIANO (with Peter Golub). His translations and adaptations include TYNAN starring Corin Redgrave (with Colin Chambers, RSC and West End), LOLITA with Brian Cox (National), Molnar's THE GUARDSMAN (Kennedy Center), Carriere's THE CONTROVERSY (Public Theater), Fo's ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST (Broadway), Strindberg's THE FATHER with Frank Langella (Broadway) and MISS JULIE (Yale Rep), Beaumarchais' THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (the Guthrie and Broadway); Molière's DON JUAN, Ibsen's WILD DUCK and ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, Pirandello's ENRICO IV, Goldoni's IL CAMPIELLO, Erdmann's THE SUICIDE. With the esteemed translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, he was co-translated Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD, Gogol's THE INSPECTOR, Turgenev's A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY and Bulgakov's DON QUIXOTE. Films: Hyde Park on Hudson, staring Bill Murray and Laura Linney (Dir: Roger Michell), Ethan Frome, starring Liam Neeson (Dir: John Madden); Sensibility and Sense, staring Elaine Stritch and Jean Simmons (Dir: David Jones). Television: The End of a Sentence with Edward Herrmann (Dir: David Jones). Radio Plays include: HYDE PARK ON HUDSON, LANGUAGES SPOKEN HERE (Giles Cooper Award), EATING WORDS (Giles Cooper Award), ADVICE TO EASTERN EUROPE, AN AMERICAN WIFE (all BBC).
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 7/23/2019 |
| Pages | 98 |
| ISBN | 9780881458497 |
Special Notes
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypublishing.com