About the Play:

Prodigal Son is a full-length drama by John Patrick Shanley. When a troubled but gifted boy from the Bronx arrives at a private school in in New England, two faculty members wrestle with how to help him adjust to his new environment. As with his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Doubt, John Patrick Shanley has drawn on his personal experiences to create an explosive portrait of a young man on the verge of either salvation or destruction.

Prodigal Son is inspired by a pivotal time in John Patrick Shanley's own life at a boarding school in New Hampshire in the 1960s. Most of the students at the Roman Catholic private school come from upper middle class backgrounds. Seventeen-year-old Jim Quinn, however – the central character, representing Shanley – is a working class kid uprooted from the South Bronx, on the verge of salvation or destruction as he desperately tries to fit in at the elite school. He's violent, gifted, alienated, and on fire with a ferocious loneliness. Two faculty members must wrestle with the dilemma: Is the young man a genius or a complete disaster and harmful to the students? A harrowing coming-of-age tale from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Doubt.

Prodigal Son premiered in 2016 at the Manhattan Theatre Club off-Broadway in New York City. The play has been performed in reregional, high school, college, and community theatre productions

Cast: 1 female, 4 male

What people say:

"…savvy and often moving…a return to form for John Patrick Shanley…In monologue and dialogue, Shanley communicates Jim's vast confidence and vaster insecurity, the workings of his creative mind and the fumblings of his wounded heart." — The Guardian (UK)

"…a keen, passionate portrait of the author as a poetry-spouting romantic punk torn between literary dreams and his roots in the Bronx…Prodigal Son is pure, splendid Shanley: shaggily idealistic and always scratching a philosophical itch underneath jokes and banter." — Time Out NY

"Prodigal Son is a heart-sore portrait of adolescent turmoil that bears the stamp of hard-earned truth on every scene…[it's] the best thing that Mr. Shanley has given us since Doubt. You can't get much better than that." — The Wall Street Journal

"Shanley chooses characters stretched to the breaking point between rage and love... His are characters of obsessive passions who match those passions with hyper-melodic language." — BOMB magazine

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.