Synopsis: |
This collection of Alan Bennett's work includes his first play and West End hit, "Forty Years On", as well as "Getting On", "Habeus Corpus", and "Enjoy". "Forty Years On": 'Alan Bennett's most gloriously funny play ...a brilliant, youthful perception of a nation in decline, as seen through the eyes of a home-grown school play ...a classic' - "Daily Mail". "Getting On": Winner of the Evening Standard Best Comedy Award in 1971, "Getting On" is an account of a middle-aged Labour MP, so self-absorbed that he remains blind to the fact that his wife is having an affair with the handyman, his mother-in-law in dying, his son is getting ready to leave home, his best friend thinks him a fool and that to everyone who comes into contact with him he is a self-esteeming joke. "Habeus Corpus": 'After two elegiac comedies about the decline of old England, Mr Bennett has now written a gorgeously vulgar but densely plotted facre that is a downright celebration of sex and the human body ...a combination of hurtling action with verbal brilliance' - "Guardian". "Enjoy": "Enjoy" uncannily foresaw the attitudes to English working-class life now enshrined in themeparks.'The classic tug in Bennett between childhod Yorkshire and intellectual sophistication has never been better, or more daringly expressed' - "Observer". |