Fierstein has said in interviews he’s thought of “revisiting” Arnold for a play, one that examines the seismic changes in the gay world since the early '80s (I don’t recall the first one even mentioning AIDS- may not have been an issue when the play was produced, though it was when the movie was made). It would also examine the often overlooked demo of aging gay guys (Arnold, if he’s the same age as Fierstein, would be in his mid 50s). To my knowledge he hasn’t done this, but I think it has extremely rich potential.
What was his rationale for doing so? Did he consider other early modern plays, like Part Two of Tamburlaine, to be legitimate sequels?
I seem to recall some sort of explanation that Shakespeare was more interested in covering the time periods than continuing a narrative thread via the characters, and setting doesn’t make a sequel…it didn’t sound so outrageous when I was 20, you know? I have no idea what she thought of other early modern plays since it never came up.
The Little Foxes is the sequel to Another Part of the Forest.
The Slab Boys by John Byrne now has 3 sequels which follow the characters through life.
The first one mainly revolves around apprentices in a carpet factory’s paint mixing room…
Near the end of Richard II, Bollingbrook (Henry IV) out of the blue asks if anyone has heard of the whearabouts of his previously unmentioned son, and that fact that he tends to hang around taverns with drunkards and ho’s, and then it’s back to the play.
Clearly setting up the sequeals.
Dennis Potter wrote two plays Karaoke and Cold Lazarus one was a follow on from the other, (although ther were supposed to be set quite some time apart). They were his last plays.