John Guare has been lauded as one of the most successful American playwrights of the last third of the twentieth century. He has won three Obie (Off-Broadway) Awards, New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, Antoinette Perry (Tony) Awards, Drama Desk Awards, the New York Film Critics Award, the Los Angeles Film Critics Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and has received an Academy Award nomination. Largely because of the nearly universal appeal of his best-known dramas, The House of Blue Leaves (1971) and Six Degrees of Separation (1990), and because of his screenplay for the movie Atlantic City (1980), Guare has been placed in the company of Edward Albee, David Mamet, and August Wilson--playwrights who have given renewed life to the contemporary American theater. However, unlike those of Albee, Mamet, and Wilson, Guare's plays have been perceived by theater critics and scholars as problematic and paradoxical.

With regard to content, Guare's...