The 30 greatest American family dramas

25. THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL’S GUIDE TO SOCIALISM AND CAPITALISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES
No eardrums go unbeaten in the shouting matches of the Marcantonio family, a Brooklyn clan with deep labor-union roots, in Tony Kushner’s rich work of public-intellectual engagement, a play of profound disquiet whose overarching tone is nonetheless somber and elegiac. Grandly messy, this 2011 piece is an unconventional hybrid: a domestic drama (with nods to Miller, O’Neill and Chekhov) that is principally animated by a nuanced examination of the ways in which materialism inflects our daily lives.—AF

24. HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE
Infidelity, addiction or physical abuse are your typical family-drama ingredients. But incest is a spice that only the best chefs can handle, from Oedipus Rex to Paula Vogel’s 1997 memory play. What’s freshly disquieting about How I Learned to Drive is how much humanity Vogel gives Peck, the uncle who exploits his well-endowed teen niece, L’il Bit. Peck is something of a kid himself—frisky and bumptious—a guy who talks to children honestly, sets boundaries and puts them at ease…before he tragically oversteps the line. Without preaching or demonizing her characters, Vogel skillfully navigates a gray zone between emotional need and sexual violation.—DC

23. THE LION IN WINTER
James Goldman’s clever 1966 work of historical fiction—in which the 12th-century monarch Henry II wrestles for control over his wife, three sons and two French guests—takes the power struggles and allegiance shifts of any unhappy family at Christmas and royally ups the stakes. The court setting and the waspish wit of Goldman’s dialogue (expertly delivered in the film version by Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn) ensure that amid multiple betrayals and reversals of fortune, all of the enemies are arch.—AF

22. FIFTH OF JULY
Lanford Wilson returned again and again to the Talleys of Missouri, a family well-stocked with eccentricities and ripe for a seriocomic trilogy. In this gently redemptive 1978 installment, Wilson surrounded Ken, a disabled, gay Vietnam vet, with a host of nutty relations—all busy with manipulations, sudden revelations, the usual squawkings of hippies coming home to roost. On one level, the work burbles with the minor dramas among siblings and spouses; more broadly, its empathy tries to teach a whole country what to do when the fireworks of war (and even peace) are over.—HS

21. A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
In 1956, Arthur Miller’s wrenching Brooklyn drama converted the ordinary struggles of the proletariat into something like ancient tragedy. At first, A View from the Bridge’s events seem cramped and domestic, as respected longshoreman Eddie Carbone, destabilized by jealousy over his own niece, begins to bite viciously at his own immigrant kin. But in turning informant, as so many would in that age of HUAC, Eddie betrays the larger family of the working poor. In Miller’s 1949 essay “Tragedy and the Common Man,” he had argued for a tragedy in this age for “we who are without kings.” Carbone would be his Oedipus.—HS