The Designated Mourner - Acting Edition
by Wallace Shawn
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Book Summary Information
Author: Wallace ShawnEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-01-01
ISBN: 0822218488
Number of pages: 72
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Book Reviews of The Designated Mourner - Acting Edition
Book Review: Taking America's Temperature
Summary: 3 Stars
Shawn is a remarkable thinker, but a limited dramatist. One gets the sense that the theater itself, as a genre, is a bit too low for him, that 'playing' to an audience is a compromise he'd just as soon not make. So be it. The theater needs someone like him and, evidently, he can afford to live off the proceeds of his 20-seat chamber pieces. His themes are exciting here and in other works such as "My Dinner With Andre" and "The Fever," to take but two examples. He is distrustful of the highly sophisticated cultural world he grew up in, distrustful of intellectuals, afraid of the powers intellectuals have to deceive themselves and others into believing, among other things, that there is no morality. While other artists seek admission to this rarefied world, Wallace Shawn takes a step back. In this play, Jack plays a kind of Aunt Dan character, the highly persuasive lover of evil, the entrancing deceiver, the empty aesthete, who is capable of murder or complacency, or indifference. It's unnerving material. Shawn is one of the handful of playwrights worldwide willing to attack his self-satisfied audience, full of snobby, snotty 'innocents'. This play is rich, but as drama it fails. It belongs to the other immortal Greek tradition; it is a platonic dialog.
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