A Few Stout Individuals
by John Guare

Name: A Few Stout Individuals
Brand: John Guare
SKU: 9780802140029
Rating: 3.62 (15 reviews)

A Few Stout Individuals Book Cover — A Few Stout Individuals Cover

Highlights

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120 minsAmerican Comedy

What readers are saying

Readers have mixed feelings about the play, with many finding it both hilarious and moving, while others feel it detracts from Ulysses Grant's legacy. Some praise its interesting narrative and encouragement to explore Grant's memoirs, while a notable dissenting voice considers it an abomination and disappointing representation of Grant.

Hilarious and movingFascinating narrativeEncourages reading Grant's memoirsDetracts from Ulysses Grant's legacy

Synopsis

This latest work from award-winning playwright John Guare, author of House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation, addresses ideas of history and memory, fame and ignominy, reason and insanity with his trademark Guare imagination.

In a Fifth Avenue brownstone in 1880s New York, Ulysses S. Grant is penniless, dying of throat cancer, and attempting to finish his memoirs while he's cajoled and pestered by everyone from his wife and children to his publisher Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and, via his drugged hallucinations, the emperor of Japan.

Although the memoirs are eventually completed, the audience is left questioning their accuracy and, ultimately, the authenticity of history itself.

ThemesAutobiography--Authorship--Drama DramaGrant, Ulysses S. (Ulysses Simpson) , 1822-1885 Autobiography--Authorship Generals Generals--Drama PS3557.U2 F49 2003 Throat--Cancer--Patients Throat--Cancer--Patients--Drama

Press Reviews

"A FEW STOUT INDIVIDUALS bounces high off the springboard of real-life American history…the play studies the tragic yet ultimately victorious final days of Ulysses S. Grant. Unleashing his powers of cosmic wit, Guare uses this dark scenario to reflect thoughtfully upon the interdependence of memory and history…A FEW STOUT INDIVIDUALS stands among Guare's best plays. Guare's smarts, passion and creativity skyrocket to awesome heights. In this remarkable work, Guare illuminates the dusty pages of history so that we can understand our heritage in the contemporary glow of his imagination.“ —The Star-Ledger (NJ). ”…unmistakably the product of Mr. Guare's exotic yet very American imagination…distinctive theatrical exuberance.“ —The New York Times. ”A FEW STOUT INDIVIDUALS is precisely the kind of good new play that you might call an everyday miracle."
— Village Voice