BOOK

Ben Hodges (ed)., The Play That Changed My Life: America’s Foremost Playwrights on the Plays That Influenced Them (Applause, $18.95 paper). The title and subtitle say it all. Among those present: Jon Robin Baitz, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Horton Foote, A.R. Gurney, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, and John Patrick Shanley. Your interest in the nineteen essays will undoubtedly vary with your interest in the nineteen playwrights who wrote them, but every contribution is both readable and worth reading–albeit for very different reasons. I especially liked David Ives’ witty reminiscence of seeing Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance as a teenager in Chicago in the late Sixties. Oh, how the world has changed! (TT).