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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 812.54
EAN num: 9781559361231
ISBN number: 1559361239
Label: Theatre Communications Group
Manufacturer: Theatre Communications Group
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 300
Printing Date: December 01, 1996
Publishing house: Theatre Communications Group
Sale Popularity Level: 209573
Studio: Theatre Communications Group
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Amazon.com Review:
At this point in his career, you can almost visualize producers camped-out beside playwright Nicky Silver's door. Almost everything he writes gets produced, generally Off-Broadway, and almost everything produced gets raves and goes on to be staged at resident companies everywhere. Etiquitte and Vitriol is a rare opportunity to experience the uniquely neurotic comedy of Silver, both before his huge sucess when he was shaping his instrument, and after he becomes one of the most widely produced contemporary American playwrights. The latter two are his hits, The Food Chain and Pterodactyls. The earlier pieces are, Fat Men in Skirts (about cannibals, no less) and Free Will & Wanton Lust. He hasn't had a Broadway show, yet, but if you want to get a sense if his range, this volume is an admirable introduction.
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Rated by buyers -
This collection of plays has the ability to satisfy both the comic and tragic needs of any dramatic reader. Silver's ability to write dark comedy is perhaps unparalleled by any living playwright. He has the skill to smoothly draw the reader into an entertaining story, and then to slowly put the reader off-guard until you find yourself wrapped up in the middle of a very dark narrative.
Silver uses many different theatrical approaches in the collection. Most of his plays are a mix of dialogue and monolgue, and he often takes modernist perspectives of staging. In any given play he will engage two opposing dramatic styles -- such as Noel Coward v. Berthold Brecht in Free Will and Wanton Lust -- to accentuate his message. The playwright's language flows easily and the dialogue is smooth. While some characters at times appear to have a forced three-dimensionality, the reader feels that Silver is doing this on purpose.
The greatest benefit of Silver's gift is that, through comedy and the guise of comedy, he is able to present otherwise difficult subjects to us, such as deeper meanings of love and hate, loneliness, self-denial, and spiritual needs. Recommended for all theatre fans.
Rated by buyers -
When I was a theatre student I rarely found plays that excited me to actually want to read, direct, or act in. I was on a crusade one year buying script after script after script. Usually I would be bored and put them down after the very first scene. When I picked up Etiquette and Vitriol I think I almost died. Here was a gay playwright who didn't write your normal "I'm ok and I'm gay" play. He writes about the deconstruction of families and relationships. He has an amazing ability to give you something so horribly disgusting and then to make you laugh at it. Like in FAT MEN IN SKIRTS which is a dark comedy about a mother and son who are trapped on a desert island and their struggles to survive and their inability to acclimate back to civilized culture. At the end of the very first act the mother is raped by the son and in the back ground you here Bali Hai from SOUTH PACIFIC, if you get the reference of the song there is almost no way you can stop from laughing but then you realize what you are laughing at. That is the brilliance of his writing. I highly recommend all of his works!
Rated by buyers -
Nicky Silver's work will in time be noticed by the masses. For now, his plays will intrigue and entertain the relatively small number of people that pays allegiance to them. Etiquette and Vitriol is a well-shaped, fully engaging product. And it's funny. Extremely. It's hillarious really. And textured and smart. The work brings in characters of all sizes, and plants them together upon the stage, focusing on relationships -- familial, social, sexual... Each of the plays is hardly cluttered however. We are given a few figures to work with and thus these figures must be and are quite complex. They carry with them a certain authenticity often unrealized by many a playwright. Silver's work is impressive and sure to make jealous any aspiring artist. Buy the book. You'll love it.
Rated by buyers -
This anthology is a good introduction to Nicky Silver. It provides the reader with a well-rounded overview of Silver's work, and I enjoyed reading the author's own comments on the plays in the introduction.
Rated by buyers -
if you buy no other anthology this year...you must own this one. nicky silver remains one of the american theatre's funniest, smartest, most exciting writers. if you like your comedy served up with the occassional gut-punch, you can't go wrong. exciting, viscerally engaging, challenging...i can't say enough. this is a collection of plays bound to endure.
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