Plays six
By: Howard Barker
Series: Oberon modern playwrights; Modern playwrights
Publisher: Oberon Books Ltd
Published: 2010
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 334
ISBN-13: 9781840029611
Subjects: English drama; Plays
Other titles: Plays 6
Work titles: Plays
Description: "(Uncle) Vanya, Barker's radical rewriting of Chekhov's classic, brought him more controversy than most of his other works put together. Interrogating not so much Chekhov's text as the use to which society has put it, Barker turns Vanya's defeat into victory and converts a play of sadness into a tragedy of desire. A House of Correction is a meditation on cause and effect. Set on the eve of a war which may destroy a society, the seemingly arbitrary arrival of a messenger with a vital communication sets off an agonizing train of events in the lives of three desperate women. Few works of drama can have plumbed the depths of solitude and rage that characterize Let Me, a nightmare set on the frontiers of the Roman Empire during the barbarian invasions.Biblical narratives serve as the origin of two shorter works, of which Judith is a contemporary classic of cultural conflict, a reinterpretation of the status of the heroine in Israel's war of survival against the Assyrians. In Lot and His God, the imminent destruction of Sodom simultaneously licenses the moral decay of an angel and the erotic epiphany of an adored wife."--Publisher description.
Table of contents: title: (Uncle) Vanya; title: A house of correction; title: Let me; title: Judith; title: Lot and his God.