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A SAMUEL FRENCH, LTD. TITLE
Short Play, Dramatic Comedy / 7w, 5m
Thornton Wilder
Ninety years are traversed in this play, which represents in accelerated motion 90 Christmas dinners in the Bayard household. Each member of the family ages with the passing years, until finally they die and exit from the stage. We hear them comment on the development of the countryside and the enormous changes in manners and customs during this period of time.
The Long Christmas Dinner – nine decades long – showcases the lives of several generations of the Bayard family. Wilder breaks the boundaries of time as we measure it, and invites us to partake of “one long, happy Christmas dinner” – past, present and future. As generations appear, have children, wither and depart, only the audience appreciates what changes and what remains the same. “Every last twig is wrapped around with ice. You almost never see that,” young Genevieve marvels, not realizing that her mother made this observation years earlier, or that her daughter-in-law will one day do the same.
Please note: The Long Christmas Dinneris available both in a single-play edition or in the six-play volume Wilder’s Classic One Acts, which also contains The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, Pullman Car Hiawatha, Queens of France, Such Things Only Happen in Books and Love and How to Cure it.
The dining room table in the Bayard home, over the course of nine decades.
“Like a surprise holiday gift... [these plays] shine like gems.” – The New York Times
“Of all my plays it is the one that has found the widest variety of receptions. At some performances it has been played to constant laughter; some listeners are deeply moved and shaken by it; some find it cruel and cynical. (What? The dead are forgotten so soon?)” – Thornton Wilder, in a letter written April 11, 1960 to Gertrude Hindemith, whose husband, the composer Paul Hindemith, wrote an opera based on the play
The Long Christmas Dinner - Abbey Theatre Trailer
Thornton Wilder: It's Time
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both drama (Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth) and fiction (The Bridge of San Luis Rey). He collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt, hiked the Alps with the heavyweight boxing champion ...
by Noah Haidle
Noah Haidle
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Multiple Authors