He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box and Other Plays

by Adrienne Kennedy, Adam P. Kennedy (Contributor), Margo Jefferson (Contributor)

In her first new work in a decade, Adrienne Kennedy journeys into Georgia and New York City in the 1940s to lay bare the devastating effects of segregation and its aftermath. The story of a doomed interracial love affair unfolds through fragmented pieces--letters, recollections from family members, songs from the time--to present a multifaceted view of our cultural history that resists simple interpretation. This volume also includes Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side and Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles?

Genres: Plays, College

129 pages, Paperback

Published November 17, 2020

Reviews

[Jade]

3.5
I picked this slim collection up from Unnamable Books knowing nothing about Adrienne Kennedy. (I am very unacquainted with theater—which I would like to change!). I do think it would probably read better with more context about Kennedy’s career, but I still enjoyed a lot of it!
The titular play is wonderful. Very haunting and an interesting meditation on white cognitive dissonance about racism. I found the interview with Kennedy included very interesting but thought “Ella and Etta” was less so. I enjoyed “Mom, How Did you Meet the Beatles” especially as a story about how often powerful white men steal ideas from women and people of color with no repercussions… Fuck those guys.
“Almost Eighty” was my favorite part. As someone who—at the ripe age of 26–sometimes feels stuck and without any creativity left, Kennedy’s search for purpose in her last chapter struck me. I was so inspired by her commitment to her values, her gratitude and her ongoing search for the creative spark. I only hope I can be that way at 80!

[A.T.]

Adrienne Kennedy, I'll speak your name forever. Almost Eighty made me cry. The importance of archiving and memory speaks to me so deeply.

Mom, How Did You Meet the Beatles? upset me greatly. Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Tynan, and Victor Spinetti should consider themselves lucky that they're dead because I would've spit at either of them had they still moved amongst the living. Europeans are so diabolical.

[Aaron Thomas]

This is a great collection of very different pieces by Adrienne Kennedy. He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box is a haunting tragedy of the Jim Crow South, run through with passages from Christopher Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris – a dissection of a town in the South and the deeply intimate relations of the neighbors there (what Sharon Holland would call "the erotics of racism"). Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side is less theatrical (or perhaps moreso); it's a series of images of two sisters in desperate competition who drive one another to madness or suicide (or is it murder...). This play is a continuation of Kennedy's longstanding use of the name/story of Suzanne Alexander and her family (the Alexander family, that is) as invented figures. And then there's Mom, How Did You Meet The Beatles?, easily my favorite play in the collection. This is a wonderfully name-speckled tale of Kennedy herself (using her own name this time) and how she met The Beatles, how she had the idea to turn Lennon's book In His Own Write into a play, and how that idea was taken over by various people, including Kenneth Tynan, Laurence Olivier, and Victor Spinetti. This is an amazing, insane little story—all the more extraordinary because it is a true one.

This collection also includes an insightful introductory essay by Margo Jefferson, an interview with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins about He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box and a late essay by Kennedy titled "Almost Eighty".

[Cassandra]

I received a complimentary copy.

Armed with a mug of cider or even a glass of water and a flashlight should you dare explore this wonderful book in the dark. The movement of the plays are well written and very easy to pass time with.

[Carmen]

Just didn’t capture me- perhaps it’s a play far better seen than read.