Boz & Co.

$5.40 – $15.00

'Boz & Co' traces the attempt by James Boswell, the eighteenth-century biographer of Dr Johnson, to settle on a single, cohesive identity. The play explores his intimacy with three people: Zaide, the lively, unconventional blue-stocking writer with whom he has a tumultuous relationship, simultaneously wanting to marry her and being prevented by his own chauvinism; Dr Johnson, the wheezing literary sage of the coffee-houses, whom Boswell initially turned to as a father figure, but whom he eventually comes to regard as a pompous old fool; and John Reid, a felon convicted of sheep-stealing whom Boswell defended arduously in the courts, but is finally hanged. 'Boz & Co' suggests that far from being established truths, both history and human identity are created.

Equal second place in the 1998 Griffin Award.

APT