About the Play:

Winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

All the Way Home is a full-length drama by Tad Mosel, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Death in the Family, by James Agee, a semi-autobiographical work about the impact of his own father's death on his family. A portrait of early twentieth century family life and the crushing intrusion of sudden death. Especially recommended for school and contest use.

The sudden death of a Southern husband and father and its effect on his family is the subject of Tad Mosel's Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of James Agee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family. While the play is set over 100 years ago in Knoxville, Tennessee, it explores all the universal emotions that ring true today when a loved one is suddenly taken away. The Folletts are a close-knit family, although they have different temperaments and beliefs. Jay is a reformed alcoholic who has turned to a more stable family life and career. His wife, Mary, is deeply religious. They truly love each other, although some issues, such as her zealous approach to religion and her reluctance to tell their son, Rufus, about her pregnancy, create conflict between the two. When Jay, who is a husband, a father, a son and a brother, dies unexpectedly in a car accident during a visit to see his ailing father, the tragic death shatters the hearts of his wife and young son and leaves his extended family in shock and to cope with the loss.

All the Way Home premiered in 1960 and was a critical and popular success on Broadway at the Belasco Theater in New York City. It was nominated for the 1961 Tony Award for the Best Play and won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1961, making it the second (and, so far, last) work to win dual Pulitzers, first as a novel, then as a play. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional repertory, middle school, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 7 female, 6 male, 1 male child, extras

What people say:

"A striking drama about death...A somber and beautiful play." — New York Post

"A quiet compassion that one will remember long after some of the theatre's flashier sensations." — The New York Times

"Without preaching, Mosel presents a heart-wrenching portrait of people in deep crisis...." — Variety

About the Playwright:

Tad Mosel (1922-2008) was an American playwright and writer for the early live television series Playhouse 90, Omnibus, Goodyear Television Playhouse, and Chevrolet Tele-Theater. He was known – along with Paddy Chayefsky, Gore Vidal and Rod Serling – for making dramatic plays a staple of network broadcasts, but it was a play he wrote for the theatre, All the Way Home, that earned him a Pulitzer Prize.