John Logan: Plays One: (Oberon Modern Playwrights)

About the Book

The first collection of plays from the multi-award-winning legendary screenwriter and playwright. Contains the plays RED, PETER AND ALICE and I’LL EAT YOU LAST.

Contents: Introduction by Michael Grandage

RED
Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant and the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting. A moving and compelling account of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century whose struggle to accept his growing riches and praise became his ultimate undoing. Nominated for 7 Olivier Awards (2009) and winner of 6 Tony Awards (2010) including Best New Play.

PETER AND ALICE
When Alice Liddell Hargreaves met Peter Llewelyn Davies at the opening of a Lewis Carroll exhibition in 1932, the original Alice in Wonderland came face to face with the original Peter Pan. In John Logan’s remarkable play, enchantment and reality collide as this brief encounter lays bare the lives of these two extraordinary characters.

I’LL EAT YOU LAST: A CHAT WITH SUE MENGERS
1981. Hollywood. Sue Mengers, the first female ‘superagent’ at a time when women talent agents of any kind are almost unheard of, invites you into her Beverly Hills home for an evening of dish, secrets, and all the inside showbiz stories that only Sue could tell… Back in the 1970s, Sue Mengers represented almost every major star in Hollywood; her clients were the talk of the town and her glamorous dinner parties were legendary. But by 1981 the glory days were fading. Her time was passing as a sleek and corporate New Hollywood began to emerge. The phone’s not ringing so much these days and Sue is forced to face the inevitable truth: the credits roll sooner than you think.

About the Author :

John Logan is a three time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and playwright. His play Red is a bestseller, opening at London’s Donmar Warehouse to great acclaim before transferring to a smash-hit Broadway run where it won six Tony Awards including Best New Play. Logan’s work for the stage includes Never the Sinner, Hauptmann, a new adaptation of Ibsen's The Master Builder, Peter and Alice, I'll Eat You Last, and Red, the Tony-winning play about painter Mark Rothko. Logan’s work as a screenwriter includes Skyfall, Sweeney Todd, The Aviator, Hugo, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, Rango, Coriolanus, and Any Given Sunday.

Review :
An electrifying new play. Simmering…fiction, memory and multi-way commentary seethe up against and amid one another. A fresh, exciting portrait of a brilliant mind. [I’ll Eat You Last is] very much worth crossing the playground, or indeed the Atlantic, to spend an evening with. A moving, 90-minute theatrical chamber piece about childhood, growing up and the pressure of literary immortality…a beautiful and searching play that will live long in the memory. It’s a heady sensation, thanks to the buoyant, witty writing of Mr. Logan… Tangy and funny…a delectable soufflé of a solo show. Funny and profane — and something of a cautionary tale. Plays about painters are fraught with difficulty. Either the hero preaches about art without practising it, or the Bohemian lifestyle supersedes the work. But John Logan’s play about Mark Rothko overcomes these obstacles with finesse… It’s a measure of the play’s success that it makes you want to rush out and renew acquaintance with Rothko’s work. Shattering in its intensity…the distressful, healing empathy which great theatre produces. If you are growing old, or love the old and recognise their youthfulness, it breaks your heart open. Smart and scintillating. RED deftly conjures what most plays about artists don’t: The exhilaration of the act. Bold, daring theatre that is unquestionably touched by greatness.