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One Flea Spare
“I sat in a theater at the Humana Festival last year, after the closing monologue of ONE FLEA SPARE, unable to move. I had known Naomi Wallace’s work well, having directed an earlier play, and I knew she had tremendous talent and promised to great things. Nothing had prepared me—not my admiration for her plays and for her beautiful, harsh, moving, brilliantly political poetry—for the experience of watching this play, which is in my opinion one of the finest works of dramatic literature written here or in England in the last two decades. Utterly without sentiment but possessed of a very great human heart, ONE FLEA SPARE touches upon many things, class and gender and the pressures of a plague upon internal and external human constructs; and, as I read it, most devastatingly it addresses a tragedy of almost inexpressible the consequences of the horrors of biology and Capital on the young. As the play draws to its shattering close I was filled with thoughts of the children of Sarajevo and Rwanda and the slums of America. `Almost’ inexpressible except in the hands of a true poet, and Naomi Wallace so magnificently proves herself to be. Her ability to articulate the inarticulable, grief and loss and suffering beyond endurance, is a source of hope; as is the resilience and passion of the marvelous characters she’s assembled. Everyone who loves the theater should read this play. It has made me INTENSELY envious and very full of joy.”Tony Kushner “Naomi Wallace sharply tightens her focus in this latest, thrillingly original work, set for the most part in a virtually bare London room during the Great Plague.”Jeremy Kingston, The Times (London) “Poetic...Naomi Wallace’s ONE FLEA SPARE is another example of fine, ambitious writing.... The London plague is evoked in statistics and the overwhelming reality of quirky, Marivaux-like social role reversals in a single room.”Michael Coveney, The Observer (London) “Naomi Wallace makes an opaque but artful and haunting New York debut with her ONE FLEA SPARE.... ONE FLEA SPARE is built to provoke, not to distract, and it doesn’t surrender its meanings easily. But the play’s powerful sexual subtext and its beautiful poetic surface reveal an original theatrical imagination. Whether Wallace will find a big audience remains to be seen. She has a big talent, though. Wherever her plays are mounted, they’re worth finding.”John Lahr, The New Yorker
78 pages, Paperback
Published January 8, 2021
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About the author
Naomi Wallace
92 books17 followersNaomi Wallace is an American playwright, screenwriter and poet from Kentucky. She is widely known for her plays, and has received several distinguished awards for her work.
Her Finborough Theatre productions include And I And Silence, which subsequently transferred to Signature Theater, New York City. Other theatre productions include In the Heart of America (Bush Theatre), Slaughter City (Royal Shakespeare Company), One Flea Spare (Public Theater, New York City), The Trestle at Pope Lick Creekand Things of Dry Hours (New York Theatre Workshop), The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East (Public Theater, New York City), and Night is a Room (Signature Theater, New York City).
Naomi has been awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, the Obie Award and the Horton Foote Award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Naomi received the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama, and in 2015 an Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her play One Flea Spare was recently incorporated into the permanent repertoire of the French National Theatre, La Comédie-Française. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comédie’s repertoire in two hundred years, the other being Tennessee Williams.
Her Finborough Theatre productions include And I And Silence, which subsequently transferred to Signature Theater, New York City. Other theatre productions include In the Heart of America (Bush Theatre), Slaughter City (Royal Shakespeare Company), One Flea Spare (Public Theater, New York City), The Trestle at Pope Lick Creekand Things of Dry Hours (New York Theatre Workshop), The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East (Public Theater, New York City), and Night is a Room (Signature Theater, New York City).
Naomi has been awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, the Obie Award and the Horton Foote Award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Naomi received the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama, and in 2015 an Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her play One Flea Spare was recently incorporated into the permanent repertoire of the French National Theatre, La Comédie-Française. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comédie’s repertoire in two hundred years, the other being Tennessee Williams.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
November 23, 2021
"MORSE: My mother lives in your mouth and one day she will choke you."
This was so good. One of the best plays to ever make me feel something with just the words- or the absence of, in One Flea Spare's case. It's the sort of off-putting a theatrical performance should be; a too-wise twelve year old learning about the world at a rate not meant for children, a bisexual pirate with terribly longing words, a mean old capitalist with nothing but money to die for, and a literal desperate housewife. And that horrible sonofabitch Kabe. Isolation has never been more candle-lit with long, waxing poetics.
This was so good. One of the best plays to ever make me feel something with just the words- or the absence of, in One Flea Spare's case. It's the sort of off-putting a theatrical performance should be; a too-wise twelve year old learning about the world at a rate not meant for children, a bisexual pirate with terribly longing words, a mean old capitalist with nothing but money to die for, and a literal desperate housewife. And that horrible sonofabitch Kabe. Isolation has never been more candle-lit with long, waxing poetics.
October 1, 2020
"Yes, but only because I allow it. I have given history a wee slap on the buttocks and for a moment something terribly strange happened: you in my shoes. However, what we see here is not real."
This play explodes all of the binaries that trouble us about society with its concepts and prose. It is also about one of the Bubonic plague waves, so I would caution against reading it right now if the pandemic setting might be triggering for you. This play includes a cast of characters that you will love, and a backdrop that sparks plenty of social commentary that, sadly, still applies today.
It's fairly short; give it a read!
This play explodes all of the binaries that trouble us about society with its concepts and prose. It is also about one of the Bubonic plague waves, so I would caution against reading it right now if the pandemic setting might be triggering for you. This play includes a cast of characters that you will love, and a backdrop that sparks plenty of social commentary that, sadly, still applies today.
It's fairly short; give it a read!
April 2, 2022
I swear, I feel like I’m entering my “pretentious playwright” era, which I don’t necessarily enjoy, but this play I enjoyed very much. What Naomi does with five characters, mostly one on one conversations, and limited setting but worldly stakes, is nothing short of, as the kids say, “straight fire”. I adored ever page. Act Two scene One is probably my fave scene and is such a great example of outward wants/needs/desires and subconscious wants/needs/desires. Honestly, just everything between Bunce and Snelgrave.
Obsessed, will watch every adaptation (and write one of my own for fun)
Obsessed, will watch every adaptation (and write one of my own for fun)
September 21, 2021
"One Flea Spare" is set in a plague ravaged London in 1665, which is perhaps why it is perfect reading for today, for right now, this minute. I have read that Naomi Wallace was inspired by Daniel Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Year" and the acquittal of the four officers who beat Rodney King. According to Laura Michiel's essay "Times of Contagion: The Social(ist) Politics of Plague in Naomi Wallace's "One Flea Spare", to Wallace, "these events became linked, because spatial barriers broke down, obliging the rich and poor to share a common space." And indeed, this play is very much about class, particularly in the time of a mass illness. Lower-class guard Kabe at one paint preaches, "you will see who it is that dies, their mouths open in want, the maggots moving inside their tongues making their tongues wag as though they were about to speak. But they will never speak again in this world. The hungry. The dirty. The abandoned. That's who dies. Not the fancy and the wealthy..."
One need only look today to see things have not changed a great deal in this regard. The effects of the current pandemic (as well as upcoming disasters such as climate change) do effect the poor by a very noticeable margin. And while this project isn't necessarily about making any kind of political statement, I think it is worth mentioning how art, even historical art, can be a powerful reflection of our present-day lives.
The story centers on a wealthy couple who are about to flee London to try to outrun the plague, but are forced to stay and quarantine (literally forced--- boarded inside and guarded) when a sailor, Bunce, stumbles into their house thinking it is empty. A young girl of 12, Morse, has also become a stowaway in the house without them realizing. Because these uninvited guests were spotted by guards getting into the home, the wealthy couple, the Snelgraves, cannot leave. The four are stuck together.
And Wallace is very good at showing how this quarantine-by-force breaks down the usual societal norms as time passes. And as one may notice in the quote above, Wallace does not shy away from the sad and the gruesome details of death, whether describing the pits where the dead are thrown, or those waiting to die and the "tokens" on their skin, black boils of pain.
The meat of the play is how the characters interact, and Mr. Snelgrave, the master of the house, immediately keeps his "rightful" place and makes Bunce and Morse his servants. But structure cannot last forever. Not in quarantine. There is emotional and physical manipulation, violence, and odd desire.
Which is not to say that the play is without humor and beauty. Naomi Wallace is also a poet, and her dialogue is lyrical and effortlessly descriptive. My favorite character is Morse, a challenging role no question, for any young actress. She was a servant girl who watched her mother get the "tokens" of the plague, and saw her master throw her mother in the cellar behind a locked door, and gave her no food or water. From then, she was on her own, until locking down as part of this very strange, intense group.
The title "One Flea Spare" comes from a poem, "The Flea", by John Donne, and Wallace uses this and the Brecht quote "Corruption is our only hope" as epigraphs in the printed version of the play. The play originally premiered in London in October of 1995, then was part of the Humana Festival in 1996. It opened in New York at the Public Theater in 1997, and won an Obie award for best play. The cast included Dianne Wiest and a young Mischa Barton. The play also won a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the 1996 Joseph Kesserling Prize, and the 1996 Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award.
This is my first introduction to the works of Naomi Wallace, and I anxiously look forward to learning more about her work. She is a MacArthur Fellow who has written many plays and several screenplays. I hope to learn more about her work soon. In the meantime, I highly recommend this play, though it may not be for the squeamish.
One need only look today to see things have not changed a great deal in this regard. The effects of the current pandemic (as well as upcoming disasters such as climate change) do effect the poor by a very noticeable margin. And while this project isn't necessarily about making any kind of political statement, I think it is worth mentioning how art, even historical art, can be a powerful reflection of our present-day lives.
The story centers on a wealthy couple who are about to flee London to try to outrun the plague, but are forced to stay and quarantine (literally forced--- boarded inside and guarded) when a sailor, Bunce, stumbles into their house thinking it is empty. A young girl of 12, Morse, has also become a stowaway in the house without them realizing. Because these uninvited guests were spotted by guards getting into the home, the wealthy couple, the Snelgraves, cannot leave. The four are stuck together.
And Wallace is very good at showing how this quarantine-by-force breaks down the usual societal norms as time passes. And as one may notice in the quote above, Wallace does not shy away from the sad and the gruesome details of death, whether describing the pits where the dead are thrown, or those waiting to die and the "tokens" on their skin, black boils of pain.
The meat of the play is how the characters interact, and Mr. Snelgrave, the master of the house, immediately keeps his "rightful" place and makes Bunce and Morse his servants. But structure cannot last forever. Not in quarantine. There is emotional and physical manipulation, violence, and odd desire.
Which is not to say that the play is without humor and beauty. Naomi Wallace is also a poet, and her dialogue is lyrical and effortlessly descriptive. My favorite character is Morse, a challenging role no question, for any young actress. She was a servant girl who watched her mother get the "tokens" of the plague, and saw her master throw her mother in the cellar behind a locked door, and gave her no food or water. From then, she was on her own, until locking down as part of this very strange, intense group.
The title "One Flea Spare" comes from a poem, "The Flea", by John Donne, and Wallace uses this and the Brecht quote "Corruption is our only hope" as epigraphs in the printed version of the play. The play originally premiered in London in October of 1995, then was part of the Humana Festival in 1996. It opened in New York at the Public Theater in 1997, and won an Obie award for best play. The cast included Dianne Wiest and a young Mischa Barton. The play also won a Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the 1996 Joseph Kesserling Prize, and the 1996 Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award.
This is my first introduction to the works of Naomi Wallace, and I anxiously look forward to learning more about her work. She is a MacArthur Fellow who has written many plays and several screenplays. I hope to learn more about her work soon. In the meantime, I highly recommend this play, though it may not be for the squeamish.
May 22, 2024
This was really solid. I haven’t sat down and read a Naomi Wallace play like this in one sitting since night is a room. It wasn’t as groundbreaking as Night is a Room (honestly thank god) but there’s definitely something special here.
Naomi Wallace is really really good at writing psychosexual plays, but this one is unique and interesting because of the dramaturgical aspects. There’s so much interesting sexual history being explored here!! I read a lot of these parts as a metaphor for trans pirates.
Also wow some really beautiful dialogue and intimacy moments here. Probably the best sex scene in a play, with some very unique stage directions. I like the attention that Naomi Wallace gives to the intamacy in her actions.
The orange moment, the bird moment, etc. Are all very good, but the rest of the dialogue was just okay. I wanted more from this, but it still left me satisfied overall. The good moments are REALLY good, but the bland moments are very bland.
Naomi Wallace is really really good at writing psychosexual plays, but this one is unique and interesting because of the dramaturgical aspects. There’s so much interesting sexual history being explored here!! I read a lot of these parts as a metaphor for trans pirates.
Also wow some really beautiful dialogue and intimacy moments here. Probably the best sex scene in a play, with some very unique stage directions. I like the attention that Naomi Wallace gives to the intamacy in her actions.
The orange moment, the bird moment, etc. Are all very good, but the rest of the dialogue was just okay. I wanted more from this, but it still left me satisfied overall. The good moments are REALLY good, but the bland moments are very bland.
November 19, 2020
When this was recommended to me this past spring (2020), I was shocked that I hadn't read any more of Wallace's work beyond "In the Heart of America" years ago. This play is mostly realistic, highly poetic in language ("rough poetry" as Wallace calls it), and wonderfully weird in some places. It's static overall but yet covers immense personal change (or does it?). Like many of us have wondered living through smaller lives confined to homes and apartments, does that slow down change us or just reveal more of who we really are? Reviewers from the original productions repeatedly noted "we don't know the circumstances under which these characters are living", but my audiences this spring will. I'm excited to see what comes to the surface for all of us and what opportunities it presents.
October 25, 2018
I want to say something really thoughtful about this, but my capsule review/interpretation is: Wallace explodes the nuclear family against the backdrop of the Great Plague (1665 England), exploring the power dynamics of class and sexuality through an (often homo-)eroticism enacted through the grotesque. This play is set in a world of rotting corpses and never-healing wounds and stinking flesh and claustrophobia, but it manages to be sexy as hell. Which isn't the most important thing, but it's exciting to feel something sometimes, ammirite?
March 25, 2020
Wow. What a script. I haven’t felt this drawn to a show in a long time. I have so many thoughts about how this should be presented. A maddening wooden labyrinth of a stage, incorporating jagged/specific choreo to the point of rigidity, etc.
There is a huge underlying theme of power, which plays as very BDSM in this reading of the script.
Having just seen the film, Parasite and this would be wonderfully staged together.
Can’t stop thinking about how haunting Morse is and how much I love the Snelgrave/Bunce scenes.
There is a huge underlying theme of power, which plays as very BDSM in this reading of the script.
Having just seen the film, Parasite and this would be wonderfully staged together.
Can’t stop thinking about how haunting Morse is and how much I love the Snelgrave/Bunce scenes.
April 26, 2023
Reading a play with absolutely no expectations or context can go horribly wrong or horribly right, and this was definitely the latter. The characters were all so well defined and had shining moments on stage, and the pacing was great given that there is one room, five people, and weeks of time. Simple but great.
Read
February 15, 2025Incredibly well written and constructed with masterful poetic language. Grounded in historical research that permeates the piece instead of coming out in bits of clunky exposition. Unrelentingly bleak and disgusting at turns, which is not at all what I like in art but gotta admire Wallace’s craftsmanship. An intimacy coordinator would have their work cut out for them!
March 19, 2018
Really fast read that was very very strange.
April 4, 2018
Fantastic language, mesmerizing characterization,
and brilliant structure. Loved every page of it!
and brilliant structure. Loved every page of it!
March 27, 2020
While it is amazing, I was hoping that it wouldn't ring so. . . relatable. I don't think I needed to read something about people going insane from being quarantined during a plague.
April 20, 2021
A play about people going stir-crazy in a plague-induced lockdown? Cool
September 25, 2021
“Trust her; she's a liar.”
October 4, 2021
very poignant, especially right now
November 28, 2021
Weird. Eerily relatable. Would love to see it produced!
February 2, 2023
Tout y est, pour faire du beau théâtre, du grand art, s'ancrant parfaitement dans le mouvement In-Yer-Face que je (re)découvre sans cesse.
_
Eros Satanos : pulsion d'amour, pulsion de mort.
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Eros Satanos : pulsion d'amour, pulsion de mort.
March 5, 2023
“everyone leaves… even when they stay.”
“you can’t break my heart. it’s made of water.”
(act ii sc 8)
“you can’t break my heart. it’s made of water.”
(act ii sc 8)
September 24, 2024
2.5/5
I got interrupted with this by real life stuff but regardless I was hardly enjoying it. Not fun to read.
I got interrupted with this by real life stuff but regardless I was hardly enjoying it. Not fun to read.
December 23, 2024
Weird.
Read
April 17, 2025Do not put a dead bird in my dead mouth
November 18, 2025
More immediate than The Seventh Seal.
January 2, 2021
Reading about a pandemic during a pandemic? Yep. "One Flea Spare" is filled with fascinating characters who find themselves hunkered down together during the Plague. Really interesting.
August 14, 2024
EWWWW?!??
December 30, 2021
I simply love this play. Again I want to clarify my 4 star ratings are still reads that I am thoroughly in love with. And I'm pretty sure the only 5 star play I can ever feel fully certain about is Angels in America. ANYWAYS. This is such a good read to have in this current era of disease and quarantine. It's not a forced 'art in the time of COVID' type thing; it was written 30 years ago, and centers around the Black Death in Europe. Nothing compares to the language of this play, the lyrical and beautiful ways in which these characters speak against a backdrop of blood and dirt and death. It's so simultaneously gritty and wonderous. These elements are harmonious at some times and so deeply uncomfortable at others. It sounds like such an insane text to work on as an actor. I will be keeping my Morse audition monologue till the very second I'm too old for her. It's such a quick read, as so many plays are. So just go read it.
August 25, 2015
One Flea Spare...I have so many things to say. I got this play for Christmas shortly after I saw it onstage and I think I've re-read it once a year since. It reminds me what it means to be a human being. I'm still ceaselessly amazed by how this floors me every time even though I'm aware of how it ends. It's an example of really, really fine writing that I find is so seldom surpassed these days. The one word I would choose to sum this up is...Breathtaking? Shocking? Incredible? I don't think anything best describes this other than simply stunning.
December 2, 2014
I was truly surprised at how much I loved this play. My professor assigned this to me because he believed it reflected my own writing and I am so honored he could even make such a comparison. It reminded me of Beloved or One Hundred Years of Solitude if they were to be condensed to dramatic form. I highly recommend this if you love magical realism.
March 24, 2013
Heart-wrenching, beautiful, brutal.
September 28, 2016
I LOVED THIS. I would not have assumed I would have loved a play about the bubonic plague this much but boy oh boy. So intimate and crushing and beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews