Three Plays: The Political Theater of Howard Zinn: Emma, Marx in Soho, Daughter of Venus

The first act of 'Emma,' Howard Zinn's play about Emma Goldman, is a small miracle. Here is a drama that holds down the heroics, polemics and didacticism to which works about heroes and heroines are prone. True, Emma is idealized; she is loving, honest, selfless, daring, but she is also human and believable.—Walter Goodman, New York Times"[Marx in Soho is] an imaginative critique of our society's hypocrisies and injustices, and an entertaining, vivid portrait of Karl Marx as a voice of humanitarian justice – which is perhaps the best way to remember him."—Kirkus Reviews"[Daughter of Venus's] central concerns – personal and social ethics; the balance of obligations to ourselves, our families, and our fellow citizens; the uses and abuses of political and scientific power – remain as timely as ever. . . . Zinn not only displays a fluid and passionately committed style but also is attempting to do something interesting with it: to interweave a story of familial tensions and national politics, and in doing so to remind us that the way we live our lives on the small, local, day-to-day scale of family life can have repercussions and implications for the life of the nation at large."—Louise Kennedy, Boston Globe