Evening Plays

by Richard Maxwell

Evening Plays, three new dramas by award-winning playwright Richard Maxwell are a response to Dante's Divine Comedy. The Evening centers around three archetypal barflies who together form an elegy of universal loss. The loss of a loved one seeps poignantly into his illustration of the stark reality and emotional tumult of coping with death. Samara is a mythic tale of redemption that follows a messenger through a bleak frontier in his quest to collect a debt, though the human cost of the journey may be more than he bargained for. And Paradiso, which takes place in the not-too distant future, describes three great loves: family, country and God.

134 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 23, 2020

About the author

Richard Maxwell is an American theater director and playwright.

Reviews

[Sean Tatol · Rating 4 out of 5]

To his credit, Maxwell's plays are better when they're staged, his odd sense of delivery/timing in his direction is integral to the quality of his texts. I could read the plays in an approximation of his voice though, so not much was lost, I just found myself wishing I was seeing them performed. Paradiso gets a bit sentimental and middle-aged, i.e. parental, for me, but that's just personal because I can't relate, it's not a fault. I could tell from his sense of Americana that he was from the Midwest, and indeed I just checked and he's from North Dakota. Very good, the next best thing to seeing his work performed.