The Retreat from Moscow: A Play About a Family

(Paperback)

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Description

The celebrated author ofShadowlands tells the powerful story of a husband who decides to be truthful in his marriage, and of the wife and son whose lives will never be the same again.

A finely perceptive, eloquently tender and exquisite new play. New York

How well do we know the people we marry Is it wrong to decide its time to be honest Is love enough to save a family

Edward and Alice have been married for thirty-three years. He is a teacher at a boys school, perfectly at home with his daily crossword and lately engrossed in reading about Napoleons costly invasion of Moscow. She is an observant Catholic, exacting and opinionated, and has been collecting poems about lost love for a new anthology. Jamie, their diffident thirty-two year old son, is visiting for the weekend when Edward announces he has met another woman. With the coiled intensity of Tom Stoppards The Real Thing and the embracing empathy of Edward Albees best family dramas, The Retreat from Moscow shines a breathtakingly natural light on the fallout of a shattered marriage.

Reviews

A finely perceptive, eloquently tender and exquisite new play. New York

Riveting.... Subtle and powerful, [with] marvelous emotional complexity. The New Yorker

A tense family drama.... Spare, emotionally brutal. Time Out New York

A truly devastating piece of theater. New York Daily News

The best new play in twenty years.... This perfectly written masterwork shimmers with delicacy and precision. The Journal News

Author Bio

WILLIAM NICHOLSON is the author of the play Shadowlands, which was made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. He received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for Shadowlands and has written numerous other screenplays as well as a forthcoming novel, The Society of Others, and a trilogy of childrens fantasy adventure novels. He lives in London.