The Middle Ages

As the play begins we meet Barney, the son of the club president, as a teenager, and already a rebel against the WASP-ish virtues so dear to his family. He is infatuated with Eleanor, a local girl of good background, but she is wary of his wildness, and opts to date, and then marry, his stolid brother, Billy

In a series of flashbacks we encounter Barney at various stages of his life: as he runs away to join the Navy during the Korean war, as a campus activist in California, as a graduate student and ultimately, as a successful producer of porno films

The flashbacks take Barney and Eleanor from youth to middle age while throughout Barney, to his father's growing distress, continues to profess his love for Eleanor and to challenge the validity of the lifestyle she has chosen

He remains the zany, charming, unpredictable rebel, shocking family and friends alike with his outrageous behavior until, at his father's death, a kind of reconciliation is reached, as changing times and fading youth soften Barney's belligerency and offer the promise of quieter, but happier, years to come

"As a chronicler of contemporary America's most unfashionable social stratum upper-middle-class WASP's, this playwright has no current theatrical peerThe Middle Ages often recalls Philip Barry" - NY Times

"It is a most engaging and witty playGurney's dramatic taste is impeccablehe works on a small landscape but draws with understanding and compassion" - NY Post