الكتاب يضم ثلاث مسرحيات (ساعة الغداء، استعدوا لركوب الطائرة، قولوا عني كذاباً) عندما كان جون مورتيمير في أوج نشاطه الفني، لم تجرفه التيارات المسرفة في التجديد، يقف على ارض صلبة من الواقعية ايماناً بأنها لم، ولن تستنفد اغراضها. ولم يسبق ان عرفه القراء العرب مع ان المسرح العربي يحتاج الى معرفة نماذج راقية من الكوميديا
John Clifford Mortimer was a novelist, playwright and former practising barrister. Among his many publications are several volumes of Rumpole stories and a trilogy of political novels, Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets, featuring Leslie Titmuss - a character as brilliant as Rumpole. John Mortimer received a knighthood for his services to the arts in 1998.
This book has five plays by English barrister and master of comic fiction John Mortimer (creator of Rumpole of the Bailey).
A Voyage Round My Father is touching and brilliant, and I'd have paid very good money to have seen Sir Alec Guinness in the role of the father. It so happens I have read the non-dramatized version of this essentially-autobiographical play, in _Clinging to the Wreckage_, Mortimer's touching, beautiful autobiography, so it was rewarding to see how a great artist transmutes the raw memories into peculiar, idiosyncratic and yet no longer memoiristic art.
The Dock Brief and The Lunch Hour are two droll short plays, with signature Mortimer dialogue, and though both show signs of age (e.g. people aren't all that embarrassed about assignations in hotel rooms any more), they're both very much worth reading.
The other two plays, however -- Collaborators and What Shall We Tell Caroline? -- are rather different pieces. They are both brooding ruminations, perhaps exorcisms of some sort, of tense and emotionally-abusive relationships, and were a harrowing and yet unrewarding read. I just don't know why Mortimer wrote them.