Book excerpt: (Applause Acting Series). This foray into the deeply serious and deeply funny (sometimes at the same time) world of life after 40 focuses primarily on scenes that depict the struggles of contemporary characters to come to terms with disappointment and obsolescence or to redeem their lives from the mistakes or miscalculations of their youth. It draws heavily on American classics like Long Day's Journey into Night , Death of a Salesman , The Price , Glengarry Glen Ross , Fences , and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , as well as more recent classics-in-the-making like August: Osage County , Good People , and God of Carnage . There is also ample representation from British playwrights like Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Simon Gray, and Peter Nichols, whose work also explores this territory of growing older in a society obsessed by youth and novelty.