Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Kathleen Gregory Klein

Critical Essay by Kathleen Gregory Klein

SOURCE: “Language and Meaning in Megan Terry's 1970s ‘Musicals',” in Modern Drama, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, December, 1984, pp. 574-83.

In the following essay, Klein concentrates on the meaning and power of the language in Terry's musicals.

American King's English for Queens is the most clearly articulated of Megan Terry's language plays of the 1970s, explicitly concerned with the ways in which the text and context of language mold thinking, seeing, and believing. In four full-length plays, Tommy Allen Show, Babes in the Bighouse, Brazil Fado and American King's English for Queens—all “musicals” performed at the Omaha Magic Theatre—although ostensibly savaging television, Middle American family life, marriage, sex, or prison, Terry challenges the perceptions molded by language itself and the clichés about language as a vehicle for communication. Whereas words seldom say what they mean, the reverse (that they mean what they say) is often true. What is conveyed between...
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