Plays: One

by Enda Walsh

The first eight astonishing plays by Enda Walsh. Bursting onto the theatre scene in 1996 with Disco Pigs , Enda Walsh has delivered a sustained fusillade of strikingly original plays ever since. This volume, with a Foreword by the author, The Ginger Ale Boy (Walsh's first play, previously unpublished)
Disco Pigs misterman
bedbound The Small Things
Chatroom Also included are two previously unpublished short plays, How These Desperate Men Talk (2004) and Lynndie's Gotta Gun (2005).

Genres: Plays, Ireland, Theatre

256 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2011

About the author

Enda Walsh (born 1967) is an Irish playwright born in Dublin and currently living in London. Walsh attended the same secondary school where both Roddy Doyle and Paul Mercier taught. Having written for the Dublin Youth Theatre, he moved to Cork where he wrote Fishy Tales for the Graffiti Theatre Company, followed by Ginger Ale Boy for Corcadorca Theatre Company. His main breakthrough came with the production of his play Disco Pigs in collaboration with director Pat Kiernan of Corcadorca. Since then he moved to London, where he has been particularly prolific over the past five years, bringing his productions to thirteen stage plays, two radio plays and two screenplays.

Winner of the 1997 Stewart Parker and the George Devine Awards, he won the Abbey Theatre Writer in Association Award for 2006. Productions of his plays at the Edinburgh Festival have won four Fringe First Awards, two Critic's Awards and a Herald Archangel Award (2008). His plays, notably Disco Pigs[1], Bedbound, Small Things, Chatroom, New Electric Ballroom[2] and The Walworth Farce, have been translated into more than 20 languages and have had productions throughout Europe and in Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. He has written two radio plays, with Four Big Days in the Life of Dessie Banks for RTÉ winning the I PA Radio Drama Award and The Monotonous Life of Little Miss P for the BBC commended at the Gran Prix Berlin. His commissioned work includes plays for Paines Plough in London, the Druid Theatre in Galway, the Kammerspiele in Munich and the Royal National's Connections Project in London. He wrote the screenplay of the film Disco Pigs and co-wrote the screenplay of Hunger which was directed by Steve McQueen and stars Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker who starved himself to death in protest over British rule. Hunger won numerous awards (see below) including the Caméra d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, Best Film Award from the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2009 and a nomination for Best British Film at the British Academy Film Awards. He wrote an adaptation of his play Chatroom for a film directed by Hideo Nakata which was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. He is currently under commission for two films, an adaptation of the children's story Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson and a biography of Dusty Springfield.

Reviews

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of Enda Walsh's early plays shows a writer who is attempting to find his voice. Walsh is probably best-known for his play Disco Pigs, a frenetic two-hander written in a thick Cork dialect which on its opening night introduced Cillian Murphy to the world. It is the best play in this collection. It's a dazzling cacophony of Cork slang and nonsense slung at the audience at high speed. It's success is astounding, given the fact that much of it must be indecipherable to non-native ears. We follow Pig and Runt around Cork city as they grow apart. It's a love story for degenerates.

Another highlight of this collection is Misterman which is a terrifying 90-minutes with a preacher and his tape recorders that makes Krapp's Last Tape look like Spike Jonze's Her.
I found bedbound and The Small Things to be somewhat similar and flawed works. Both were struggles to finish I must admit, but I am sure they are far more engaging on stage.
Chatroom is the final major play in here which I throughly enjoyed. However, despite only being written in 2005, it has aged very badly. The references to McFly and pre-breakdown Britney are unfortunate. Also the fact that the whole play is based on dialogue from an online chatroom, the kind of which just does not exist today ever since the boom of social media, makes it seem like something of a relic.

Overall it is a fine collection of plays. Some highs and some lows. I don't know would I call Enda Walsh a new favourite but I definitely enjoy his output.

[SM]

Easily/predictably the collection’s strongest, “Disco Pigs” is hormonal and scrambling and electric, once your brain accepts how the Cork dialect is stylized in text.

Wasn’t really taken with any of the rest as reading experiences but I’d be very down to see “Misterman,” “The Small Things,” and “Chatroom” staged.

A couple of connective, especially compelling undercurrents run between the plays—of course, augmented (or maybe even visible only, I’m not sure) because they’re being presented together: 1) rejection/wanting to be wanted, and 2) retelling/reframing as a vehicle of power.

These early works demonstrate a killer gift for turns of phrase, but structure is pretty question-mark-y. I kept laughing out loud because it felt like he’d get to the back half of a project and go “oh NO how do I end thi—oh Iiiii know! of course!!! another Enda Walsh™️ brutal homicide of passion!!!!!”

[Vittoria Corella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enda Walsh scrive quello che vorrei scrivere io, se ne avessi le capacità e il talento. Riscrive la lingua inglese, crea linguaggi nuovi, gioca coi dialetti, i gerghi e gli accenti. Di più, crea personaggi che nascono uno dentro l'altro, una dall'altro, tutti irrimediabilmente fallati e compromessi, dipinti un attimo prima di compiere un passo fatale verso il vuoto della ragione. I suoi drammi non possono non entrare nella storia della letteratura in lingua inglese. Lui è una specie di Beckett e ha le chiavi dell'Assurdo. In assoluto, la cosa migliore che ho letto negli ultimi cinque anni.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Enda Walsh's writing and am always excited when he has a new play coming out. My only complaint is that some of his plays blend together for me and as a result don't have a distinct effect. That being said, this collection has some of his best plays in my opinion and far make up for some of the less successful ones.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

ENDA! ENDA! ENDA! very disturbing, odd & poetic little plays. An inspiration!

[Callum · Rating 3 out of 5]

bedbound, How These Desperate Men Talk, and The Small Things are really excellent plays; the remaining four, quality-wise, are more turbulent, and overall far less accomplished.