Home on the Stage

Nicholas Grene explores the subject of domestic spaces in modern drama through close readings of nine major plays.

Ibsen's A Doll's House established a theatrical politics of the interior that was to have a lasting impact upon twentieth-century drama. In this innovative study, Nicholas Grene analyses the full significance of home on the stage in nine major plays, from Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard to Parks' Topdog/Underdog.As a serious drama set in an ordinary middle-class home, Ibsen's A Doll's House established a new politics of the interior that was to have a lasting impact upon twentieth-century drama. In this innovative study, Nicholas Grene traces the changing forms of the home on the stage through nine of the greatest of modern plays and playwrights. From Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard through to Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, domestic spaces and personal crises have been employed to express wider social conditions and themes of class, gender and family. In the later twentieth century and beyond, the most radically experimental dramatists created their own challenging theatrical interiors, including Beckett in Endgame, Pinter in The Homecoming and Parks in Topdog/Underdog. Grene analyses the full significance of these versions of domestic spaces to offer fresh insights into the portrayal of the naturalistic environment in modern drama.