Noonday demons
By: Peter Barnes
Contributors: Barnes, Peter, 1931-2004
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London]
Language: eng
Subjects: Drama
Description: St Eusebius is in devotional exile in the desert, alone apart from a tower of his own excrement, enduring extreme physical deprivation for the betterment of his soul and apologising to the maggots that live in his festering flesh. After a desperate struggle with a Cockney demon that speaks through Eusebius's mouth, he is challenged by St Pior, a rival hermit, to a bizarre duel of piety. With a mixture of slapstick, rhetoric, religious fervour and red-blooded vernacular, Barnes creates a comic theatre of opposites. 'Noonday Demons' was premiered with 'Leonardo's Last Supper' in 1969 at the Open Space Theatre.
Notes: Previously published in print: in Plays one. London, Methuen Drama, 1996.