Laughter!
By: Peter Barnes
Contributors: Barnes, Peter, 1931-2004
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London]
Language: eng
Description: 'Laughter!', first performed in 1978 at the Royal Court Theatre, London, is a two act play that dramatises the screaming cruelty of Ivan the Terrible - the 16th century Russian Tsar - and the anaesthetized bureaucracy which administrated the Nazi concentration camps in the 20th century. With his daring treatment of concentration camps, involving a music-hall style routine, Peter Barnes probes the cavity between comedy and tragedy, examining the mechanisms - among them laughter - which dampen atrocity.
Notes: Previously published in print: in Plays one. London, Methuen Drama, 1996.