Includes the plays They Came to a City, Summer Day’s Dream and The Glass Cage
With an introduction by Tom Priestley.
All three dramas in this second volume of J B Priestley’s plays investigate the question of an individual’s responsibility towards his or her family and community. In They Came to a City, written at the height of the Second World War, a mixed bag of Britons mysteriously find themselves outside a strange city. What kind of ‘New Jerusalem’ is this, and will it suit everybody?
Summer Day’s Dream, first performed in 1949, is set in the future – 1975. In a Britain bombed back into pre-industrial past, three representatives of the new world order disturb the tranquil lives of three generations of an English family. The themes of hypocrisy and redemption are brought to the fore in The Glass Cage, when three black sheep of a respectable Toronto clan are grudgingly welcomed back into the family home.
