The Designated Mourner - Softcover

Shawn, Wallace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1559363622 ISBN 13: 9781559363624

Publisher: Theatre Communications Group, 2010

Synopsis

“The play nicely combines Pinterian menace with caustic political commentary.” –Time

“Acerbic, elusive, poetic and chilling, the writing is demanding in a rarefied manner. Its implications are both affecting and disturbing.” –Los Angeles Times

“In his exquisitely written dramatic lament for the decline of high culture. . . . [Shawn] offers a definition of the self that should rattle the defenses of intellectual snobs everywhere.” –The New York Times

Writer and performer Wallace Shawn’s landmark 1996 play features three characters—a respected poet, his daughter, and her English-professor husband—suspected of subversion in a world where culture has come under the control of the ruling oligarchy. Told through three interwoven monologues, the Orwellian political story is recounted alongside the visceral dissolution of a marriage. The play debuted at the Royal National Theatre in London, in a production directed by David Hare, who also directed the film version, starring Mike Nichols and Miranda Richardson. The play’s subsequent New York premiere was staged in a long-abandoned men’s club in lower Manhattan, directed by Shawn’s longtime collaborator André Gregory.

Wallace Shawn is the author of Our Late Night (OBIE Award for Best Play), Marie and Bruce, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Fever, and the screenplay for My Dinner with André. His most recent play, Grasses of a Thousand Colors, premiered last year in London.

About this title

About the Author:

Wallace Shawn is the author of "Our Late Night" (OBIE Award Best Play) "Marie and Bruce", "Aunt Dan and Lemon", "The Designated Mourner", "The Fever", among other plays, and the screenplay for "My Dinner with André". He has translated and adapted "The Threepenny Opera", "The Master Builder" and "The Mandrake".

From Publishers Weekly:

Wallace Shawn (A Modest Proposal), known to some as that guy in Clueless, has written a new play called The Designated Mourner. With only three characters and a number of intimate monologues, the play stands up very well as a text. The narrator, Jack, who has married into an elite literary coterie, survives an uprising of the underprivileged that has extinguished his highbrow, literary community, and he finds that he is the only remaining witness.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1559363622
• ISBN 13: 9781559363624
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108