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| “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 |
| “It takes a tender man to make plays as tough as Neil LaBute's. No contemporary writer has more astutely captured the brutality in everyday conversation and behavior; that kind of insight requires sensitivity and soul-searching.” ——Elysa Gardner, USA Today
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| “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
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| “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 | |
The Break of Noon
Neil LaBute
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| Paper | 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 | 160 pgs. | ISBN: 1-59376-285-2 | List: $13.95 |
Coming September 2010 |
About the book: What if God told you to be a better person but the world wouldn’t allow it?
Such is the dilemma facing Joe Smith, a run-of-the-mill white-collar businessman who survives an office shooting and is subsequently touched by what he believes to be a divine vision. His journey toward personal enlightenment—past greed and lust and the other deadly sins—is, by turns, tense, hilarious, profane, and heartbreaking.
The Break of Noon will have its world premiere Off Broadway at Manhattan’s MCC Theater in the Fall of 2010. Exploring the narrow path to spiritual fulfillment and how strewn it is with the funny, frantic failings of humankind, the play showcases Neil LaBute at his discomfiting best.
About the author: Neil LaBute is a critically acclaimed playwright, filmmaker, and fiction writer. His most recent works for the stage include Fat Pig, which won the Outer Critics Circle Award for outstanding off-Broadway play, and Reasons to Be Pretty, which received a Tony nomination for best play.
From the book:
TALK SHOW HOST
You really do believe it, don’t you? That something happened to you in there. That day. That this Old Testament idea we have of a God—the flowing beard, the shining robes, all that—that he singled you out.
JOE
. . . yes. Of course.
(BEAT)
Why would I be here otherwise? I mean . . . why? I’m . . .
HOST
It’s all right. I don’t want you to have to defend yourself—all I’m saying is that you’re asking us to believe that you had a convertive experience at a moment when people all around you—good people, men and women with families, many with very strong Christian backgrounds—these folks were dying. Being hunted down and shot by a madman, and during that same moment, a man of no significant religious or moral background is singled out by God to live and to spread his glorious word to all of the unenlightened after his rescue. Joe?
Is that correct?
JOE
That’s not exactly . . . / I mean, yes, I was chosen to . . . but. Yeah. Basically. That’s how it happened.
(BEAT)
Yes. |
