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About
This play examines the curiously personal nature of power play in the modern age.
John is a successful businessman whose company owns several newspapers. Now nearing retirement age, he's concerned about how the world will remember him. He asks his younger brother, Geoffrey, to write his biography.
But the brothers haven't met for many years. Geoffrey stayed in England to become a writer, while John emigrated to America. As a biographer, Geoffrey prefers historical subjects who are safely dead and easy to study. He also hates the business world. Against his better judgement, his wife - who is also his agent - persuades him to take the commission. Geoffrey finds himself documenting a complicated situation.
John is trying to persuade his young actress wife, Miranda, to star in a film to re-ignite her career - a career she'd rather leave behind. Also involved in the project are two up-and- coming film director brothers, a well-established couple who host a TV chat show and a model desperate to become an actress.
Lost among these fame-hungry people, Miranda finds an unexpected ally in the reluctant recorder of this world - Geoffrey.
Every personal relationship in the play is also a business relationship, and the people around the brothers are drawn into the struggle that develops between them. Can John keep control of the players in his game?
The brothers create a place in which everything is self-consciously grist to the mill of various media. Events are digested into popular film, television shows and newspaper articles. Art forms like poetry, biography and literature are shown to exert similar forces, despite Geoffrey's protests to the contrary. Context is all, and the truth is easily misinterpreted.
The difficult relationship between the brothers mirrors aspects of the relationship between America and the UK. Both countries, renowned as vanguards of innovation from very different perspectives, are perhaps playing outdated roles, within an outdated relationship. Back in the world of the play, the characters find it hard to change their relationships, trapped in a story they have made for themselves.