Christopher Durang's theatre is a gloriously dysfunctional world of religious hysteria, family cruelty and sexual confusion.

Across six plays, Durang turns the institutions supposedly responsible for making people decent, happy and well-adjusted into elaborate engines of absurdity. His characters are frequently monstrous, occasionally sympathetic, and almost always convinced of their own reasonableness.

The collection includes The Nature and Purpose of the Universe, 'Dentity Crisis, Titanic, The Actor's Nightmare, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You and Beyond Therapy. Moving between domestic farce, surreal comedy and savage social satire, Durang examines the hypocrisies of religion, psychiatry, marriage and the American family, finding considerable comic potential in the distance between what people profess to believe and how they actually behave.

Grove Press, paperback, later printing. Six plays with an introduction by the author. Good vintage condition, with some age-related discolouration, light cover wear and minor handling marks.