Lips Together, Teeth Apart - (Drama, Plume) by Terrence McNally (Paperback)

About the Book

As two couples spend the 4th of July in a house left to one of the women by her brother, a victim of AIDS, they mask their fear with desperate wit and hide inside uncomfortable marriages--each character struggling to come to terms with a world of anxious isolation haunted by ever-present death. A powerful play Frankie and Johnny.

Book Synopsis

Drama Desk Award Winner for Outstanding New Play

"One of Mr. McNally's finest plays--and one that hasn't dated, despite its apparently topical subject matter."--The New York Times

"McNally's wit and wild comedy invariably score, and his darker intentions resonate, making Lips Together one of his most accomplished plays."--New York Daily News

"A brilliant comedy."--The New Yorker

At the heart of this haunting play is a dramatically incisive portrait of two married couples--the Trumans and the Haddocks. Uncomfortable with themselves and each other, they are forced to spend a Fourth of July weekend at the Fire Island house that the brother of one of the women left his sister when he died of AIDS. Though the house is beautiful, it is as empty as their lives and marriages have become, a symbol of their failed hopes, their rage, their fears, and of the capricious nature of death. Acerbic and haunting, Lips Together, Teeth Apart probes the stifled lives of people and their prejudices with a stunning clarity that resonates long after.

The author of such critically acclaimed plays as The Lisbon Traviata and Frankie and Johnnie in the Clair de Lune, Terrence McNally has graced the American theater with a voice that captures our fear of intimacy in the modern age with dead-on insight, wit, and poignancy. But never has he blended these disparate elements into such a brilliantly cohesive whole as he has in Lips Together, Teeth Apart, hailed by Frank Richard of the New York Times as McNally's "most ambitious and most accomplished play yet."

Review Quotes

Drama Desk Award Winner for Outstanding New Play

"One of Mr. McNally's finest plays--and one that hasn't dated, despite its apparently topical subject matter."--The New York Times

"McNally's wit and wild comedy invariably score, and his darker intentions resonate, making Lips Together one of his most accomplished plays."--New York Daily News

About the Author

Terrence McNally is the author of numerous plays, including Love! Valour! Compassion! (winner of the Tony Award for best play), The Ritz, and Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, which was made into a feature film starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, and the books for the musicals The Rink, and Kiss of the Spider Woman (winner of the Tony Award for the best book of a musical). Other successes include Lips Together, Teeth Apart and The Lisbon Traviata. McNally has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He also serves as vice president for the Dramatists Guild, the national orgainzation of playwrights, composers, and lyricists. He lives in New York City.