Some Americans Abroad
Description
Richard Nelson’s 1989 play, about the internecine squabbles of Yankee English professors leading students on a tour of London, makes you feel like you’re back in college: not on a class trip, but in a stuffy seminar room, trying to stay alert as a smug instructor thrills to his own voice. The Anglophilic characters in this tale (wanly staged by Gordon Edelstein) may think they’re not ugly Americans, you see, but ha! The author knows better. Look how selfish, classless and money-obsessed they are! Look how they kiss up to anyone in power! The joke’s on them, and the joke is repeated over and over, with a mirthless snigger.—AF
