Great 20th Century Plays Trivia Quiz

Answer: Samuel Beckett

"Waiting For Godot" was Samuel Beckett's first full-length play to be performed and was first seen in 1953 in its original French version as "En attendant Godot". The first production of the English version was in 1955 at London's Arts Theatre, directed by Peter Hall.

The plot, such as it is, concerns two tramp-like characters who are waiting for the arrival of the mysterious Godot (who famously never turns up).

Answer: Samuel Beckett

"Endgame" had its premiere at London's Royal Court Theatre in 1957, in a French-language production directed by Roger Blin, who had also directed the first production of "Waiting for Godot". It has four characters: Hamm (an irascible blind man who is confined to a wheelchair); Clov (Hamm's servant); plus Nagg and Nell (Hamm's parents, who spend the whole play confined to a pair of dustbins).

Answer: Samuel Beckett

"Krapp's Last Tape" is a one-man play written specifically for the Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and was first performed by him in 1958. The title character, Krapp, is an elderly man who sits at a table with an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder playing old recordings of events from his younger days, while commenting on them.

Answer: Samuel Beckett

"Happy Days" had its first performance in 1961. It is largely a monologue by a woman named only as Winnie, who spends the first act of the play buried up to her waist in a large mound. In the second act she is buried up to her neck but remains cheerful throughout. Her husband, Willie, sits behind the mound almost invisible, and responds occasionally to her chatter.

Answer: Arthur Miller

"Death of a Salesman" was first performed in February 1949 at New York's Morisco Theatre, starring Lee J. Cobb in the title role, and won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for Best Play (1949). It tells the tragic story of Willy Loman, an "American everyman", whose life slowly unravels despite his best efforts to do the right thing for himself and his family.

Answer: Arthur Miller

"The Crucible", written in 1953, has become one of Arthur Miller's most popular plays. It dramatizes the events surrounding the historic Salem witch trials of 1692/3, in which a group of girls accused over 200 innocent townspeople of witchcraft, leading to the execution of around 20.

The play is also an allegory for the McCarthyist "witch hunts" against alleged Communists in the early 1950s.

Answer: Arthur Miller

"A View From the Bridge" began life as a one-act play called "A Memory of Two Mondays". Expanded to two acts, the full version was first performed in October 1956 in London's West End in a production directed by Peter Brook, with a cast including Anthony Quayle and Richard Harris.

It tells of an Italian American dock-worker who is unable to manage his unhealthy obsession with his 18-year-old orphaned niece.

Answer: Arthur Miller

While not one of Arthur Miller's best-known plays, "After the Fall" is of interest because it is based on the author's relationship with, and failed marriage to, the actress Marilyn Monroe. It was first performed on Broadway in January 1964, three years after their marriage ended and two years after Monroe's death.

Answer: Bertolt Brecht

"Mother Courage and her Children" was written by Brecht in 1939, immediately following the German invasion of Poland. It is an historical play, set in 17th century Europe during the Thirty Years War, but with obvious parallels with events at the time it was written. Mother Courage is a woman who scrapes a living for herself and her three children, selling provisions to whichever side will pay her.

During the course of the play the children are killed one by one, and Brecht clearly intended her to be an unsympathetic character who profits from the war at the expense of their lives. However, it is impossible not to feel some sympathy for her, even admiration, as a strong and courageous woman attempting to make a living in dangerous and uncertain times, and who resolutely refuses to be defeated by circumstances.

Answer: Bertolt Brecht

Brecht wrote "The Good Person of Szechuan" between 1938 and 1941, and it was first performed in Switzerland in 1943. Its first English-language production was in Reading, England, in 1953. The plot concerns a young female prostitute named Shen Teh, who attempts to lead a moral life in accordance with the teaching of the gods.

However, in order to protect herself she is forced to create a male alter-ego named Shua Ta, which causes numerous problems, which are only solved by the intervention of the gods themselves.

Answer: Bertolt Brecht

"The Caucasian Chalk Circle" is one of Brecht's best-known works, and was first performed in 1948, in an amateur student production at Carleton college, Minnesota. The main character is a girl named Grusha Vashnadze who finds herself looking after an abandoned baby following an insurrection.

The chalk circle of the title comes into play at the play's climax, when the baby's real mother turns up to claim it. To decide who should have the baby, a judge decrees that Grusha and the mother should stand within the circle, and each try to pull the baby out of it. Grusha refuses, as this would hurt the child, so the judge decrees that she can keep it.

Answer: Bertolt Brecht

"Schweik in the Second World War" is Brecht's dramatic sequel to the classic Czech satire "The Good Soldier Svejk" by Jaroslav Hasek (1883-1923), an unfinished novel about an apparently innocent and incompetent soldier who bumbles his way through events in the First World War.

The book shows up the incompetence of the military and the futility of war in general - themes also common in Brecht's work. His version transposes the character of Svejk/Schweik to the Second World War, and deals with similar themes.

It was first performed in Warsaw in 1957, the year after Brecht's death.

Answer: Noel Coward

The comedy "Blithe Spirit" was first performed in 1941 and was an immediate success. The plot concerns a writer, Charles Condomine, who finds himself haunted by the ghost of his first wife, Elvira, following an unsuccessful séance led by the medium Madame Arcati. His second wife, Ruth, can neither see nor hear the spirit, leading to predictable misunderstandings.

Answer: Noel Coward

"Private Lives" is one of Coward's most famous plays and was first performed in 1930. It deals with a divorced couple who each remarry, and then meet up again while on their respective honeymoons, finding themselves staying in the same hotel. The first production starred Coward himself and Gertrude Lawrence as the divorced pair, and Adrienne Allen and Lawrence Olivier as their new spouses.

Answer: Noel Coward

One of Coward's early hits, "Hay Fever" was first performed in 1925. It deals with the eccentric and self-absorbed Bliss family: parents Judith and David, and their children Simon and Sorel. One weekend, each of them invites a guest to their country house, without telling the others.

The weekend turns out just as disastrous as you would expect, with the Bliss family far more interested in themselves than in looking after their guests.

Answer: Noel Coward

"Present Laughter" was first performed in 1942, during the Second World War, when its light comedy provided a welcome distraction from real events. The leading character, Garry Essendine, is an amusingly exaggerated version of Coward himself, and the author played the role in the first production. During the play he has to deal with a serious of farcical incidents with his wife, secretary, various other women, and an insistent young playwright.