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7 Stories
In this fast-paced, sophisticated and hilarious play, a man contemplating suicide on a seventh-storey building ledge confronts the stories of the people who live inside the building. These “seven stories” lead to a charming and surprising ending.
Cast of 2 women and 3 men.
Cast of 2 women and 3 men.
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
May 28, 2021
Panych's most widely read/produced/popular play, and one can see why. Very witty, yet philosophically astute, with a wide array of fun, quirky characters that actors can really sink their teeth into. The ending could be a bit tricky to pull off, but think there are myriad 'work-around's that could be utilized in lieu of a flying rig. A lot of good monologue/audition material here also.
September 14, 2015
یک نمایشنامهی شلوغ با شخصیتهای زیاد و البته با اکت کم. بیشتر روایت داستان به عهدهی دیالوگهاست. هر چند این نمایشنامه برای دهه ۹۰ میلادیه اما به شرایط امروز قابل تعمیمه و کاملا میشه این متن رو توی قرن بیست و یکم هم تصور کرد.
اگه پایانبندیش بهتر بود کار خیلی خوبتری میشد.
اگه پایانبندیش بهتر بود کار خیلی خوبتری میشد.
May 19, 2017
Clever, funny, well-writen and entertaining. I've forgotten how I stumbled across this gem... likely by accident in a random goodreads search.... but I'm glad that I did..... in fact this all seems to simply reinforce the work itself. Highly recommended... but why should you listen to the random opinion of some guy on goodreads? Oh well... I have better things to concern myself with... Now... I wait for that next gust of wind... another work of Panych perhaps?
October 1, 2018
Jump, Man! Jump. Fuck the Mary Poppins shit.
July 20, 2014
تا صفحه ی 40 یه لحن طنز خیلی جالبی روی دیالوگ شخصیت ها حاکمه این رو خیلی دوست داشتم این تقابل و برخورد یهویی آدما این قضاوت کردنا یا حرفای بی مورد.
خوب تونسته بود تفاووت شخصیت ها رو از نظر روحی و فکری دربیاره اما خب می تونست به ششخصیت های کمتری بسنده کنه چون نمایشنامه خیلی شلوغ شده بود.
شخصیت پرستار و مریضش هم به جا وارد کار می شن و تاثیری که روی مرد می ذارن خیلی جالبه.
صحنه ی انتهایی رو دوست داشتم اما پایان بندی رو نه.
دیالوگ انتهایی پلیس هم بانمک دراومده.
خوب تونسته بود تفاووت شخصیت ها رو از نظر روحی و فکری دربیاره اما خب می تونست به ششخصیت های کمتری بسنده کنه چون نمایشنامه خیلی شلوغ شده بود.
شخصیت پرستار و مریضش هم به جا وارد کار می شن و تاثیری که روی مرد می ذارن خیلی جالبه.
صحنه ی انتهایی رو دوست داشتم اما پایان بندی رو نه.
دیالوگ انتهایی پلیس هم بانمک دراومده.
April 14, 2018
I had to read it for my literature class and I’m surprised how much I loved it! It’s a really fast and enjoyable read.
The story and character become so insanely absurd that makes me laugh. The story satires how we live our lives inside a bubble and how conversations can be so one sided.
The story is timeless and placeless it’s solely about people!
The story and character become so insanely absurd that makes me laugh. The story satires how we live our lives inside a bubble and how conversations can be so one sided.
The story is timeless and placeless it’s solely about people!
January 14, 2025
Comedy: Constantly having characters slightly misunderstand and repeat the same two things to each other over and over and over and over
Depth: Having characters say vague philosophical things to each other in long monologues before going back to saying the same two things to each other over and over and over and over
I'd rather jump from the seventh story of an apartment than read this again.
Depth: Having characters say vague philosophical things to each other in long monologues before going back to saying the same two things to each other over and over and over and over
I'd rather jump from the seventh story of an apartment than read this again.
April 29, 2025
that last monologue, so much to analyze. my initial thought is that maybe its saying how he finally doesn't depend on others to make him happy so he can finally truly live? he finally learns that everyone doesn't care about him since he's just another man so he finally feels happy about himself by just worrying about himself?
September 12, 2025
I love this play. It's busy and hectic and the characters are a great mix of people with everything and nothing to say. Everything is about perspective and regardless what you think is the best way to live your life or someone else to live theirs, ultimately no one has any control over what fate could have in store. A great play that I studied in University.
February 21, 2019
This is an entertaining modern play. I like that it is Canadian. I would consider directing it but I worry about staging the ending. I have an idea but....
April 15, 2019
quirky and fast paced but also really honest and evocative
November 7, 2022
Gran idea, siento que es brillante pero no disfrute leerlo en absoluto, ganas de no tener vecinos en la vida me dieron lol
February 6, 2024
Man, I love this play. Endlessly rereadable, funny banter, thoughtful dialogue, and just a wonderful piece of art
May 24, 2024
quick read
November 21, 2025
Super long monologue. It would be extremely impressive if someone memorized the whole thing
April 19, 2021
When I first read this I was in school. We were all assigned a part to read based on what our teacher thought best suited us. I was Nurse Wilson. The pessimistic, people hating, suicide encouraging nurse. My teacher told us why we each got the part. She said I was disillusioned..and that stuck with me. She wasn't wrong.
Years later I still think about it all the time. It was definitely a bold step for a fantasy lit teacher to both 'analyze' and also 'diagnose' a group of teens she hardly knew.. but that's kind of the point isn't it?
As the man stands on the ledge he (and the audience) sees a condensed extreme window into each person's life. These characters reflect common characteristics but pushed to the extreme; the desire to fit in, the desire to be someone else, letting your emotions control you, being completely impartial, the willing to go to extremes for love, obliviousness, disillusionment, paranoia..
Most of these characters so engrossed in their own lives and worries that they hardly notice The Man standing on the ledge ready to jump.
Years later I still think about it all the time. It was definitely a bold step for a fantasy lit teacher to both 'analyze' and also 'diagnose' a group of teens she hardly knew.. but that's kind of the point isn't it?
As the man stands on the ledge he (and the audience) sees a condensed extreme window into each person's life. These characters reflect common characteristics but pushed to the extreme; the desire to fit in, the desire to be someone else, letting your emotions control you, being completely impartial, the willing to go to extremes for love, obliviousness, disillusionment, paranoia..
Most of these characters so engrossed in their own lives and worries that they hardly notice The Man standing on the ledge ready to jump.
May 25, 2011
i liked this play a lot. it was humorous and intriguing. I like the rawness and strange behavior of some of the characters. I wish they had given "Man" a proper name. And his reasons for why he is where he is are strange and kind of selfish and stupid.
An Everyman undergoing an existential crisis climbs to a seventh-floor ledge and contemplates jumping. But before he can make up his mind, Venetian blinds begin opening onto seven different apartments, revealing the lives and characters within, and the Man is drawn into their dramas and absurdities. Though he knows no one in the building, he's given a drink and a cigarette, hectored, befriended, philosophized at, and accused of all kinds of complicity. Before you know it, nearly an hour and a half has gone by and our antihero is still perched on the ledge.
Will he jump in the end? I won't give that away. Though the play is nearly 20 years years old, and won awards in Vancouver BC, it's fairly obscure and most New York audiences won't know it. As realized by director Greg T. Parente and his Strain Theater Company, with a skilled cast and crew, it's an entertaining piece of theater.
The denizens of the building, who appear through their narrow windows, are written as eccentric caricatures, not realistic characters. Crisply directed by Parente and played with wit and charm by the cast - each of whom, except for the Man (Erica Terpening-Romeo), plays at least two characters - they represent disparate human elements like religiosity, paranoia, duplicity, obsession, and the wisdom of old age.
The lesson the Man learns in the end results in an effective final set-piece of magic realism. But the lesson itself is conveyed verbally rather than dramatized, and that's the play's flaw; the manic scenes that make up the first two-thirds of the action don't lead, in any clear way, to what happens later.
The playwright, Morris Panych, has a great way with funny lines. "She doesn't actually want me to die," says the old lady of her fatalistic home care nurse, "because then she'd have to fill out a form." "The presence of Dacron," says the wife of the obsessive interior decorator, "gives him the flu."
More to the ultimate point, the old lady warns the Man against running "the risk of a protracted survival"; although she's philosophical and uncomplaining about her own confined life, she urges him to take the plunge. The message is about defying what we perceive as our fated path. Absurdism, like animation on TV, allows the writer to make a point in a way he couldn't otherwise, to make happen what could never "really" happen - with pleasing results.
Standout performances include that of the stunning Alice Kremelberg as the fetishistic Charlotte, and then, transformed by the mere donning of an old nightie, as the old lady. Thomas Patel does a remarkable job of motoring through his extended scene as the young psychiatrist Leonard, though the scene's too long nonetheless (through no fault of his). Toni-Ann Gardiner's nurse is hilarious. Really, the whole cast is quite good.
However, I wasn't delighted with the casting of a woman as the Man. It smacks of expedience rather than making any sort of statement, and while Terpening-Romeo shines during the character's climactic monologue, up until that point the casting against type proves a bit of a distraction. Dressed in an old-fashioned business suit, the Man is a descendant of a Magritte man, or Bartleby the Scrivener - someone adrift in his own questionable existence. That could be anybody, but, as written by Panych and indicated by the costuming, here it's the quintessential male office clerk/drone, lost without a sense of meaning.
An Everyman undergoing an existential crisis climbs to a seventh-floor ledge and contemplates jumping. But before he can make up his mind, Venetian blinds begin opening onto seven different apartments, revealing the lives and characters within, and the Man is drawn into their dramas and absurdities. Though he knows no one in the building, he's given a drink and a cigarette, hectored, befriended, philosophized at, and accused of all kinds of complicity. Before you know it, nearly an hour and a half has gone by and our antihero is still perched on the ledge.
Will he jump in the end? I won't give that away. Though the play is nearly 20 years years old, and won awards in Vancouver BC, it's fairly obscure and most New York audiences won't know it. As realized by director Greg T. Parente and his Strain Theater Company, with a skilled cast and crew, it's an entertaining piece of theater.
The denizens of the building, who appear through their narrow windows, are written as eccentric caricatures, not realistic characters. Crisply directed by Parente and played with wit and charm by the cast - each of whom, except for the Man (Erica Terpening-Romeo), plays at least two characters - they represent disparate human elements like religiosity, paranoia, duplicity, obsession, and the wisdom of old age.
The lesson the Man learns in the end results in an effective final set-piece of magic realism. But the lesson itself is conveyed verbally rather than dramatized, and that's the play's flaw; the manic scenes that make up the first two-thirds of the action don't lead, in any clear way, to what happens later.
The playwright, Morris Panych, has a great way with funny lines. "She doesn't actually want me to die," says the old lady of her fatalistic home care nurse, "because then she'd have to fill out a form." "The presence of Dacron," says the wife of the obsessive interior decorator, "gives him the flu."
More to the ultimate point, the old lady warns the Man against running "the risk of a protracted survival"; although she's philosophical and uncomplaining about her own confined life, she urges him to take the plunge. The message is about defying what we perceive as our fated path. Absurdism, like animation on TV, allows the writer to make a point in a way he couldn't otherwise, to make happen what could never "really" happen - with pleasing results.
Standout performances include that of the stunning Alice Kremelberg as the fetishistic Charlotte, and then, transformed by the mere donning of an old nightie, as the old lady. Thomas Patel does a remarkable job of motoring through his extended scene as the young psychiatrist Leonard, though the scene's too long nonetheless (through no fault of his). Toni-Ann Gardiner's nurse is hilarious. Really, the whole cast is quite good.
However, I wasn't delighted with the casting of a woman as the Man. It smacks of expedience rather than making any sort of statement, and while Terpening-Romeo shines during the character's climactic monologue, up until that point the casting against type proves a bit of a distraction. Dressed in an old-fashioned business suit, the Man is a descendant of a Magritte man, or Bartleby the Scrivener - someone adrift in his own questionable existence. That could be anybody, but, as written by Panych and indicated by the costuming, here it's the quintessential male office clerk/drone, lost without a sense of meaning.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 13, 2012
It was interesting. I think that I would have enjoyed it more if I had not had to read it for school and then analysis every little thing about it. This play is something that is better to be performed then read but it's that the way with all plays.
June 27, 2012
Cute and rather existential.
November 15, 2012
با ترجمه کتاب ، به شدت مشکل داشتم.
September 11, 2014
3.5 stars
December 13, 2025
I’m in this. I’m counting it.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews