Book description
Three Plays of Adolescence: Goodnight Children Everywhere; Franny's
Way; Madame Melville Goodnight Children Everywhere Olivier Award for
Best Play, 2000 'Exile - both literal and emotional - has been a
haunting preoccupation for this dramatist. And with all themes of
displacement and loss comes the yearning for a sense of place, for
those attachments we cannot always rationalize but know as home. In
Goodnight Children Everywhere, the safe harbor of home has been
dynamited by war... A disturbing and lovely domestic drama about the
loss of childhood.' New York Observer Franny's Way 'Boundaries warp
and melt in the dense urban heat that pervades Franny's Way, Nelson's
sensitively drawn portrait of love in the age of J. D.Salinger. The
lines between childhood and adulthood blur disorientatingly for the
three generations of characters gathered in a cramped apartment in
Greenwich Village at the height of the summer in the 1950's... Nelson
continues to give compassionate and insightful life to such erotic
waywardness.' New York Times 'It moves with the breathless haste of a
horny teen on prom night.' Time Out New York Madame Melville 'A memory
play of wonderful delicacy, tenderness and humour... I left the
theatre elated at having discovered such a terrific new play. An
exquisite reminder of lost love, innocence and youth.' Daily Telegraph
'An elegant, tender, beguiling play.' Guardian 'It moves with the
breathless haste of a horny teen on prom night.' Time Out New York
Madame Melville 'A memory play of wonderful delicacy, tenderness and
humour... I left the theatre elated at having discovered such a
terrific new play. An exquisite reminder of lost love, innocence and
youth.' Daily Telegraph 'An elegant, tender, beguiling play.' Guardian
Richard Nelson's plays include Farewell to the Theatre, Nikolai and
the Others, Sweet and Sad, That Hopey Changey Thing, Conversations in
Tusculum, How Shakespeare Won the West, Frank's Home, Rodney's wife,
Franny's Way, Madame Melville, Goodnight Children Everywhere, The
General From America, New England, Misha's Party (with Alexander
Gelman), Columbus or the Discovery of Japan, Two Shakespearean Actors,
Some Americans Abroad, Left, Life Sentences, Principia Scriptoriae. He
was written the musicals Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano (with Peter
Golub), James Joyce's The Dead (with Shaun Davey), My Life With
Albertine (with Ricky Ian Gordon), the screenplays for the films Hyde
Park-on-Hudson (Roger Michell director) and Ethan Frome (John Madden
director). He has received numerous awards both in America and abroad,
including a Tony Award (Best Book of a Musical for James Joyce's The
Dead), and Oliver Award (Best Play for Goodnight Children Everywhere),
Tony nominations (Best Play for Two Shakespearean Actors; Best Score as
co-lyricist for James Joyce's The Dead), an Olivier nomination (Best
Comedy for Some Americans Abroad), two Obies, a Lortel Award, a New York
Drama Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lila
Wallace-Readers' Digest Writers Award. He is the recipient of the
PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, an Academy Award from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he is an Honorary Associate
Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He lives in upstate New York.
