Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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Ebook167 pages1 hour
Downstate (NHB Modern Plays)
By Bruce Norris
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
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Currently unavailable
About this ebook
In downstate Illinois, four men convicted of sex crimes against minors share a group home where they live out their lives in the shadow of the offences they committed. A man shows up to confront his childhood abuser – but does he want closure or retribution?
Bruce Norris's provocative play Downstate zeroes in on the limits of our compassion and what happens when society deems anyone beyond forgiveness. It received its UK premiere at the National Theatre, London, in March 2019, in the same production which had its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, in September 2018.
'An unsentimental act of compassion and a devastating entertainment, a wry polemic and the darkest of dark comedies' - Chicago Reader
'[An] audacious, highly charged play' - Daily Herald
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Author
Bruce Norris
Bruce Norris is a writer and an actor whose Pulitzer Prize- and Olivier Award-winning play Clybourne Park premiered at Playwrights Horizons in January 2010. Other plays include The Infidel, Purple Heart, We All Went Down to Amsterdam, The Pain and the Itch, and The Unmentionables, all of which premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre. Norris is the recipient of the 2009 Steinberg Playwright Award and the Whiting Foundation Prize for Drama. He resides in New York.
Read more from Bruce Norris
Clybourne Park: A Play Downstate (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
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Reviews for Downstate (NHB Modern Plays)
Rating: 4.285714285714286 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
7 ratings1 review
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Unapologetic pedophile propaganda. The play tries to pretend that three rapists aren't irredeemably bad people, and tries to make their crimes seem not as bad by tying them to a man who mistakenly had sex with an adolescent. At no point did I sympathize with any of these homo pedophiles, and the best part of the play is when one of them hangs himself. I wish the play ended with Andy beating every last one of them to death, and then the jury lets him off with a "No True Bill" verdict.