The Family Reunion
The Family Reunion is a play by T. S. Eliot. Written mostly in blank verse (though not iambic pentameter), it incorporates elements from Greek drama and mid-twentieth-century detective plays to portray the hero's journey from guilt to redemption. The play was unsuccessful when first presented in 1939, and was later regarded as unsatisfactory by its author, but has been successfully revived since the 1940s. Some critics have thought aspects of the tormented hero reflect Eliot's difficulties with his estrangement from his first wife.
This article is about stageplay by T. S. Eliot. For other subjects containing the term "family reunion", see Family reunion (disambiguation).Productions[edit]
Première[edit]
The play was first performed on 21 March 1939 at the Westminster Theatre, London, with Michael Redgrave as Harry, Helen Haye as Lady Monchensey and Catherine Lacey as Agatha.[1] It ran until 22 April 1939.[2]
Revivals[edit]
Other productions of the play have included:
In New York, the play has been staged at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1947, the Phoenix Theater in 1958, with Fritz Weaver, Florence Reed and Lillian Gish, and by the visiting Royal Shakespeare Company in 2000 (the Swan Theatre production listed above).[8][9]
Commentary[edit]
Structure[edit]
The play is partly in blank verse (though Eliot uses a stress-based metre, with usually four or five stresses per line and not the iambic pentameter) and partly in prose. Eliot had already experimented with verse drama in Murder in the Cathedral, and continued to use the form in his post-war stage works.[12] Though the work has superficial resemblances to a conventional 1930s drawing room drama, Eliot uses two devices from ancient Greek drama: