The Last Yankee highlights conflicts between men and women, between the working class and those who have left labour behind, and between exterior appearances and interior realities. Set in a New England state mental hospital in the early 1990s, The Last Yankee creates spaces in which the four characters grapple with definitions of health and of success.
This scholarly edition is perfect for students. It features an extensive commentary on the context, themes, structure, style, language and characters, a survey of the play in production and questions for further study. Methuen Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires.
'The Last Yankee reasserts Miller's unquestionable dominance of American drama...No other American playwright has had his range of experience and feeling; none has combined his magisterial moral judgement with his warm and forgiving sense of humour and his ability to inhabit completely, like Shakespeare or Ibsen, every character he creates...Miller writes with a sense of pain and laughter, with an understanding of the heart's endless struggle with the mind, which is characteristic of a writer on an unending journey of discovery.' Sunday Times