Paul Green's The House of Connelly

Book excerpt: One of Paul Green's best plays, The House of Connelly, was the first play performed (on Broadway in 1931) by the renowned Group Theatre of New York. This book reintroduces the play, and the playwright--famous in his day, but largely forgotten now, although his outdoor symphonic drama The Lost Colony continues to be performed every summer in Manteo, North Carolina. The House of Connelly, is a more traditional drama, comparable to the writing of Tennessee Williams, and the editor asserts that the play deals more directly and fully with racial issues of the early 20th-century South than Williams did in his work. A new edition of the play includes both the original tragic ending and the revised ending Green wrote upon the Group Theatre directors' request. The writing, production and publication history of the play is provided, as well as a scene-by-scene critical analysis and a discussion of the 1934 film adaptation, Carolina. The play's theme is change and Green shows with both endings that the South had to change to survive.