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Heroes of the Fourth Turning
It's nearing midnight in Wyoming, where four young conservatives have gathered at a backyard after-party. They've returned home to toast their mentor Gina, newly inducted as president of a tiny Catholic college. But as their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos and clashing generational politics, it becomes less a celebration than a vicious fight to be understood. On a chilly night in the middle of America, Will Arbery's haunting play offers grace and disarming clarity, speaking to the heart of a country at war with itself.
146 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2019
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February 15, 2020
The characters in this play mock the idea of empathy, but this is a dizzyingly brilliant and achingly empathetic view into the anxieties, passions, and joys of conservatives. Many on the left tend to think of the right as a monolith, but Arbery makes clear just how diverse the voices of the coalition are by crafting five beautifully distinctive characters to play out the drama. There's no liberal voice presented here, although several of the characters periodically champion liberal arguments, usually for very different reasons than their political opponents would.
That's the brilliance of the play: Arbery resists the temptation to present an easy anchor viewpoint for most readers (I'm assuming, completely unfairly, that the intended audience of this play is largely liberal cosmopolitan elites), but instead takes seriously from the inside the world of Catholic traditionalists and conservatives wrestling with their place on the right in the time of Trump. Some argue for isolation from the secular world (The Benedict Option), others argue for engagement of persuasion, and others advocate for deals with the devil in service of (their idea of) the greater good-joining forces with Bannon, Trump, and his ilk. These are arguments that most liberals will never encounter.
And frankly, it's heartbreaking. Arbery captures perfectly how deeply faithful Catholic conservatives wrestle with doubt, wrestle with certainty, wrestle with tactics in their perceived culture war, and above all, wrestle with the better angels of their nature. They want The Good. Their idea of The Good. They're as concerned with ideals of justice, compassion, protection of innocents, and human flourishing as the most crusading leftist. It's easy to demonize the other side and paint them as evil. These characters certainly do. But it takes nerves of steel to push past that impulse and all the revulsion that accompanies it, and see the common humanity of the other side. To see that we're all struggling with transcendent ideas of goodness and charity and how to effectuate that vision in the mucky world of failing bodies, imperfect communication, and the terrible aloneness of our separated consciousnesses. Not everyone on that spectrum would call it God or the numinous, but that's what these characters see. And they want it SO. BAD. They want to be heroes; they want to labor in the service of a noble cause. Why can't we liberals just see that? That's what keeps them up at night.
And damn. What a thing to fully realize while you're reading this (or watching). I've known these people in real life, mostly long ago. And I'm not where they're at. But this reminded me why it's so dangerous to demonize those who don't share our views. We forget that we share more than divides us. But also, those differences are real. There is a real, and deadly serious, dispute over what goods we as a society should seek. And these characters believe, rightly or wrongly, that our vision means the destruction of their way of life. They don't see our ideals as tolerance that leaves room for their views just like all the others. They see in that tolerance a corrosive leveling that will not rest until the distinctive difference of Christianity (and yes, Western Christian civilization, despite how uncomfortably racist that sounds even to them sometimes) is subsumed under a totalitarian dictatorship of acceptance and hedonic individualism. I don't agree, but that fear is real. Thank you, Will Arbery, for reminding me of that. Liberals, prove those ideals. Read this play and be confronted by The Other. Truly confronted. Read it. Fantastic stuff. Some of the characters of this play would mock me for it, but this is the highest end of empathy right here.
That's the brilliance of the play: Arbery resists the temptation to present an easy anchor viewpoint for most readers (I'm assuming, completely unfairly, that the intended audience of this play is largely liberal cosmopolitan elites), but instead takes seriously from the inside the world of Catholic traditionalists and conservatives wrestling with their place on the right in the time of Trump. Some argue for isolation from the secular world (The Benedict Option), others argue for engagement of persuasion, and others advocate for deals with the devil in service of (their idea of) the greater good-joining forces with Bannon, Trump, and his ilk. These are arguments that most liberals will never encounter.
And frankly, it's heartbreaking. Arbery captures perfectly how deeply faithful Catholic conservatives wrestle with doubt, wrestle with certainty, wrestle with tactics in their perceived culture war, and above all, wrestle with the better angels of their nature. They want The Good. Their idea of The Good. They're as concerned with ideals of justice, compassion, protection of innocents, and human flourishing as the most crusading leftist. It's easy to demonize the other side and paint them as evil. These characters certainly do. But it takes nerves of steel to push past that impulse and all the revulsion that accompanies it, and see the common humanity of the other side. To see that we're all struggling with transcendent ideas of goodness and charity and how to effectuate that vision in the mucky world of failing bodies, imperfect communication, and the terrible aloneness of our separated consciousnesses. Not everyone on that spectrum would call it God or the numinous, but that's what these characters see. And they want it SO. BAD. They want to be heroes; they want to labor in the service of a noble cause. Why can't we liberals just see that? That's what keeps them up at night.
And damn. What a thing to fully realize while you're reading this (or watching). I've known these people in real life, mostly long ago. And I'm not where they're at. But this reminded me why it's so dangerous to demonize those who don't share our views. We forget that we share more than divides us. But also, those differences are real. There is a real, and deadly serious, dispute over what goods we as a society should seek. And these characters believe, rightly or wrongly, that our vision means the destruction of their way of life. They don't see our ideals as tolerance that leaves room for their views just like all the others. They see in that tolerance a corrosive leveling that will not rest until the distinctive difference of Christianity (and yes, Western Christian civilization, despite how uncomfortably racist that sounds even to them sometimes) is subsumed under a totalitarian dictatorship of acceptance and hedonic individualism. I don't agree, but that fear is real. Thank you, Will Arbery, for reminding me of that. Liberals, prove those ideals. Read this play and be confronted by The Other. Truly confronted. Read it. Fantastic stuff. Some of the characters of this play would mock me for it, but this is the highest end of empathy right here.
December 29, 2019
"All I do is come and cry" okay brag
September 6, 2024
Although this is Arbery's most lauded play (a finalist for the Pulitzer), it is the one I liked least of his three published works I've now read. This wasn't due to the fact that ALL of the characters are conservative Catholics, although perhaps the fact I wouldn't want to spend two hours in their company under ANY circumstances didn't help - it is more the fact that I didn't believe for a second the longwinded philosophical diatribes coming out of their mouths.
When Kevin, a lowlife wastrel/drunk who can't get a girlfriend and is forever rushing into the bushes to either vomit or pee, suddenly turns around and inexplicably recites from memory an entire Wordsworth sonnet, I just had to wonder what planet these characters are supposed to be inhabiting. And maybe it's different at rural Wyoming colleges, but I've never been to ANY after party in which the participants sit around dissecting the finer points of Thucydides.
When Kevin, a lowlife wastrel/drunk who can't get a girlfriend and is forever rushing into the bushes to either vomit or pee, suddenly turns around and inexplicably recites from memory an entire Wordsworth sonnet, I just had to wonder what planet these characters are supposed to be inhabiting. And maybe it's different at rural Wyoming colleges, but I've never been to ANY after party in which the participants sit around dissecting the finer points of Thucydides.
January 8, 2022
Streamed a digital production of this by the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia. This one had been on my list since I heard Arbery on Know Your Enemy.
Heroes has been held up as a Trump whisperer text, occupying some of the space that Hillbilly Elegy occupied in 2016, but instead of focusing on Trump's base, focusing on the people who are often pulling bigger levers of power: integralists Catholics, conservatives plugged into the media mainframe in New York, conservative college presidents holding fundraisers, and, in general, the people who create the intellectual and theological arguments that pave the way for a full-throated embrace of conservative movements in the US. So where Hillbilly Elegy is supposed* to be about a nameless Trump rally attendee, Heroes is about the William Barrs and Amy Coney Barretts.
But that's where Heroes is a lot more than a Trump whisperer text. Really, narrowing it down into that spectrum of explainer totally robs the play of most of its actual merit. Yes, it works really well as an explainer text, as we track what are essentially five different paths through American conservatism--all informed by religion, but not ultimately all religious. If you want to watch the play for that, you'll enjoy it.
The legs on this play come from pulling back the connection between the physical body and political thought. I was talking to Mike Kleine about some of his writing and how I love what he does with the corporeal, fluxing in and out of it, so maybe I'm just reading the body into everything I read (I don't think so, but I wanted to disclaim it anyway).
Abortion is ultimately the heart of this, but not just because it's a political touchpoint. It goes prior to that: If arguments about abortion are ultimately around thingness and agency, pro-choice arguments ultimately center the agency of the living, breathing individual, while anti-choice arguments ultimately center the Thingness of the fetus--the truth of it existing, not extrapolated into agency. And for each of the characters in this play, they struggle so deeply with the Thingness of their own bodies, the truth that their bodies exist. Kevin is haunted by his flesh, Justin is haunted by his blood, Emily is haunted by her pain (and, as the only empath, by the pain of her brothers and sisters in the human project), Teresa is haunted by her capacity for motherhood.
So as a whisperer, as an explainer, this text is immediately about how theological arguments based in a politically and physically weak dude who was executed by the state can so easily flip to pro-fascist, war-loving realpolitik. But Arbery's real gift here is capturing the way that the impulses of conservatism, namely to maintain power and the status quo, are rooted in a deep love and fear of the individual body, not as it acts, but as it exists. Kevin more or less lays this out with a brief tirade against Cartesian dualism in the opening 30 minutes, but Arbery lets us settle into that over the next three hours in a way that is felt, not known.
Arbery wrote this as the child of professors at an arch-conservative, tiny, sheltered Catholic college in rural Wyoming, and that's maybe the only vantage point you could write such a critical, honest, and compassionate piece. There is not an endorsement of their views--that's not part of the question here. There is a de-cartoonifying and intimacy to it all.
It's really hard to take an intimate, conversational play to the screen. Direction on the Wilma Theatre production was maybe a little too harsh, sharp, and loud, but how do you get something so conversational in one setting onto the screen? I'm guessing this play reads pretty well--I'm going to try to get my hands on a copy.
Also a good inversion of the "I'm my best self with my old friends" into "I'm my worst self with my old friends."
Heroes has been held up as a Trump whisperer text, occupying some of the space that Hillbilly Elegy occupied in 2016, but instead of focusing on Trump's base, focusing on the people who are often pulling bigger levers of power: integralists Catholics, conservatives plugged into the media mainframe in New York, conservative college presidents holding fundraisers, and, in general, the people who create the intellectual and theological arguments that pave the way for a full-throated embrace of conservative movements in the US. So where Hillbilly Elegy is supposed* to be about a nameless Trump rally attendee, Heroes is about the William Barrs and Amy Coney Barretts.
But that's where Heroes is a lot more than a Trump whisperer text. Really, narrowing it down into that spectrum of explainer totally robs the play of most of its actual merit. Yes, it works really well as an explainer text, as we track what are essentially five different paths through American conservatism--all informed by religion, but not ultimately all religious. If you want to watch the play for that, you'll enjoy it.
The legs on this play come from pulling back the connection between the physical body and political thought. I was talking to Mike Kleine about some of his writing and how I love what he does with the corporeal, fluxing in and out of it, so maybe I'm just reading the body into everything I read (I don't think so, but I wanted to disclaim it anyway).
Abortion is ultimately the heart of this, but not just because it's a political touchpoint. It goes prior to that: If arguments about abortion are ultimately around thingness and agency, pro-choice arguments ultimately center the agency of the living, breathing individual, while anti-choice arguments ultimately center the Thingness of the fetus--the truth of it existing, not extrapolated into agency. And for each of the characters in this play, they struggle so deeply with the Thingness of their own bodies, the truth that their bodies exist. Kevin is haunted by his flesh, Justin is haunted by his blood, Emily is haunted by her pain (and, as the only empath, by the pain of her brothers and sisters in the human project), Teresa is haunted by her capacity for motherhood.
So as a whisperer, as an explainer, this text is immediately about how theological arguments based in a politically and physically weak dude who was executed by the state can so easily flip to pro-fascist, war-loving realpolitik. But Arbery's real gift here is capturing the way that the impulses of conservatism, namely to maintain power and the status quo, are rooted in a deep love and fear of the individual body, not as it acts, but as it exists. Kevin more or less lays this out with a brief tirade against Cartesian dualism in the opening 30 minutes, but Arbery lets us settle into that over the next three hours in a way that is felt, not known.
Arbery wrote this as the child of professors at an arch-conservative, tiny, sheltered Catholic college in rural Wyoming, and that's maybe the only vantage point you could write such a critical, honest, and compassionate piece. There is not an endorsement of their views--that's not part of the question here. There is a de-cartoonifying and intimacy to it all.
It's really hard to take an intimate, conversational play to the screen. Direction on the Wilma Theatre production was maybe a little too harsh, sharp, and loud, but how do you get something so conversational in one setting onto the screen? I'm guessing this play reads pretty well--I'm going to try to get my hands on a copy.
Also a good inversion of the "I'm my best self with my old friends" into "I'm my worst self with my old friends."
April 25, 2024
additional thoughts after much thinking, spring 2024: I stand by most of what I said, but I am beginning to see why this appeals to a broader audience. It does a good job of portraying conservatives as real, human, and interesting, but also capable of being horrifyingly wrong. I want to read it again and I want to see it performed.
2023 review:
Reading this was a terrifying and exhilarating experience. It seems like it would be very difficult to stage, and it presents a true challenge for actors. I am also not sure of the intended audience; other people of various political and philosophical persuasions seem to have enjoyed it, but my main thought while reading it was, "Wow, this would only appeal to a very niche group of graduates of conservative Christian liberal arts schools." The characters aren't caricatures, though, and offer a nuanced picture of life as a principled but confused intellectual: one that older conservatives would probably be horrified by, and most people would find mystifying. I found it comforting and disturbing. I would recommend Heroes of the Fourth Turning to adults, especially those who went to small Christian liberal arts colleges.
Here are some quotes that arrested me:
TERESA: I'm not, like, avoiding that conversation, about my soul, I just want to have a normal conversation like adults.
KEVIN: I think talking about our souls being in peril is a very adult conversation.
KEVIN: If you're all about the particular / Then why don't you want to hear about all my things / My particular things
TERESA: ...What? I asked you about your neighborhood.
KEVIN: Not my ordinary things, my soul things, my ordinary soul things. / Why do you keep shutting me down
TERESA: Honestly? / Because you're weak. / And it disgusts me.
KEVIN: But that's what I love about Catholicism / It forgives me / For being weak.
KEVIN: How are we not falling down on the ground and WEEPING — every time? Why are we ever bored? Just waiting to get out and have brunch? Because it's been 2000 years and we know the story already? But the story is new every time because there are new kinds of sinning every day — and he dies for those sins, every time, every day, all over the world, in every church — he is dying he is dying he is dying, he is giving us his body so that we can LIVE, and meanwhile we're sneakily checking our phones and speed praying by rote, just saying the words.
KEVIN: You think I'm horrible.
EMILY: No. I think you're suffering.
KEVIN: All we know how to do is make things Catholic. That's all you taught us how to do. At other schools, they allow for different conclusions. But here, we're in the pursuit of the same conclusion — what you want isn't different conclusions, you want better poetry to get us to the same place.
EMILY: What are you scared of?
TERESA (cold): That my wedding won't be beautiful. That it just won't be beautiful. That people won't know how to celebrate me, or my love... Or just that people don't know me, that I don't let them know me / That I'm too private with my love / Or that I don't really know how to love at all
KEVIN: No it'll be beautiful / It'll be scandalously particular — everyone will look at you and wonder how this one person this one particular person got so much grace.
2023 review:
Reading this was a terrifying and exhilarating experience. It seems like it would be very difficult to stage, and it presents a true challenge for actors. I am also not sure of the intended audience; other people of various political and philosophical persuasions seem to have enjoyed it, but my main thought while reading it was, "Wow, this would only appeal to a very niche group of graduates of conservative Christian liberal arts schools." The characters aren't caricatures, though, and offer a nuanced picture of life as a principled but confused intellectual: one that older conservatives would probably be horrified by, and most people would find mystifying. I found it comforting and disturbing. I would recommend Heroes of the Fourth Turning to adults, especially those who went to small Christian liberal arts colleges.
Here are some quotes that arrested me:
TERESA: I'm not, like, avoiding that conversation, about my soul, I just want to have a normal conversation like adults.
KEVIN: I think talking about our souls being in peril is a very adult conversation.
KEVIN: If you're all about the particular / Then why don't you want to hear about all my things / My particular things
TERESA: ...What? I asked you about your neighborhood.
KEVIN: Not my ordinary things, my soul things, my ordinary soul things. / Why do you keep shutting me down
TERESA: Honestly? / Because you're weak. / And it disgusts me.
KEVIN: But that's what I love about Catholicism / It forgives me / For being weak.
KEVIN: How are we not falling down on the ground and WEEPING — every time? Why are we ever bored? Just waiting to get out and have brunch? Because it's been 2000 years and we know the story already? But the story is new every time because there are new kinds of sinning every day — and he dies for those sins, every time, every day, all over the world, in every church — he is dying he is dying he is dying, he is giving us his body so that we can LIVE, and meanwhile we're sneakily checking our phones and speed praying by rote, just saying the words.
KEVIN: You think I'm horrible.
EMILY: No. I think you're suffering.
KEVIN: All we know how to do is make things Catholic. That's all you taught us how to do. At other schools, they allow for different conclusions. But here, we're in the pursuit of the same conclusion — what you want isn't different conclusions, you want better poetry to get us to the same place.
EMILY: What are you scared of?
TERESA (cold): That my wedding won't be beautiful. That it just won't be beautiful. That people won't know how to celebrate me, or my love... Or just that people don't know me, that I don't let them know me / That I'm too private with my love / Or that I don't really know how to love at all
KEVIN: No it'll be beautiful / It'll be scandalously particular — everyone will look at you and wonder how this one person this one particular person got so much grace.
January 10, 2021
"I'm just so tired of talking. There's nothing to figure out. We just eat each other up and die one by one. And in heaven it's going to be so different, all the words and meaning will fade into no words and no meaning, just God everywhere through us all the time, and it'll hurt so bad."
March 2, 2025
I have NO IDEA what to do with this
January 29, 2024
Having attended, separately, a conservative Christian college and a great books college, I felt able to access this play in a unique way. Strange as these people talk, I've met shades of all of them so many times over.
This is a play about finding home and what you do when you want it back. Each of the five characters found something in this weird little college that felt like family, like rightness, like The Good.
Some will try to force the rest of the world to be more like that place, whether they like it or not. Some will retreat from the world, even from the college, finding a home away from people who have nothing to offer them. Some never leave home. Some come crawling back, hoping to recreate what they couldn't do without. And some just hurt, they hurt because there's no hope of finding home in this life.
Now, those descriptions sounds relatively benign. Who doesn't feel certain longings for home? But the way that these goals manifest in conversation doesn't sound benign. It sounds like war, hate, self-loathing, resentment, envy, and vanity. And it sounds like empathy, hope, generosity, and wit. The longing for home brings out every nasty and noble thing these people have to offer. It individualizes political sentiments that so easily become abstract and collective.
It's on the nose. But so is anyone who says they want to put their feet in the pool and have a Big Conversation. It dispenses with irony and distance like its characters who don't have time for irony because they feel too much, they've been thinking about one another too much. They have all these things they've been wanting to tell each other, along with all the resentments they forgot they carried along with their memories.
I don't know how the play will age. It's of a moment, but that's useful too. I think the play is most useful in thinking about character fixations. They don't resolve, perhaps they don't even grow. But the things they hoped to say get said, and then they, the same as the ever were, get to keep going with one more memory of home in their heads. One more memory of how they didn't quite get home the way they expected to.
Will they go back? How do they go forward? I don't know. They don't know.
This is a play about finding home and what you do when you want it back. Each of the five characters found something in this weird little college that felt like family, like rightness, like The Good.
Some will try to force the rest of the world to be more like that place, whether they like it or not. Some will retreat from the world, even from the college, finding a home away from people who have nothing to offer them. Some never leave home. Some come crawling back, hoping to recreate what they couldn't do without. And some just hurt, they hurt because there's no hope of finding home in this life.
Now, those descriptions sounds relatively benign. Who doesn't feel certain longings for home? But the way that these goals manifest in conversation doesn't sound benign. It sounds like war, hate, self-loathing, resentment, envy, and vanity. And it sounds like empathy, hope, generosity, and wit. The longing for home brings out every nasty and noble thing these people have to offer. It individualizes political sentiments that so easily become abstract and collective.
It's on the nose. But so is anyone who says they want to put their feet in the pool and have a Big Conversation. It dispenses with irony and distance like its characters who don't have time for irony because they feel too much, they've been thinking about one another too much. They have all these things they've been wanting to tell each other, along with all the resentments they forgot they carried along with their memories.
I don't know how the play will age. It's of a moment, but that's useful too. I think the play is most useful in thinking about character fixations. They don't resolve, perhaps they don't even grow. But the things they hoped to say get said, and then they, the same as the ever were, get to keep going with one more memory of home in their heads. One more memory of how they didn't quite get home the way they expected to.
Will they go back? How do they go forward? I don't know. They don't know.
July 25, 2022
[Read script only].
KEVIN
Yes, it’s just
I got sad
If you’re all about the particular, and ordinary people
Then why don’t you want to hear about all my things
My particular things
TERESA
… What? I asked you about your neighborhood.
KEVIN
But my confused and fragile things, my soul things, my ordinary soul things
And not just tonight — like ever — like when I reach out to you, just to talk… why do you
always shut me down?
TERESA
Honestly?
Because you’re weak.
And it disgusts me.
KEVIN
But it's what I love about Catholicism:
It lets me be weak
KEVIN
Yes, it’s just
I got sad
If you’re all about the particular, and ordinary people
Then why don’t you want to hear about all my things
My particular things
TERESA
… What? I asked you about your neighborhood.
KEVIN
But my confused and fragile things, my soul things, my ordinary soul things
And not just tonight — like ever — like when I reach out to you, just to talk… why do you
always shut me down?
TERESA
Honestly?
Because you’re weak.
And it disgusts me.
KEVIN
But it's what I love about Catholicism:
It lets me be weak
November 13, 2025
Watched in Vancouver, 2025
A boring play that started strong but ended up as an ideological manifesto!
A boring play that started strong but ended up as an ideological manifesto!
April 22, 2023
Fantastic, and will have staying power if it is considered not as a commentary on the Bannonites’ political era per se (which seems to be its fate), but on the tensions between religious ideals and personal and social realities. All of these characters are earnest people grasping for beautiful things, as evidenced by the principles that motivate the college (and for the record, folks in these circles do, in fact, speak like these characters). In order to keep those good things in sight, however, the characters must, to varying degrees, practice a regimen of mercilessness—one that eventually turns in on them, as well, when they fail to meet their own ideals.
Zadie Smith told Will Arbery that Teresa is a fascinating character because she acts like a living algorithm, reducing and standardizing reality into repetition and cliche. Even her discussion of “the scandal of particularity”—ended with the words “boom” and “eat it”—sounds like a template explanation of a theological concept that champions the role of the unexpected in the story of salvation. Gina replicates this energy in her exposition on gridlock, Kevin in his entertainment of the holy fool approach to faith, Justin in pursuing the abstraction of the monastery over the ambiguous challenge of commitment to Emily. Emily herself is the only character who avoids becoming fully flattened by the tropes of religious life and expectation—brought low by physical pain, she alone among them touches the earth in a real way. Her pain cuts through her companions’ formulas by making itself unavoidably known. In the end, she fails to make her suffering the symbol that her faith demands it becomes: rather than a vehicle to grace, her pain is a conduit into the suffering of the world at large, and it’s more than enough to destroy her.
We may not be niche conservative Catholics grappling with the implications of the Trump administration, but we all flatten one another in the same ways—and the technology that increasingly conditions our minds, bodies, and choices, divorcing us from the realities around us, threatens to transform our own understanding of life into something perniciously reductive. Heroes of the Fourth Turning is a window into a world that few of us will ever know first hand, but to me its characters do not demonstrate a fundamental deviation from normal human motivations or behavior. In our ways, all of us are steps away from becoming like them—and through this play, Arbery asks us to summon the empathy and compassion they have fatally chosen to refuse.
Zadie Smith told Will Arbery that Teresa is a fascinating character because she acts like a living algorithm, reducing and standardizing reality into repetition and cliche. Even her discussion of “the scandal of particularity”—ended with the words “boom” and “eat it”—sounds like a template explanation of a theological concept that champions the role of the unexpected in the story of salvation. Gina replicates this energy in her exposition on gridlock, Kevin in his entertainment of the holy fool approach to faith, Justin in pursuing the abstraction of the monastery over the ambiguous challenge of commitment to Emily. Emily herself is the only character who avoids becoming fully flattened by the tropes of religious life and expectation—brought low by physical pain, she alone among them touches the earth in a real way. Her pain cuts through her companions’ formulas by making itself unavoidably known. In the end, she fails to make her suffering the symbol that her faith demands it becomes: rather than a vehicle to grace, her pain is a conduit into the suffering of the world at large, and it’s more than enough to destroy her.
We may not be niche conservative Catholics grappling with the implications of the Trump administration, but we all flatten one another in the same ways—and the technology that increasingly conditions our minds, bodies, and choices, divorcing us from the realities around us, threatens to transform our own understanding of life into something perniciously reductive. Heroes of the Fourth Turning is a window into a world that few of us will ever know first hand, but to me its characters do not demonstrate a fundamental deviation from normal human motivations or behavior. In our ways, all of us are steps away from becoming like them—and through this play, Arbery asks us to summon the empathy and compassion they have fatally chosen to refuse.
May 12, 2024
4.5
Beautiful play. Disturbing, accurate, and frenzied; also just phenomenally written. One of my new favorites and I’d love to see it onstage.
Beautiful play. Disturbing, accurate, and frenzied; also just phenomenally written. One of my new favorites and I’d love to see it onstage.
September 23, 2023
brilliant
March 12, 2025
I started an episode of the Know Your Enemy podcast in which they discuss this play with it's writer, and halfway through I had to stop to read it myself.
Oh my God. This play kind of blew me away. Err—not kind of. It definitely blew me away.
I loved so much about this. I loved how naturally it coalesced so many lofty themes into such a simple story, I loved its explicit desire to be about a "big conversation," I loved the building sense of dread, but mostly I loved the insight provided by its scope of characters.
The characters in this play are (mostly) young, intellectually curious conservative Catholics, and I think the greatest strength of the play is its willingness to face both the beautiful and appalling ideas they secrete through their own language and their own political/ spiritual frameworks. The lack of inclusion of a secular, liberal foil character was an essential choice, since it allows us an unguarded view of how these characters would actually speak in real life. Plus it allows the conflict to come not from a binary political debate of left vs right, but within the factions of the intellectual right.
The confrontation between Teresa, an embodiment of the new, red-pilled right, and Gina, an elder, Goldwater conservative, is probably the most illustrative example of this. As much as Gina scolds Teresa about her corruption by the algorithms of right-wing online conspiracies, she finally explodes because Teresa has the intelligence and the baldness to show the throughline between her "new" kind of conservatism and Gina's more classical, "respectable" conservatism. When Teresa says that one thing the liberals get right is that that "state rights" and "communism" and "globalism" have always been dog whistles for race, Teresa snaps, not because of their newfound differences, but because of their revealed similarities.
So, too, I think a lot of liberal readers will be disturbed to find similarities in their own lines of thinking while reading or watching this play. At one point in the story, a character bemoans cities as hubs of LGBTQ activity, as sites of "infection," and as I got to thinking about what I really took from this play, I kept coming back to that theme. As a born-again leftie raised in a conservative Catholic household, I see this fear of infection everywhere. From the right it's almost always of the body, and from the left it's almost always of the mind. To consume any sort of right-wing media, to fraternize with conservatives, to read Republican-voting writers like Normal Mailer or Saul Bellow or Joan Didion, is at best an orange flag and at worst outright vile. And just as I loathed hearing my Republican family gather around the Thanksgiving table to blast liberals and discuss Obama's plans to release Shariah Law onto the US, I eventually saw the same behavior in my academic humanities classes of likeminded people matching and one-upping the rhetoric of disgust, straw manning their opponents to the point of missing them completely, making us unable to understand, unable to face, and unable to fight.
And the ending? Oof, that ending.
Five FUCKIN stars and a big round of applause.
Oh my God. This play kind of blew me away. Err—not kind of. It definitely blew me away.
I loved so much about this. I loved how naturally it coalesced so many lofty themes into such a simple story, I loved its explicit desire to be about a "big conversation," I loved the building sense of dread, but mostly I loved the insight provided by its scope of characters.
The characters in this play are (mostly) young, intellectually curious conservative Catholics, and I think the greatest strength of the play is its willingness to face both the beautiful and appalling ideas they secrete through their own language and their own political/ spiritual frameworks. The lack of inclusion of a secular, liberal foil character was an essential choice, since it allows us an unguarded view of how these characters would actually speak in real life. Plus it allows the conflict to come not from a binary political debate of left vs right, but within the factions of the intellectual right.
The confrontation between Teresa, an embodiment of the new, red-pilled right, and Gina, an elder, Goldwater conservative, is probably the most illustrative example of this. As much as Gina scolds Teresa about her corruption by the algorithms of right-wing online conspiracies, she finally explodes because Teresa has the intelligence and the baldness to show the throughline between her "new" kind of conservatism and Gina's more classical, "respectable" conservatism. When Teresa says that one thing the liberals get right is that that "state rights" and "communism" and "globalism" have always been dog whistles for race, Teresa snaps, not because of their newfound differences, but because of their revealed similarities.
So, too, I think a lot of liberal readers will be disturbed to find similarities in their own lines of thinking while reading or watching this play. At one point in the story, a character bemoans cities as hubs of LGBTQ activity, as sites of "infection," and as I got to thinking about what I really took from this play, I kept coming back to that theme. As a born-again leftie raised in a conservative Catholic household, I see this fear of infection everywhere. From the right it's almost always of the body, and from the left it's almost always of the mind. To consume any sort of right-wing media, to fraternize with conservatives, to read Republican-voting writers like Normal Mailer or Saul Bellow or Joan Didion, is at best an orange flag and at worst outright vile. And just as I loathed hearing my Republican family gather around the Thanksgiving table to blast liberals and discuss Obama's plans to release Shariah Law onto the US, I eventually saw the same behavior in my academic humanities classes of likeminded people matching and one-upping the rhetoric of disgust, straw manning their opponents to the point of missing them completely, making us unable to understand, unable to face, and unable to fight.
And the ending? Oof, that ending.
Five FUCKIN stars and a big round of applause.
June 13, 2025
Just stayed up until almost 2 am reading this play I randomly found on a whim and holy shit. I feel like everyone I know should read this. One, it does the thing I love in plays where the dialogue isn't always written with correct syntax and punctuation and grammar and sometimes uses words like 'cuz and boi because it takes place in 2017 and they're millennials and ykno what yea that's how they talked and also thought and also it helps you envision How the characters each talk depending on how their dialogue is actually written which is just great and I love it a lot. Two, I had to read it when I found out it was about a reunion of conservative alum of a Catholic university shortly after the first Trump administration began, because that sounds like a really good concept and it IS!
It's like this weird parallel setting to my friends and I when we sit down late at night and riff on politics, ethics, how to be good people going forth in crisis, what we should do with our lives, etc etc- but through the conservative looking glass. The characters here are so well rendered and span such a range of those within the conservative Catholic movement, so their debates are deeply interesting, especially because going to a Catholic university and having grown up in a Red state myself, I've known a lot of them. But what makes this play truly great is the human element of it- it's not simply a philosophical dialogue about how we ought to carry on in our society, but a snapshot of a generation in identity crisis, one attempting to orient itself in a world where almost everyone of that generation agrees that "the system" is, in one way or another, broken. There's also such an interesting theological layer to this play, especially in regard to the theology of chronic pain and illness, and the way religious language can both provide comfort and be extremely frustrating to those experiencing trauma. And the ending scene- god, it was so insane and so good and it expressed this rift absolutely beautifully and I want to see this play done live so so badly now. If you are reading this go read this play so I can talk about it with you because these are my mostly spoiler free thoughts but I have a lot of non spoiler free thoughts and I just super loved this play okay
It's like this weird parallel setting to my friends and I when we sit down late at night and riff on politics, ethics, how to be good people going forth in crisis, what we should do with our lives, etc etc- but through the conservative looking glass. The characters here are so well rendered and span such a range of those within the conservative Catholic movement, so their debates are deeply interesting, especially because going to a Catholic university and having grown up in a Red state myself, I've known a lot of them. But what makes this play truly great is the human element of it- it's not simply a philosophical dialogue about how we ought to carry on in our society, but a snapshot of a generation in identity crisis, one attempting to orient itself in a world where almost everyone of that generation agrees that "the system" is, in one way or another, broken. There's also such an interesting theological layer to this play, especially in regard to the theology of chronic pain and illness, and the way religious language can both provide comfort and be extremely frustrating to those experiencing trauma. And the ending scene- god, it was so insane and so good and it expressed this rift absolutely beautifully and I want to see this play done live so so badly now. If you are reading this go read this play so I can talk about it with you because these are my mostly spoiler free thoughts but I have a lot of non spoiler free thoughts and I just super loved this play okay
July 12, 2020
I love how dynamic this is and how it moves through quoted ideas and harsh emotions. Theres somehow space for everything the characters want from old friends and old flames and mentors and institutions and God. Wow what an ending. Stunned.
March 20, 2022
This play illuminates through four young adults, and then also through the older college professor whom they idolize, the conservative beliefs, theories, and arguments of the religious right in the time of Trump in America.
June 29, 2022
Electric; shoves audience and characters alike into the ring with race, religion, politics, and sex and pulls no punches. The characters and their viewpoints are true to the current moment without being cute. Read on a recommendation and have since recommended it to several others!
November 29, 2023
would appreciate more of the unconventional didaskalia, it was a lot more interesting than the copy-paste conservative catholic anxieties that is essentially the dialogue
Want to read
August 28, 2024will read anything with a unicorn on the cover tbh
April 16, 2025
feels bad reading this during the second trump presidency
August 5, 2025
Good play.
July 16, 2023
interesting look at the intersection between religion and politics, and how their overlap implicitly poses questions about the "correct" way to be Catholic -- articulated through the characters' various disagreements. It gets a little tiresome at times-- the same way that listening to real people argue about such things does-- but ultimately has some really poignant and/or beautiful and/or interesting moments that made it very much worth the read for me.
February 20, 2025
Not sure but I think Will Arbery got nearly everyone's ass.
January 12, 2025
so excited to work with this
April 23, 2020
Plus a star imagining Mary Steenburgen performing it as a one woman show.
May 1, 2021
I first heard about Will Arbery's remarkable play 'Heroes of the Fourth Turning' when he was interviewed on the 'Know Your Enemy' podcast. I'm fresh off of finishing it, but, combining my two great loves, religion and politics, it might be my favourite play ever (certain better than 'Griffin and Sabine' - I hated 'Griffin and Sabine' with an acute passion). The cast is small, five characters in total, all conservative Catholics. Justin, Teresa, Kevin, and Emily are all in their thirties or twenties and they have gathered to celebrate the inauguration of Emily's mother, Dr. Gina Presson, as president of Transfiguration College, a small Catholic school in Wyoming (the least populated state in the USA).
At 38, Justin is the oldest among the four. Divorced, he spent time "in the world" as a Marine before coming to Transfiguration College as an older student. He belongs to the "nomad" archetype as outlined in the book 'The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny.' It seems he finds solace and comfort in the simplicity and tradition that Roman Catholicism offers; at one point he defends "the Benedict Option."
Teresa, 29 and engaged, works in New York City for a right-wing publication (First Things?). She identifies with the modern Trumpist-Bannon strain of conservatism, direly warning her friends of the coming war. Despite her militancy and her feisty shrillness, she also is the one who lives and works in a diverse, multicultural metropolis where she encounters the aggressions of liberalism. She worries that the left has organized the young on a mass scale and that conservatives need to wake up to this and do likewise. She also does cocaine and recommends Kevin read some Walter Brueggemann.
Kevin, 28, is listless, works at a Catholic textbook company, and is constantly berated by Teresa throughout the play. He expresses interest in becoming a priest but he also really REALLY wants a girlfriend (he has the hots for both Teresa and Emily). He has a fondness for Transfiguration College and gets drunk throughout the play, becoming a blubbering, vomit-spewed mess.
Emily is 25 and has a disease that leaves her weak and in pain. When others comment on her sickly condition she says "I just do it like my gal Flannery O." (p. 27). She represents an empathetic conservatism. She and Teresa argue about how to view people who are pro-choice and who have abortions; Teresa views women who have had abortions as murderers and pro-choice organizations as complicit in a Holocaust but Emily urges her to think about what it is like being in the shoes of the women who have abortions (while never disputing that abortion itself is immoral).
Dr. Gina Presson is 64, newly minted as Transfiguration's president. She too is in constant pain. She and Teresa, her protégé, clash over conservative politics; Gina despises the Trumpist-Bannon strain of conservatism, excoriating the movement as foolish, racist, and full of charlatans that do not represent true conservatism that is modelled on reason which is inclusive of gender, race, etc... Both characters believe the other to be naïve, with Teresa retorting, "Every thinker on the Left today would absolutely decimate you. You're a little protected out here, you don't have to deal with the protests and the pronouns and the cancelling and the...I just feel like you need to experience the front lines" (p. 80).
Like his character Emily, Will Arbery himself presents these characters empathetically, witnessed by the accolades 'Heroes of the Fourth Turning' has received among the Right, including Rod Dreher, the doyen of kneejerk conservatism. As a right-leaning Canadian evangelical who has (perhaps foolishly) spent too much time immersed in American conservative politics, I felt like I saw myself represented in the play too by the different characters in different circumstances. That a play about religion and conservative politics would be a finalist for the Pulitzer Price for Drama in 2020 is extraordinary but this play is well worth engaging and I too hope to one day see it performed on stage.
At 38, Justin is the oldest among the four. Divorced, he spent time "in the world" as a Marine before coming to Transfiguration College as an older student. He belongs to the "nomad" archetype as outlined in the book 'The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny.' It seems he finds solace and comfort in the simplicity and tradition that Roman Catholicism offers; at one point he defends "the Benedict Option."
Teresa, 29 and engaged, works in New York City for a right-wing publication (First Things?). She identifies with the modern Trumpist-Bannon strain of conservatism, direly warning her friends of the coming war. Despite her militancy and her feisty shrillness, she also is the one who lives and works in a diverse, multicultural metropolis where she encounters the aggressions of liberalism. She worries that the left has organized the young on a mass scale and that conservatives need to wake up to this and do likewise. She also does cocaine and recommends Kevin read some Walter Brueggemann.
Kevin, 28, is listless, works at a Catholic textbook company, and is constantly berated by Teresa throughout the play. He expresses interest in becoming a priest but he also really REALLY wants a girlfriend (he has the hots for both Teresa and Emily). He has a fondness for Transfiguration College and gets drunk throughout the play, becoming a blubbering, vomit-spewed mess.
Emily is 25 and has a disease that leaves her weak and in pain. When others comment on her sickly condition she says "I just do it like my gal Flannery O." (p. 27). She represents an empathetic conservatism. She and Teresa argue about how to view people who are pro-choice and who have abortions; Teresa views women who have had abortions as murderers and pro-choice organizations as complicit in a Holocaust but Emily urges her to think about what it is like being in the shoes of the women who have abortions (while never disputing that abortion itself is immoral).
Dr. Gina Presson is 64, newly minted as Transfiguration's president. She too is in constant pain. She and Teresa, her protégé, clash over conservative politics; Gina despises the Trumpist-Bannon strain of conservatism, excoriating the movement as foolish, racist, and full of charlatans that do not represent true conservatism that is modelled on reason which is inclusive of gender, race, etc... Both characters believe the other to be naïve, with Teresa retorting, "Every thinker on the Left today would absolutely decimate you. You're a little protected out here, you don't have to deal with the protests and the pronouns and the cancelling and the...I just feel like you need to experience the front lines" (p. 80).
Like his character Emily, Will Arbery himself presents these characters empathetically, witnessed by the accolades 'Heroes of the Fourth Turning' has received among the Right, including Rod Dreher, the doyen of kneejerk conservatism. As a right-leaning Canadian evangelical who has (perhaps foolishly) spent too much time immersed in American conservative politics, I felt like I saw myself represented in the play too by the different characters in different circumstances. That a play about religion and conservative politics would be a finalist for the Pulitzer Price for Drama in 2020 is extraordinary but this play is well worth engaging and I too hope to one day see it performed on stage.
Read
July 22, 2022idk goodreads what DID I think
December 27, 2021
In the author's own words, this is a "walk-out" play, meaning: some people will definitely walk out. Supposedly some right-wing critics think this play is actually ok, because they felt some characters actually depicted them accurately. But since new theater is typically the domain of the left, and many simply don't want to hear right-wing talking points--even if there are crises and conflict between the characters spewing them, as they inhabit different points on that half of the spectrum, from a female "edgelord"/Bannon-wannabe, to a confused self-abusive fuckup, to an empathetic soul who lives with some chronic condition, to the professor of the college, whom they all still idolize even though they disagree over whether "a [civil] war is coming".
I went to 12 years of catholic school--barely practicing, and although admittedly there's certainly many levels beyond, this just didn't feel... catholic to me, despite the author growing up hardcore catholic and embedding characters based heavily on his mother, and sister. This felt much more... protestant, as that's the core right-wing base. If catholics are right-wing, it's usually over abortion, which gets debated in the play, until the excellent line: "If abortion is equivalent to the holocaust, then who are the Nazis? Don't you dare say the mothers!"
As a reunion "mystery" play, where you unravel prior events and relationships, it definitely works; the dialogue is natural and moves at a good pace.
As a political think-piece, there were a few other interesting observations, e.g.
* religion has a built-in dilemma of wanting to increase its numbers, so it must appeal to different types of people/expanding its "entry points", but ultimately it wants everyone to wind up at the same destination.
* the first female head of the college does want some change (or else she would not have her position), but they just want very very slow change. the left wants too much change too fast for their taste.
So then what cost it stars from me...? Theater gimmick bullshit.
Some completely unrelated unexplained things intentionally "open to interpretation" at the very end, which felt like a total cop-out. In an interview, the author even states that he doesn't have an explanation for them, but calls out one obvious supernatural assumption as "definitely not it". Weak. You don't get it both ways. It completely ruined an otherwise challenging-yet-thought-provoking play.
p.s. - I also found the two male characters to be the weakest characterizations of the bunch.
The strong, silent, ex-military Justin both proposes a gun-training course at the catholic college, then says he's going to go off to be a solitary monk, without the obvious question of why he proposed the first if the second was his intention?
The overall fuck-up Kevin suddenly recites a few long poems/quotes in-between his wallowing, without any confirmation from another character that it even happened, let alone it being an aspect of their friend with which they're all familiar... or some new trait, completely unusual in relation to his other traits.
I went to 12 years of catholic school--barely practicing, and although admittedly there's certainly many levels beyond, this just didn't feel... catholic to me, despite the author growing up hardcore catholic and embedding characters based heavily on his mother, and sister. This felt much more... protestant, as that's the core right-wing base. If catholics are right-wing, it's usually over abortion, which gets debated in the play, until the excellent line: "If abortion is equivalent to the holocaust, then who are the Nazis? Don't you dare say the mothers!"
As a reunion "mystery" play, where you unravel prior events and relationships, it definitely works; the dialogue is natural and moves at a good pace.
As a political think-piece, there were a few other interesting observations, e.g.
* religion has a built-in dilemma of wanting to increase its numbers, so it must appeal to different types of people/expanding its "entry points", but ultimately it wants everyone to wind up at the same destination.
* the first female head of the college does want some change (or else she would not have her position), but they just want very very slow change. the left wants too much change too fast for their taste.
So then what cost it stars from me...? Theater gimmick bullshit.
Some completely unrelated unexplained things intentionally "open to interpretation" at the very end, which felt like a total cop-out. In an interview, the author even states that he doesn't have an explanation for them, but calls out one obvious supernatural assumption as "definitely not it". Weak. You don't get it both ways. It completely ruined an otherwise challenging-yet-thought-provoking play.
p.s. - I also found the two male characters to be the weakest characterizations of the bunch.
The strong, silent, ex-military Justin both proposes a gun-training course at the catholic college, then says he's going to go off to be a solitary monk, without the obvious question of why he proposed the first if the second was his intention?
The overall fuck-up Kevin suddenly recites a few long poems/quotes in-between his wallowing, without any confirmation from another character that it even happened, let alone it being an aspect of their friend with which they're all familiar... or some new trait, completely unusual in relation to his other traits.
February 22, 2022
The broad narrative around Will Arbery’s “Heroes of the Fourth Turning” seems to be that it allows a liberal audience to understand something integral about Trump voters. It doesn’t. The idea that Trump’s victory, or any presidential election for that matter, can be understood through four Wordsworth-quoting intellectuals is risible.
That is not to suggest that the kinds of Americans Arbery writes do not exist or do not matter. They do. They just aren’t stand-ins for rural Americans, for right-wing Americans, for religious Americans. They are a specific type of insular, threatened Catholic intellectual. Such people exist and are a real part of the Trump story. The repeated invocations of Steve Bannon are not contrived, and Arbery’s personages inhabit a world shared by more and more intellectuals: J. D. Vance, Sohrab Ahmari, Adrian Vermeule, etc. These figures were able to give Trump some fleeting intellectual heft at times, but as New Republic writer Sam Adler-Bell, paraphrasing Tanner Greer, writes “archetypal Trump Country is inhabited by the [Protestant] descendants of Scots-Irish anti-authoritarians who deplore outsiders, hierarchy, and learned university men.” What are the alumni of Transfiguration College of Wyoming if not learned university men (and women) championing authority and hierarchy, the precise antithesis of the archetypal Trump Country resident?
This criticism of the mythology surrounding the play is not criticism of the play itself. At no point did the script pretend to be a guide to Trump Country. All it did was tell the story of five sincere Catholic intellectuals. This will, as some of the other reviews here attest, not be to some people’s liking. Their views are not all that acceptable in liberal elite circles, nor even entirely welcome in the American mainstream. Politics aside, Kevin can’t stop sniveling and Teresa can feel incapable of human connection. Still, unlikeable characters have never ruined a work of fiction for me, and oftentimes I think they’re more revealing, especially when they are written as honestly and generously as they are in “Heroes.”
That is not to suggest that the kinds of Americans Arbery writes do not exist or do not matter. They do. They just aren’t stand-ins for rural Americans, for right-wing Americans, for religious Americans. They are a specific type of insular, threatened Catholic intellectual. Such people exist and are a real part of the Trump story. The repeated invocations of Steve Bannon are not contrived, and Arbery’s personages inhabit a world shared by more and more intellectuals: J. D. Vance, Sohrab Ahmari, Adrian Vermeule, etc. These figures were able to give Trump some fleeting intellectual heft at times, but as New Republic writer Sam Adler-Bell, paraphrasing Tanner Greer, writes “archetypal Trump Country is inhabited by the [Protestant] descendants of Scots-Irish anti-authoritarians who deplore outsiders, hierarchy, and learned university men.” What are the alumni of Transfiguration College of Wyoming if not learned university men (and women) championing authority and hierarchy, the precise antithesis of the archetypal Trump Country resident?
This criticism of the mythology surrounding the play is not criticism of the play itself. At no point did the script pretend to be a guide to Trump Country. All it did was tell the story of five sincere Catholic intellectuals. This will, as some of the other reviews here attest, not be to some people’s liking. Their views are not all that acceptable in liberal elite circles, nor even entirely welcome in the American mainstream. Politics aside, Kevin can’t stop sniveling and Teresa can feel incapable of human connection. Still, unlikeable characters have never ruined a work of fiction for me, and oftentimes I think they’re more revealing, especially when they are written as honestly and generously as they are in “Heroes.”
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