The Apple Family
Performing rights not held by Nick Hern Books
4 Jun 2015Size: 215mm x 135mm£23.99
The Apple Family
Scenes from Life in the Country
Paperback £23.99
A critically acclaimed play cycle about loss, memory and remembrance in America's recent past.
The Apple Family is a quartet of plays following the Apple family of Rhinebeck, New York, as they grapple with events both personal and political in their immediate present: the 2010 election (That Hopey Changey Thing), the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (Sweet and Sad), Obama's reelection (Sorry), and the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination (Regular Singing).
Delicately constructed and precisely observed, the quartet of plays — each of which premiered at The Public Theater in New York on the day it was set — is a masterpiece of stage naturalism and a powerful reminder of theatre's unique capacity for civic dialogue and public communion.
'Extraordinary... What is striking is how much ground Nelson covers: hope and disillusion, individual and collective memory, and the need to acknowledge the past without being possessed by it... each work precisely charts the shifting moods within the family and the national psyche'
Guardian'No previous works of theater have been topical in the resonant and specific ways of the Apple Family plays... They are a rare and radiant mirror of the way we live... In another fifty years audiences will be watching these plays to remember how we remembered.'
Ben Brantley - New York Times'The writing is so minutely observed, the portrayal of American life and its politics so current and acute that these plays speak what all of us are thinking (politically, socially, morally), but few are saying.'
Village Voice'Positively shattering... the Apple Family plays cement Nelson's place in American theatrical history.'
Entertainment WeeklyPerforming rights not held by Nick Hern Books
4 Jun 2015Size: 215mm x 135mm£23.99
