Filthy Talk for Troubled Times: And Other Plays - Softcover

LaBute, Neil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593762828 ISBN 13: 9781593762827

Publisher: Soft Skull Press, 2010

Synopsis

Neil LaBute burst onto the American theater scene in 1989 with his controversial debut work Filthy Talk for Troubled Times. Set in a barroom in Anytown USA and populated by a series of everymen (and two beleaguered everywomen), this series of frank exchanges explores the innumerable varieties of American intolerance. A unique snapshot of the times, the play seldom allowed production by the author since provides a compelling look at the early thinking and evolution of one of our great theater artists.
Also in this collection is a series of new, short works, some never before produced. They include The New Testament,” a showbiz satire that takes a close look at the perils of color-blind casting, and The Furies,” in which a woman helps navigate her brother’s breakup with his out-and-then-perhaps, in-the-closet-again lover.

About this title

Review

Praise for Neil LaBute

The reigning prince of Off Broadway.” David Amsden, New York

LaBute [is] the dark shining star of stage and film morality.” Linda Winer, Newsday

There is something of the sinister menace of Pinter in LaBute's work (along with David Mamet, he is very much the heir apparent to that master).” Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

A connoisseur of unsettling emotion . . . LaBute’s psychological terrain is the punishing slippery slope of ambivalence. In his hands, this bedeviling state of spiritual stasis comes with a distinctive sound, a sensational hemming and hawing, which poetically betrays the mind boxing clever with itself.” John Lahr, The New Yorker

Like a giant, mischievous child poking a dog with a stick, Neil LaBute delights in seeing what he can get away with. [He's] the bad boy of American theater . . . Dangerous and devastatingly funny.” Jumana Farouky, Time

LaBute[ s] judgment of his fellow men makes the Old Testament Jehovah look like a softie . . . his talents go beyond glibly vicious storytelling and extend into thoughtful analyses of a world rotten with original sin.” Ben Brantley, The New York Times

There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute.” John Lahr, The New Yorker

About this edition

• Publisher: Soft Skull Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1593762828
• ISBN 13: 9781593762827
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144