Episode Detail: America; 1956 - Changing Stages
In Part 2 (of three), director Richard Eyre traces British and American theater through the first two-thirds of the 20th century. He begins in the U.S., recalling “the golden age of Broadway.” It began when Eugene O'Neill wrote “A Long Day's Journey Into Night” in 1916. Eyre also considers Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Broadway musicals. The second hour recalls Noel Coward's “revolutionary days” in the 1920s and '30s, his later decline and the arrival of “angry young man” John Osbourne's “Look Back in Anger” in 1956. Says Eyre: “It erupted into the monochromatic grayness of the 1950s.”
