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Reckless

Reckless
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Author: Craig Lucas
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 72
Pub. Date: 1985
Edition: Acting
ISBN-10: 0822209373
ISBN-13: 9780822209379
Cast Size: 5 female, 4 male

About the Play:

Reckless has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.

Reckless is a full-length comedic drama by Craig Lucas. Rachel, a runaway wife, needs to dodge a murderous husband, a couple with almost as many secrets as she has, numerous psychiatrists (who may or may not help her), and an assortment of shady characters in an hilarious and sometimes nightmarish journey. Filled with bizarre characters and events, Reckless reflects the fractured life-styles which have become the norm for so many in our tenuous times. Especially recommended for school and contest use.

Reckless is a deeply moving story about running away from crisis and running toward yourself. At home on Christmas Eve, Rachel, a stay-at-home mother is informed by her guilty husband that he has hired a hitman to kill her, and she must flee for her life – which she does by scrambling out the kitchen window and into the snowy night. She meets and joins up with Lloyd Bophtelophti, a true "original" who has changed his name to avoid alimony payments and who now lives with a paraplegic named Pootie (who also pretends to be deaf in order to get double disability). Rachel then wins $100,000 on an inane TV game show "Your Mother or Your Wife!" and begins a series of picaresque escapades involving a succession of psychiatrists and, eventually, an ill-fated reunion with her husband. In the end, Rachel becomes a therapist herself, treating her own child (who fails to recognize her) and is led more and more to ponder whether the modern world might not be a vast conspiracy designed to systematically undermine her own increasingly shaky sanity. Told with the signature dark humor of Craig Lucas, this is a richly inventive and often startling dark comedy.

Reckless premiered in an earlier form Off-Off-Broadway by the Production Company in 1983 and marked the arrival of an exceptionally imaginative and resourceful young playwright. The first performance of the published version enjoyed an extended 125-performance run at Off-Broadway's Circle Repertory Company in Greenwich Village in 1988. Since then it has been consistently delighting audiences, was revived on Broadway in 2004 by Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) at the Biltmore Theater. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has become a staple of community theatres, regional repertory houses, and high schools.

Cast: 5 female, 4 male (doubling)

What people say:

"With Reckless… Mr. Lucas has given us a bittersweet Christmas fable for our time. It's a Wonderful Life as it might be reimagined for a bruising contemporary America in which homelessness may be a pervasive spiritual condition rather than a sociological crisis… Reckless… has a simple emotional pull akin to that of a Crosby ballad born of the lonely World War II home front, it yanks us through every conceivable absurdist hoop, fracturing narrative, language and characterization on the way to its rending destination." — New York Times

"Virtually every Christmas play is either a chestnut or aimed at children more than adults. Wouldn't it be great if there were a holiday play for grown-ups that was fresh, unpredictable, contemporary and entirely original? There is. It's Craig Lucas' wondrously wacky Reckless, and it has been gift-wrapped in a dream rendition that's at once seasonal, unusual and very funny." — Houston Chronicle

About the Playwright:

Craig Lucas is an American screenwriter, performer, stage and film director, and award-winning playwright. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony nominee, his honours include the L.A. Drama Critics Award, two OBIE Awards, and the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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