Where's My Money?

by John Patrick Shanley

Book by John Patrick Shanley

Genres: Plays, Theatre

72 pages

First published February 1, 2003

About the author

John Patrick Shanley was born in The Bronx, New York City, to a telephone operator mother and a meat-packer father. He is a graduate of New York University, and is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

For his script for the 1987 film, Moonstruck, Shanley won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

In 1990, Shanley directed his script of Joe Versus the Volcano. Shanley also wrote two songs for the movie: "Marooned Without You" and "The Cowboy Song."

In 2004 Shanley was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame.

In 2005, Shanley's play Doubt: A Parable was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Drama Desk Award and Tony Award for Best Play. Doubt: A Parable, is featured in The Fourth Wall, a book of photographs by Amy Arbus in which Shanley also wrote the foreword.

In 2008, Shanley directed a film version of Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams.

Reviews

[Belle · Rating 4 out of 5]

My acting teacher David Deblinger played Sidney in the first run of this play at the LABryinth theater company in New York City. It has some great monologues in there that hold the plot together like glue. I was left a little dumbstruck and confused by the ending though.

[kaitlyn a. maynard · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5. I didn’t hate it. The characters were kind of boring and annoying. I felt like the female-presenting characters specifically could have been written with more dimension, but I like the idea of one’s past being an ever present anxiety that manifests itself into a physical presence.

[Dalton Glenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can't convince me that John Patrick Shanley loves his wife

[Tina Tovmassian · Rating 2 out of 5]

So boring I coldly even get through it. Stopped like page 38. Not his best work. Prodigal son and doubt are much better reads.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where's My Money is what happens when your disgusting past literally comes back to haunt you. I think I couldn't get into this play because none of the characters were very likable or interesting. I can deal with the not likable part, but when characters aren't interesting? Anything can happen to them and I wouldn't care, and I need to care about some part of a story or a character. The writing is fine, so maybe I missed the point. Having read this a week or two ago, there is nothing that really stands out about it to me except some of the descriptions of really different sex practices. Not a good taste at all.

[Darius · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't think of a better play with ghosts. Even without a ghost in sight, for pages Shanley opens the piece with a grotesque sense of fascination that will extend throughout every relationship. And it never feels cheap. On her lover: "He has read the book that God wrote on my flesh," but everyone's got one another pegged somehow, and it's thrilling to see them squirm under such perceptive scrutiny.