The Great God Pan

by Amy Herzog

Jamie's life in Brooklyn seems just fine; a beautiful girlfriend, a budding journalism career, and parents who live just far enough away. But when a possible childhood trauma comes to light, lives are thrown into a tailspin. Unsettling and deeply compassionate, THE GREAT GOD PAN tells the intimate tale of what is lost and own when a hidden truth is unloosed into the world. Drama, 3 men, 4 women

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama

43 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2013

About the author

Amy Herzog is an American playwright. Her play 4000 Miles, which ran Off-Broadway in 2011, was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Her play Mary Jane, which ran Off-Broadway in 2017, won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.

Reviews

[Natalie Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will be playing Paige in this show in a Dallas production in a few months. After reading it for auditions, I was struck by authenticity with which insecurities are displayed here. This play explores where the lines get blurry when it comes to memory and past experiences informing our behavior in adult life. I must admit, I prefer this to Belleville, which I'm sure is an unpopular opinion. I think there is more balance to this piece and more of an inquisitive nature while still submerging into dark and discomforting waters.

[chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love and hate how we get NO answers at all. it feels very human to not know anything

[Grace Keller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it a lot more than I thought I would. I wish we got answers but that’s the whole point, I guess. I can’t wait to see it on stage!

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

gonna act my ass off here

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting play about the vagrancies of memory and the negative life impact of repression as it relates to sexual molestation. Plays are generally hard on characterization and can usually only focus either on plot or character. Herzog, being a masterful playwright, did both ably but I didn't feel connected to anyone in the play, unfortunately.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some steadily realistic dialogue, but I didn't feel like I was reading anything new here. It didn't feel like there was much in the way of movement in the piece, the first scene felt largely the same as the last, but not in a meaningful 'circular' way. The characters were lovely and grounded, though, and this definitely makes me want to read her other plays.

[basker ville · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the play was a great take on sexual repression and the theme of trauma and the mind self defense mechanisims and the way sexual trauma manifest itself in our daily lives. Much like so many other reviewers I did not connect with any of the characters. I do feel that the different scenes flow together nicely.

[Taylor Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great characters and dialogue - A delicate and short play that touches on the not so delicate subjects of child molestation and abortion. Herzog is one of my favorite playwrights out there but I think this play could have benefitted with a little more action.

[Nick K · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved some of the scenes in this play. But as a whole, I just wanted more. But I appreciate the story as it is universal.

[E7boehm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good play but not her best worth reading. I think as I read another child abuse play. But good like the humor in it.

[c]

you're telling me Jeremy Strong and Sarah Goldberg were in a play by Amy Herzog together back in the day and I didn't know???

[Morgan Elyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excuse me while I just sob for a sec

[JackWilliamRtF · Rating 2 out of 5]

this entire play i was hoping for something a little deeper, a little meatier. i think my main issue was that i didn't real buy into the "did he or did he not get abused" narrative because the answer feels very obviously to be Yes. so i kept searching for him to begin working through that but right as he would have, the play ended. i think a lot of the problems with this play would be greatly solved if it had an unambiguous ending, not even jamie like Going To Therapy (im not looking for an act 2 here), but a lot of the more frustrating behavior of the characters in this play could be sufficiently explained if the answer was Yes, Abuse Happened And Actually More People Know About It Than We Thought. as it stands, i feel that this play has a lot of people act unkindly towards one another for little reason other than "well it creates conflict and a play needs conflict right?"

as a big fan of belleville and knowing how vicious and cutting herzog can be when she really lets it rip, this one was a let down

[Laur · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sexual abuse plays are just not my cup of tea.

The questions of memory and what was 'real' and what you remember from being a kid, vs what the adults around you remember and so on and so forth were all really interesting points and well done, but I think I would have preferred that surrounded by Polly's dementia, rather than the sexual abuse aspect being the 'main' point of reference for the remembering or lack there of.

I thought the characters all had a lot of depth, and they each had a lot going on under the surface which would be interesting to watch as an audience member and play within as an actor, but still not a fan of this kind of subject matter so not one I think I'll read again.

[Michael Nichols-Pate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amy Herzog is a brilliant playwright, I was excited to get my hands on this specific play, yet was disappointed. I felt as if the play was incomplete, needing another act to create a resolution. Each of the characters felt like they needed more. Plus, the character of Joelle and how she relates to the larger story at hand felt unneeded. If Ms. Herzog were to return to this work, I’d love to see more added on to this in the form of another act worth of material.

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Identity, trauma, and memory loss have become increasingly interesting concepts for me to explore over the last year and a half. I love the way that she addresses them in this play, but even more than that I LOVE her dialogue! I think I appreciated the individual conversations in the play more than the overall arc of the story. I do wish it was a bit longer - I feel many plays are long winded, but this one left me wanting a little more.

[Jessie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like it was trying to do a lot in a fairly short play and only kinda got some of it. Felt a little like a play and adult version of Perks of Being a Wallflower, and not in a way I particularly loved

[Ashton Showers · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. There’s some really witty writing in this, but I wasn’t blown away. It has some solid scenes, but the show as a whole doesn’t feel that intriguing. Overall, good writing but the arc just didn’t do it for me.

[By The Cover · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good, has me feeling very bittersweet at the end/

[Caitlin Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jesus Christ.

[maddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

i wish it had been longer but i did really enjoy

[sam lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

so good!!! wish it was so much longer as the dialogue was so intense but we were barely given a moment to sit with all of the characters. loved it.

[James Binz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent tale well written. I'm not a fan of overlapping dialogue but I can see the value.

[Stark]

That’s a difficult situation to be in

[Hao Luo · Rating 4 out of 5]

My directing debut :))

[Athena Psihudakis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written and I love how we only know so much by the end. Such a raw and realistic experience.

[J Dubyuh]

Jesus Fucking Christ

[Wiley June · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty good play. weak ending

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This brief, delicately probing play concerns the aftermath of a disclosure of sexual abuse: the male, Jamie, in a couple with Paige, is asked out by an old friend, Frank, whose father, Frank discloses, has confessed to participation in un-solicited sexual abuse with Frank (and, it's presumed, others) when Frank and Jamie were young boys. Jamie is forced to try to account for his own experience with Frank's father in the abuse case Frank is litigating in court. Paige, meantime, is asking herself why she so mistrusts Jamie at the same time as she wishes, precipitantly, to move their relationship into parenting by getting pregnant. She is a massage therapist whose practice specializes in eating disorders; her own eating disorder, as well Jamie's tense relationship with his own parents, form the backdrop to the play's action, essentially that Jamie and Paige decide not to decide what to do about Paige's pregnancy, and then ultimately decide to end it. The play's dialogue subtly suggests the lack of certainty any of the characters has about their own motives; but the action moves us toward a recognition of the nature that has been put into crisis by its irreversible acts of memory, that retrieve, and rescue, nature in what we do. Herzog's language delicately shoots out tendrils of life through the play's troping around Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "A Musical Instrument," with its refrain of "Whatever happened to the Great God Pan?" Herzog is trying to suggest that the action that the play needs relies on Pan's force of sexual nature, attenuated at every seam by the hemming in of identity and what Browning called "ban" -- repression of disclosure.

[Jay Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seen at Ithaca College Dillingham School 5/3/22

An intimate and at times difficult exploration of childhood trauma and abuse. I wish some scenes were fleshed out more, but I'm glad I saw it definitely