The Power Plays

David E. Kemp, a former drama professor at Queen’s University, is the
author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

George F. Walker was playwright-in-residence at Factory Theatre Lab from
1971 to 1976 and its artistic director from 1978 to 1979. Two of the
plays in this collection were written during those years of remarkable
creative output.

The Power Plays—Gossip (1977), Filthy Rich (1979), and The Art of War
(1983)—were first published as a trilogy in 1986. This edition
completely revises and updates the plays; together, they act as a
showcase for Walker’s “film noir” period. Each play has a common
hero—or, more accurately, antihero. He is T.M. Power, a cynical and
alcohol-dependent newspaperman.

Gossip is a comic murder mystery that recalls American urban-crime
dramas such as Double Indemnity, Laura, and the film adaptations of
Raymond Chandler novels. In this brilliant play, Power investigates the
death of society matron Bitch Nelson.

Filthy Rich finds our antihero still drunk, but now a failed novelist
and a very reluctant private eye. He gets involved, against his will, in
the misadventures of the big city’s filthy rich. This play provides a
plethora of film noir imagery—gangsters, brutal cops, political graft,
and femmes fatales.

The Art of War finds Power in a new role. Now he’s a concerned
citizen spying on a vicious militarist who is the fascist adviser to the
Ministry of Culture. Power as an idealist seems a bit of a stretch, and
Walker himself is ambivalent about his hero’s born-again crusading.
But it all works wonderfully and is superbly theatrical, as is all
Walker’s work.