''On the Frontier: A Melodrama in Three Acts'', by

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

and Christopher Isherwood, was the third and last play in the Auden-Isherwood collaboration, first published in 1938. The play tells the story of the outbreak of war between the fictional European countries of Ostnia and Westland. Some of the action takes place in the "Ostnia-Westland Room", an imaginary setting in which two rooms, one in an Ostnian household, one in a Westland household, each occupy half the stage, and the family in one house are unaware of the family in the other - although the son and daughter of the two families sense each other's existence. Other scenes take place in the office of the Westland dictator. The play ends in a visionary scene between the two lovers who have never met in real life. The play was produced in October 1938 at the

Cambridge Arts Theatre Cambridge Arts Theatre is a 666-seat theatre on Peas Hill and St Edward's Passage in central Cambridge, England. The theatre presents a varied mix of drama, dance, opera and pantomime. It attracts some of the highest-quality touring productions ...

, in a production by the Group Theatre (London). The incidental music for the play was composed by

Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...

References

* Auden, W. H., and Christopher Isherwood. ''Plays and other dramatic writings by W. H. Auden, 1928-1939'', ed. by Edward Mendelson (1988). * John Fuller, ''W. H. Auden: A Commentary'' (1999). *

Edward Mendelson __NOTOC__ Edward Mendelson (born March 15, 1946) is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the au ...

, ''Early Auden'' (1981).

External links

The W. H. Auden Society
{{W. H. Auden Plays by W. H. Auden Plays by Christopher Isherwood 1938 plays Collaborative plays Faber and Faber books