About the Play:

Edmond has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male Scenes.

Edmond is a full-length drama by David Mamet. An urban fable about a contemporary everyman whose search for meaning sends him on a dark and violent journey through a racially charged underworld. This stunning early Mamet play is one of his more frequently-produced works.

"You know how much of our life we're alive, you and me? Nothing. Two minutes out of the year. When we meet someone new, when we get married, when, when, when, when we're in difficulties… once in our life at the death of someone that we love. That's — in a car crash — and that's it. You know, you know, we're sheltered…."

Edmond is an edgy tale of one ill-fated evening in an average man's life. Edmond is a middle-aged, burnt-out businessman. He begins the play by candidly telling his wife that their life together is dead and he intends to leave immediately and begin a more engaged existence. A fortune-teller's teasing rumination sends Edmond lurching into New York City's hellish underworld, a landscape filled with hookers, pimps and like characters, his whole life abandoned in a searing quest for self-discovery and redemption. One man becomes every man, as a desperate search for meaning and purpose takes a devastating turn in this modern allegory.

Edmond premiered in 1982 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, followed by the first New York production later that year, off-Broadway at the Provincetown Playhouse. Kenneth Branagh starred as Edmond in a production of the play at the London's Royal National Theatre in 2003.

Cast: 8 female, 20 male (to be played by 4 female, 6 male)

What people say:

"Edmond is both bleak and scathingly funny... It's eerie, angry and punishing; yet it's so well done that you may actually smile at the end...." — New York Times

"A stunning amorality play, glittering and disturbing, suspended in the dark void of contemporary New York. It is also a technically adventurous piece pared brilliantly to the bone, highly theatrical in its scenic elisions." — Financial Times (London)

"Describes a world in which morality is tangential, in which there seems to be no moral feelings, only brutal, cruel ones, no concern for others, only selfishness and self interest." — Women's Wear Daily

"A play that blisters, disquiets, shatters, hurts…. An example of masterly control over a dizzying experience and it will knock you for a loop." — New York Daily News

"A riveting theatrical experience that illuminates the heart of darkness." — Newsweek

About the Playwright:

David Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter as well as a director, novelist, poet, and essayist. He has written the screenplays for more than twenty films, including the Oscar-nominated The Verdict. His more than twenty plays include the Pulitzer Prizewinning Glengarry Glen Ross. His other awards include a Tony Award, an Academy Award, two OBIE Awards, two NYDCC Awards, and Outer Circle, Society of West End Theatre, and Dramatists Guild Hall-Warriner Awards.