Introduction -- A recluse and his guest -- Now the cats with jeweled claws -- Steps must be gentle -- Ivan's widow -- This is the peaceable kingdom -- Aimez-vous Ionesco? -- The demolition downtown -- Lifeboat drill -- Once in a lifetime -- The strange play

"This new collection of fantastic, lesser-known one-acts contains some of Williams's most potent, witty and wild late plays written from 1971 to 1982--Upper East Side ladies dine out during the apocalypse in Now the Cats With Jeweled Claws; a pair of nonagenarians struggle to cope on the Queen Elizabeth II in Lifeboat Drill; the poet Hart Crane makes peace with his mother at the bottom of the ocean in Steps Must Be Gentle; and madness bewitches the occupants during a nursing home strike in This Is the Peaceable Kingdom. Previously unpublished late plays include Aimez-Vous Ionesco?, a parody of the Theater of the Absurd; A Recluse and His Guest, a fable about a traveling woman in a dark world who can only go forward, never back; and Ivan's Widow, in which a psychiatrist and his young female patient engage in sexual power play that leads to murder."--