Four Plays: Big Night / Women at Four O'Clock / Walking Down Broadway / Jig Saw

by Dawn Powell, Michael Sexton (Editor), Tim Page (Editor)

FROM HER COLLEGE days onward, Dawn Powell dreamed of becoming a successful playwright. Indeed, over the course of four decades, she finished at least ten plays and was working on fashioning her novel "The Golden Spur "into a musical comedy during her final illness. Only two of her plays were mounted during her lifetime, however. This volume contains both of those works - "Big Night" which was produced by the legendary Group Theater in 1933, and "Jigsaw," which was staged by the Theater Guild the following year. These are fast-paced, blunt-spoken - and very funny - comedies that directly anticipate the hard-boiled satire of such novels as "Turn, Magic Wheel" and "Angels on Toast." Rounding out the book are two unpublished (and as yet unproduced) plays that Powell wrote in the late 1920s - the experimental, quasi-expressionist "Women at Four O'Clock" and a nostalgic, bittersweet story of old New York, "Walking Down Broadway," which director Erich von Stroheim would later adapt into the Hollywood film "Hello, Sister "
Eleven of Dawn Powell's fifteen novels are currently available in paperback from Steerforth Press, as well her widely acclaimed diaries. She died in 1965.

400 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1999

About the author

Dawn Powell was an American writer of satirical novels and stories that manage to be barbed and sensitive at the same time.

Reviews

[Emily Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Through reading Dawn Powell's diaries, I discovered that she really longed to be a playwright. As she slogged through novels, a play would get her all sparked up. But the theatre did not embrace her as it should have, so I think these are all we have. Too bad. They're really bold for the time. I can see that they were probably too risque to produce. She had a tendency to put people's duplicity front and center and a lot of it wasn't too pretty. The sad thing is that many of these plays, which were so far ahead of their time, now feel dated. They sort of missed their moment somewhere in between somehow. Women at 4 o'clock is very experimental - and a bit mad. I admire it's craziness - but couldn't really enjoy it because it's just on the edge of then and now. In the end, she was a better novelist, because she could put perfect moments in amber and give us every detail. The plays have the wit and structure of the novels but are missing the amber frames.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can see a 1930s movie in the plays--but I just don't like the characters.

[James Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the first two: Big Night and Jigsaw.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Big Night - 3.5/5
Jig Saw - 4/5
Women at Four O'Clock - 2/5
Walking down Broadway - 3/5

We'll keep this review pretty simple and leave it at that.