Howard Barker Collected Plays, Volume 2

by Howard Barker

Volume Two of the Collected Plays comprises six works, the earliest of which, The Love of a Good Man (1975), is an iconoclastic comedy whose theme - the mass burial of war dead - is explored both from the erotic and political point of view. Barker's The Possibilities (1988) are well-established in the international theatre repertoire; a series of ten pieces on irrationality and the limits of logic. The characters act against their own interests, but in doing so, both refine and compicate their humanity. The repuditation of humanist stereotypes in Brutopia (1989) reveals new elements in Barker's oeuvre. A ripsoste to the conventional image of Thomas More, this play takes as its starting point the alienation of the least favoured of his daughters and her secret composition of a counter-text to her gathers classic, Utopia. This is Barker's method par excellence - invented history, speculative morality, worlds within worlds. Rome (1989) is the most ambitious work undertaken by him to date and the most innovatory in form with its interwoven narratives, asides and digressions. Its concerns are spirituality, culture and sacrifice.Barker has returned again and again to the great classics of the past, not to modernise but to renegotiate them. His Uncle Vanya (1991) shows as man redeemed from self-disgust and liberated from the Chekhovian half-light to a world of sexual assertion. The appearance of Chekhov himself in the midst of his characters' rebellionm serves to hasten his own death and the passionate bid of Vanya for authentic life. Finally, Ten Dilemmas (1992) , perhaps the most complete tragedy Barker has written, tells of the agonized passion of a man and a woman whose collusive impotence arouses the wrath of the collective - the ultimate rebellion against conditioned existence.

Genres: Plays, Drama

400 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1990

About the author

Howard Barker is an English playwright. His plays have been produced at the Royal Court, the RSC and the National Theatre, throughout Europe and the USA and by his own company, The Wrestling School. He is best known as the exponent of the Theatre of Catastrophe. He is a theatre theorist, a poet and a painter. His work has been the subject of a number of book-length studies and academic conferences.

Reviews

[Harry McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Properly difficult, properly brilliant.

[Lucien · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Castle ***
Gertrude ****
Animals in Paradise ***
13 Objects ****