The Day Room (Plays, Penguin) - Softcover

DeLillo, Don

3.63

395 ratings by Goodreads

9780140482294: The Day Room (Plays, Penguin)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140482296 ISBN 13: 9780140482294

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1989

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The play opens in a hospital; the characters are patients, doctors and nurses. It is a recognizable, predictable world. And yet, as the scenes unfold -- in dialogue crackling with intelligence and insight, with incandescent bite and humour -- our sense of normalcy is rocked from under us. Are these doctors and nurses really just patients from the Arno Klein Psychiatric Wing? Or are they something else entirely: people who are playing psychiatric patients playing doctors and nurses? And who, exactly, is Arno Klein? Described by the Boston Globe on its first performance as 'an unselfconscious, fizzing, inventive black comedy that is enormously funny', The Day Room displays Don DeLillo's extraordinary talents in the brightest of lights.

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From Library Journal:

DeLillo ( The Names, White Noise) is a well known novelist with a loyal following; this is his first play. As one would expect, it is a fractured view of reality, a black comedy. For those who thought absurdism was finished as a stage language, here it is, full blown, still able to puzzle, shock, and amuse. Set in a hospital, the play rapidly destroys the distinctions between patients and staff until it is impossible to tell who is ill and who is not. Our fears of hospitals, death, and insanity are allowed full reign. Language breaks down, and finally, the perception of reality dissolves into questions about personal identity and the possibility of meaningful communication. This is not for everyone, but it plays well. A new turn in DeLillo's career. Thomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., Mass.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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