Collected Plays

by Gregory Corso, Rick Schober (Introduction)

Six humorous plays written between 1952 and 1968 by Beat poet Gregory Corso (1930-2001), two of which have never before been published. This collection includes the Untitled Play (1952), Standing on a Streetcorner (1953), Sarpedon (1954), In This Hung-Up Age (1954), JFK (1960), and That Little Black Door on the Left (1968).

130 pages, Paperback

Published January 4, 2021

About the author

Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers.

Reviews

[Mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must say I disagree with negative reviews of this book.

This is mostly a wonderful collection of plays by the great beat-generation poet, Gregory Corso, whom many would call the 4th most important member of the 'inner beat circle' of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs.

This book contains 6 of Gregory Corso's plays, arranged chronologically. It is amazing to think he wrote some of these plays in his early 20s - what an incredibly creative and fecund mind he must have had. My personal favourites were 'Sarpedon' and 'In This Hung-up Age.' 'Sarpedon' is a very funny and witty story about Hades wanting Sarpedon, son of Zeus, after the battle of Troy. Charon, who brings people across the river Styx into Hades (also appearing of course in Dante's Inferno as the river ferryman) plays the role of a disgruntled ferry worker who is treated poorly by Hades. I must say I like Corso's dark but light sense of humour (if that makes sense).

'In This Hung-up Age' is about a hipster, a square, a middle-aged lady called 'Mrs Kindhead' (who appears in one of Corso's poems too), a saxophone-playing lady called 'Beauty', an Apache, and a few others all stuck on a broken-down bus. You really get a 'feel' for the times, the 50s and 60s, and Corso's note boasts that he was the first person to record the 'hipster talk' of the 50s before it became well known. This could quite possibly be true.

The only weak play in this collection is one called 'JFK' written in Greece when he was elected President of the US. I wouldn't call this play 'bad' but it was certainly 'obscure.'

The final play in this collection, 'That Little Black Door on the Left' is a brilliant indictment of capital punishment and as someone who spent much time in prison in his youth, I could see clearly that Corso sympathises with the man behind bars.

The only thing I don't like about this book is the title - 'Collected Plays.' This is a misnomer for as Rick Schober himself points out in the introduction, a couple of plays were left out of this collection because they were not 'up to par.' I was disappointed that 'Way Out' was not included. Even though Corso himself thought it was "fucked up" his poet friend Ira Cohen believed it be good enough to publish while he was in Kathmandu. The poem/play is available but copies of Way Out are hard to find these days and often expensive. Really, this book should be called 'Selected Plays.'

Apart from this one small gripe though, I take my hat off to Rick Schober for his excellent editing work. The plays are nicely presented on the page and are easy to read. This is a quick, easy but important read showing that Corso could not only give us great poetry but was also indeed a wonderful playwright, in his own right. Highly recommended especially for fans of beat-generation literature.

[Adrian Alvarez · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very light collection of Corso's early (very early) comedic plays. They seem to have been written with very little care by a precocious and spoiled youth. I haven't read anything else by Corso so I don't know if the ideas in these plays develop into profundities in later works. I can only take this collection on its own. Without any other context I can't say there's much value here. It's a slim collection of uninteresting sketches.

[Bookworm Adventures Deluxe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I came up with the names Felonious Bligh and Mr. Blots