From his plundering of elements from B-movies and melodrama in early plays like Zastrozzi and Beyond Mozambique to the uneasy satire and the class politics of the East End and the Power plays, and now most recently in the shape of “Suburban Motel,” a cycle of six new plays, George F. Walker has not only created a substantial and impressive body of work, but impressed it all with his unique “Walkeresque” stamp—brash, assertive, perceptive, genuinely perverse, often wonky, and very, very funny. Toronto’s most-produced and internationally recognized playwright, Walker’s plays have appeared on stages in London and New York, across North America and around the world.

Chris Johnson is a professor of English literature, specialing in Canadian drama and theatre, at the University of Manitoba. He recently co-directed Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with Margaret Groome for Stoppardfest 2007. Johnson was one of the first writers to bring the work of George F. Walker to critical attention, and he continues to write and give papers on Walker and dark comedy in Canadian drama.

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“This book is … both very welcome and long overdue. … Johnson covers all of Walker’s twenty-seven plays [prior to Heaven]. He also provides a thorough account of Walker criticism … a valuable guide to extant scholarship.”
– Harry Lane, for Modern Drama