Some Americans Abroad

by Richard Nelson

Offers a satiric look at a group of American academics visiting London, as each one, from student to the Head of the English Department, finds they have not left their problems at home

Genres: Plays

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1990

Reviews

[Michael P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting update on US cultural surrender via the Henry James model, this play looks at a group of wretches quite like me. Their lives are centered around going to England as often as possible, for them annually, to see plays and visit bookstores on Charring Cross Road. These characters are college professors and their hangers-on, including 22 students who are part of the trip. Their career concerns emerge while they talk of Shaw, Hawthorne, Brown, James, modern British Theatre, and especially Shakespeare.

The real jerk of the group is the newly appointed Department Chair, a manipulator who controls the futures of principle people in the group. He pretends to be a finer person than he is, fertilizing his reputation even as he, perhaps, destroys two careers. The others toad to him to different extents. It all feels disturbingly real. They experience London and Stratford very like the way that I experience London and Stratford. If I am asked to teach a Shakespeare and Modern Culture course again, I shall probably make this the last text we study for the way it moves Shakespeare into the background of real life, just as he really is for even his ardent admirers.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have worked with some exemplary college professors and some who make the professors in this play look like saints. Nonetheless, Richard Nelson play can trigger painful memories of academentia at its worst. An annual theatre tour of England reveals the cracks in the collegial facade of a group of English professors. Henry McNeil is being pushed out of the department because he went to the wrong schools, something everybody on the trip but he seems to know. At the same time, when a professor in the "in" group is accused of sexually harassing a female student, the wagons circle to defuse the situation. A visit with the retired chair reveals that this kind of insularity and hypocrisy is a longstanding tradition. It's a very bitter picture in a play I'd like to see, but wouldn't particularly want to live with through a rehearsal process.

[nic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very talky, very witty. However it is a play with little substance over 35 years since it’s publication. It’s expose on sexual harassment within an academic setting is interesting and relevant, but doesn’t really speak to anything more- which is ironic considering Joe Taylor in the text rants on plays if this nature.

I’ll never not read a play. And Nelson is a fine writer- I just scratch my head at why the RSC commissioned this play.

[Brian McCann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Talky play from the late 1980s that doesn’t say too much 30 years later.

[Jonas Schwartz-Owen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather trite play. Especially with such a stellar cast

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh Middlebury

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

No substance...