Episode 549. Remembering A.R. Gurney

“Our good friend Howard Sherman remembers his good friend A.R. Gurney, the celebrated playwright and so-called “chronicler of contemporary America’s most unfashionable social stratum — upper-middle-class WASPS” (according to Frank Rich), who died this week at the age of 86. Howard talks about Gurney’s work and style, both onstage and off, and discusses how personal many of his plays were, how most of his success came from off-Broadway and regional theatre, how the specific culture he chronicled was (is) in decline, various opening night encounters, definitive renditions of Love Letters, hitting it big in your 50s, mutual friendships with Sir Alan Ayckbourn, and the greatness of being, above all, a gentleman. (Length 21:26)