Stopping by woods on a snowy evening and other plays : nine monologue plays / by Don Nigro.

[New York] : Samuel French, [2015]

73 pages ; 20 cm.

This collection of nine monologue plays, five for women and four for men, takes us on a journey back and forth in time from as long ago as 1392 (Gringonneur, in which a painter is slowly driven mad by an enchanted deck of tarot cards) through 1903 (Portal, in which the landscape architect who designed Central Park reveals a conspiracy to conceal the gateway to a vast hidden labyrinth and another dimensions lurking under Manhattan island), to 1940 (Mermaid, in which Inspector John Ruffing returns, now an old man patrolling the English coast during the Blitz, haunted by his lost wife turned mermaid, luring him into the sea), to 1954 (Lagoon, in which Meredith Cherry believes the Creature From The Black Lagoon is creeping up the steps into her bedroom at night) to the present (Nothingness, in which Ben Palestrina, now 62, is troubled by a terrible vision of an infinite abyss of nothingness first imagined by David Hume, and is somewhat comforted by billiard balls) and the trilogy Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, Just Out The Corner Of Her Eye, and Muse, in which Jasmine, a beautiful but troubled girl, tries to find something in her world she can hold onto. A rich and complex collection of monologues through which recurring themes of loss, madness, the fragile nature of our hold on what we imagine is reality and the enduring power of love intertwine.

English

August 31, 2016