A delightfully absurdist play that questions the nature of storytelling and challenges theatrical form.

"Anne Washburn’s downright brilliant play has arrived to leave you dizzy with the scope and dazzle of its ideas." - The New York Times It’s the end of everything in contemporary America. A future without power. But what will survive? Mr Burns asks how the stories we tell make us the people we are, explodes the boundaries between pop and high culture and, when society has crumbled, imagines the future for America’s most famous family. A delightfully bizarre, funny, bleak and wonderful play that challenges dramatic form and the nature of theatre as storytelling. Published for the first time in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series, this edition features a new introduction by Charlotte Higgins.

"Anne Washburn’s downright brilliant “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” has arrived to leave you dizzy with the scope and dazzle of its ideas" - New York Times

"Gradually this absurd, unreal performance comes to encapsulate not just the old, now-mythical way of life but also our own. The intellectual fascination of the material meshes with emotional significance on an instinctual level." - Financial Times

"Washburn’s play is pretty out there in many respects, but each scenario is beautifully realised, and it presents a compelling query: faced with uncertainty, would we salvage what’s ‘important’ for the human race? Or what comforts us? And is there really a difference? … the bold vistas of Washburn’s imagination are thrillingly provocative in themselves… its message is ultimately a comforting one: just like cockroaches and Twinkies, theatre and stories will survive the end of days, no matter how strangely" - Time Out London