SOURCE: A review of Four Plays, in English Studies, Vol. 75, No. 3, May, 1994, p. 259–61.

In the following review, the critic offers a laudatory review of the plays collected in Four Plays.

Four Plays, by Beth Henley, is a collection of plays written since Crimes of the Heart (1981) and demonstrates that she may well be the best dramatist now writing in America. Chekhov has long been the inspiration for American dramatists and actors, but Henley develops his legacy in original directions of her own. In The Wake of Jamey Foster (1983) the bizarre decision of his white-trash mother to have an open-coffin wake in the living room of his house focusses the contemplation of a failed marriage and a failed life. ‘And now he's really gone’ says his wife, ‘He's out of the whole deal; and I don't even know what we felt for each other. Stupid. Lord …’. The presence of...