The Problematic Anglo-American 'Special Relationship' in Turn-of-the-Millennium British Drama

This dissertation explores the role of British playwrights during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in providing a composite picture of a nation suffering a crisis of identity. This malaise, I argue, is the consequence of a triadic confluence of historical phenomena, which I figuratively depict as the interlocking rings of a Borromean knot: the precipitous loss of empire, Britain's reluctance to reconcile itself to the ensuing loss of prestige, and, at the crux of this study, the country's "special" relationship" with the United States---that is, the belief in an immutable but fallacious connection that acts as a compensatory factor to relieve the ignominy of no longer being assured a place at the international top table. I explore how a composite of plays suggests that the nature of this relationship has not only influenced foreign policy, but has permitted an unhealthy seepage of American ideology and popular culture into the fabric of British society, allowing government policies and cultural practices to be adopted that are intrinsic to American culture, but rests less easily with a British cultural tradition that since World War II has valued social solidarity and a prioritized the community over the individual.;The plays under discussion are stylistically varied. They span the epic history and verbatim plays of Howard Brenton, David Hare and Gregory Burke, and include the highly performative work of Caryl Churchill. They point to the politics in the comic agony of Harold Pinter's gnomic plays, in the satiric farce of Alan Ayckbourn, and in the iconoclastic brutality of the in-yer-face plays of the 1990's. I place them all under the banner of state-of-nation drama, in that, with the versatility of theatrical art, they mirror the nation's situation, one fraught with paradox, ambiguity and complexity. This study proposes that recent British theater, both directly and indirectly, conveys the message that a healthier national identity is called for---one that relies less on the "special relationship" and focuses more on values consonant with Britain's inherent character.