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Beggars in the House of Plenty
Beggars in the House of Plenty
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Author: John Patrick Shanley Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 63 Pub. Date: 1992 Edition: Acting ISBN-10: 0822213001 ISBN-13: 9780822213000 Cast Size: 3 female, 3 male
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About
the Play:
Beggars in the House of Plenty has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues and Male/Male Scenes.
Beggars in the House of Plenty is a full-length dramatic
comedy by John Patrick Shanley. In his most autobiographical
work, John Patrick Shanley takes on the demons and angels of
the past that are never quite put to rest because they are family.
Darkly funny and fast-paced, Beggars in the House of Plenty is
a gritty, surreal comedy that explores the myths and reality of
growing up in a dysfunctional working-class Irish-American family at
war with itself.
Beggars in the House of Plenty is packed with the wit,
insight, confusion, laughter and pain that only family can bring. At
once vulgar, poetic and brutally honest, this memory play leads us on
a journey told through the eyes of the author's stand-in, Johnny,
from his childhood in the Bronx of the mid-1950's to the turbulent
late 1960's and finally the perspective of his adulthood. Johnny is
the youngest and most sensitive of three siblings stranded in an
Irish-American working-class household lorded over by their father,
an immigrant butcher, and their mother, a superficially encouraging
but emotionally blocked wreck of a woman who can only grant chill
advice, not comfort. Johnny's excessively cheerful sister Sheila
escapes the hellish household via marriage, while his brother Joey
flees to the Navy, and eventually returns from duty as directionless
and unfulfilled as ever. Alone, Johnny indulges his budding
fascination with pyromania and writing about his family. As Johnny
matures, he becomes increasingly perceptive, revealing with more and
more sympathy the underlying causes of so much family misery. In
between Johnny's musings are raucous scenes of catastrophic violence
barely held in check by each character's submerged but instinctual
need for the love of one another. In the play's final scenes, part
memory, part hallucination and part truth, Ma is seen through
Johnny's eyes as she once was: innocent and flirtatious (even with
Johnny), and painfully unprepared for her ultimate destination with
Pop. The father is also transfigured in Johnny's imagination: broken,
remorseful and unable to identify with the mantle of fatherhood that
his own unhappy upbringing and its crippling legacy has inflicted
upon him. As the forgiving vision begins, Pop and Ma dance to "Danny
Boy," the song to which they used to force their children to
dance, but Johnny, now an angry young man, must confront Ma and Pop,
the demons that have made him and destroyed Joey, leading to a
shattering resolution. John Patrick Shanley went on from this
deeply autobiographical work to win an Oscar, a Tony, and a Pulitzer
Prize for Moonstruck and Doubt.
Beggars in the House of Plenty premiered in 1991 at the
Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) off-Broadway in New York City. It's
Canadian premiere was in 1992
at Station Street Arts Centre in Vancouver. The play had regional premieres at professional theatres across
the US and "has
been a theatre staple ever since, a meaty meal, bereft of ham, for
the right cast." —
(Vancouver
Sun)
Cast: 3 female, 3 male
What people say:
"…crackles with the energy
of artists who are going places…a theatrical event not likely to
recur anytime soon… In a breathless 90 minutes, 40 topsy-turvy
years of family life flood across the stage." — New
York Times
"…Painfully funny… a
memory play that is like Eugene O'Neill as seen through the eyes of a
Tennessee Williams influenced by Eugene Ionesco." — New
York Post
"…funny and profoundly
painful at the same time… a play to be seen more than once."
— Chelsea Journal
"Under the tender hand of
Larry Moss…we sit transfixed, transported to
the excruciatingly painful life of young Johnny, Shanley's alter ego.
…it's so right, we're left shattered by the imagery, in awe
of the artistry." — Backstage
About the Playwright:
John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright,
screenwriter, and director. Shanley has written some two dozen off
Broadway plays since the 1970s, but he is best known for Doubt,
which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award. He has also written
extensively for TV and film, and his credits include the teleplay for
Live from Baghdad and screenplays for Five Corners and
Moonstruck, for which he won an Academy Award for original
screenplay.
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