You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running.

First edition of Robert Anderson's quartet of one-act comedies, among the longest-running non-musical hits of the 1960s Broadway stage. Octavo, original half cloth, top stain orange, illustrated with production photographs. Association copy, inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the front free endpaper to the director of its Broadway premiere, "Dear Alan, This was indeed a Happy Reunion! Thank you for shepherding the whole thing to such success so splendidly! Bob. Nov. 18, 1967." The recipient, Alan Schneider, directed the original production of You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running, which opened at the Ambassador Theatre on March 13, 1967 with a cast led by Martin Balsam, Eileen Heckart, and George Grizzard and ran for more than 750 performances, one of the director's rare and most lucrative commercial triumphs. Russian-born and raised in Baltimore, Schneider became the foremost American interpreter of the postwar avant-garde: he staged the legendary 1956 American premiere of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot at Miami's Coconut Grove Playhouse and went on to become Beckett's closest and most trusted American collaborator, directing the United States premieres of Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Happy Days, and nearly all of the playwright's stage work, as well as Beckett's only screenplay, Film (1965), starring Buster Keaton. He won the 1963 Tony Award for his direction of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and led the American premieres of further Albee plays including Tiny Alice and A Delicate Balance, while also introducing audiences to Harold Pinter through productions of The Collection and The Birthday Party. A tireless man of the theater long associated with the Arena Stage in Washington and a dedicated teacher of acting and directing, Schneider mounted well over a hundred productions on and off Broadway across his career before his sudden death in London in 1984, struck by a motorcycle as he crossed the street to post a letter; he recounted his singular life in the art in the posthumously published memoir Entrances: An American Director's Journey. That the present copy should pass from the playwright to the man who shepherded his greatest commercial success makes it an especially resonant theatrical association. Fine in a very good dust jacket. An exceptional association copy, uniting playwright and director. You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running (1967) is a quartet of one-act comedies by the American playwright Robert Anderson (1917-2009): The Shock of Recognition, The Footsteps of Doves, I'll Be Home for Christmas, and I'm Herbert. Wry and bittersweet meditations on sex, marriage, and aging, the four plays opened together on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on March 13, 1967, under the direction of Alan Schneider and with a cast including Martin Balsam, Eileen Heckart, and George Grizzard, and became one of the decade's longest-running non-musical hits, playing more than 750 performances. Anderson was among the most successful American playwrights and screenwriters of his era, best known for the play Tea and Sympathy (1953) and the autobiographical I Never Sang for My Father (1968), and for the screenplays of The Nun's Story and The Sand Pebbles, both of which earned him Academy Award nominations. Married to the actress Teresa Wright, he was a founder of the New Dramatists and a president of the Dramatists Guild.…