Overview
This foray into the deeply serious and deeply funny (sometimes at the
same time) world of life after 40 focuses primarily on scenes that
depict the struggles of contemporary characters to come to terms with
disappointment and obsolescence or to redeem their lives from the
mistakes or miscalculations of their youth. It draws heavily on American
classics like Long Day's Journey into Night, Death of a Salesman, The
Price, Glengarry Glen Ross, Fences, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
as well as more recent classics-in-the-making like August: Osage
County, Good People, and God of Carnage. There is also ample
representation from British playwrights like Harold Pinter, Tom
Stoppard, Simon Gray, and Peter Nichols, whose work also explores this
territory of growing older in a society obsessed by youth and novelty.