Someone recently asked about novels that are set in the year 194-, or take place in the province of R-----------. I hope the person who posed that question was satisified with the answers (s)he was given.
My question has to do with setting a play in “The Present.” Look Back in Anger, for example, is set in the present, and yet the action clearly happens in a particular time: main character Jimmy Porter has experience as an air raid warden, and there is talk about the hydrogen bomb. Sounds like the events are happening shortly after WWII.
What are we to make of this? Are we supposed to pretend, in spite of the clear references to things past, that it is taking place in the present?
I remember when A Chorus Line was running on Broadway it took place “in the present,” according to the Playbill, even when its 1970’s-era costumes and book made that seem laughable. After a while – perhaps when it toured after it closed – they changed the time of the action to “in the mid-1970’s” (or something like that).