Aunt Dan and Lemon

Description

A thrilling friend of her parents casts a spell over a young girl. A study in the glamour of brutal ideas. Susie, he's not just an individual like you and me - he works for the government. It's as if you were saying that you and I are so nice every day and why can't our governments be just like us! But you know the whole thing, Susie - you and I are only able to be nice because our governments - our governments are not nice! - so that if you see me putting this spoon in my purse, you don't have to wrestle me to get the spoon back, you can just pick up the phone and call the police. And if there are people attacking our friends in Southeast Asia, you and I don't have to go over there and fight them with rifles - we just get Kissinger to fight them for us. Aunt Dan and Lemon was first produced by the Royal Court Theatre, London, and the New York Shakespeare Festival and received its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in August 1985. The play was revived at the Royal Court Theatre in May 2009.

Wallace Shawn's first play to be produced in New York was Our Late Night, directed by Andre Gregory at The Public Theater in 1975. A Thought in Three Parts was staged two years later by the Joint Stock Theatre Group in London, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. Shawn's next three plays - Marie and Bruce, Aunt Dan & Lemon, and The Fever - were all performed in New York at the Public Theater and in London at the Royal Court. Aunt Dan and Lemon was revived in London in 1999 at the Almeida Theatre, directed by Tom Cairns. Shawn's next play, The Designated Mourner, premiered at the National Theatre, London, with Mike Nichols, Miranda Richardson, and David de Keyser under the direction of David Hare, and was then performed in New York by Wallace Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg, and Larry Pine under the direction of Andre Gregory. In 2009, the Royal Court held a Wallace Shawn season, reviving Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Fever, and staging the premiere of Grasses of a Thousand Colours. Shawn wrote the libretto for Allen Shawn's opera The Music Teacher, directed by Tom Cairns for The New Group in New York (2006). Shawn translated Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (performed in New York at the Roundabout, Studio 54, directed by Scott Elliott). Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory wrote and performed in the film My Dinner with Andre and Andre Gregory directed Shawn in Vanya on 42nd Street. Shawn has appeared as an actor in many films, including Manhattan, Clueless, Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills,The Moderns, and The Wife. Shawn's Essays was published by Haymarket Books in 2009.