PREAMBLE:

Author: Tom Stoppard (1937-) Britain dramatist and scriptwriter who employs a ingenious and ironic language connected to the absurd theatre.

Title: `Dirty Linen’.

Subtitle: A play in one act.

Publishing: -

Year of publication: This play was written in 1976.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

The characters are eight:

Maddie: `She is wearing a low cut, sleeveless blouse…´

Cocklebury-Smythe: Member of the Parliament.

McTeazle: Member of the Parliament.

Chamberlain: Member of the Parliament.

Withenshaw: Also, the Chairman, and Member of the Parliament.

Mrs.Ebury: Deborah, Member of the Parliament.

French: Member of the Parliament.

Home secretary.

PLOT:

This play describes a special committee of the House of Commons, appointed to investigate reports that a large number of Members of Parliament have been having sex with the same woman. Naturally, it contains implied commentary on the government, its workings, its members, and its relationship to the press and to the public.

SCENERY:

A room of the House of Commons in the tower of Big Ben (London). A committee table with a lot of chairs, a table with drawers for Maddie, a blackboard, shelves and two doors.

TIME:

Now, that is, the present ( in seventies).

CRITIC:

Tom Stoppard is the most original Britain and playwright author in fifties and sixties. He has not interest in the theatre as instrument of complaint, but as like spectacle in itself and he knows to make good use of until his late possibilities. This plot, and his plays in general, are great, audacious and innovatory, with a very personal humour.

This story is a farce which portraits a typical committee of the House of Commons, Members of the Parliament and Lords of the Parliament all them of the United Kingdom.

PERSONAL OPINION:

I like this play because, I think, this is a different story respect other plays of the same time. In my opinion, this is an interesting and entertaining story in which the author creates a realist story about a committee, in spite of he does it in his point of view.

Ana Calatayud Moreno – Teatro Inglés de los siglos XIX y XX.