Plays 2: Northern Star / Heavenly Bodies / Pentecost

by Stewart Parker

This volume includes three of Stewart Parker's most striking plays - Northern Star: 'Only an Irishman could have written something like this: a freewheeling, lunatic sense of invention is harnessed to a cultivated, literary imagination and stoked up by moral outrage. It is a captivating play' (Sunday Times); Heavenly Bodies: 'The colourful, rather Balzacian story of Boucicault …An undoubted talent for pungent dialogue' (The Times); Pentecost: 'One of the most stimulating, most satisfying, most touching, most illuminating in years of Irish theatre. A total theatrical experience' (Irish Times)

Genres: Plays, College, Ireland, Drama

260 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2000

Reviews

[Blanchgyal · Rating 5 out of 5]

El monólogo final de Marian en Pentecost se me va a quedar dentro mucho tiempo. Qué poder cuando decides vivir. Porque se lo debes a alguien y porque mereces la vida

[Lenka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only read Pentecost and loved it. Especially the proposed LSD solution to the Troubles.

[Charlie Swan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Conventional, nothing more than a cultural touchstone.(pentecost only)

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

only read pentecost, read it out loud with my friends, fantastic, darkly funny and sad

[Gail McConnell]

Peter: ... what would Jesus Christ do with us all here, would you say?

Lenny: I'll tell you exactly what he'd do, he'd close down every church and chapel, temple and tabernacle in the whole island, put them to the torch, burn them into rubble, turf the congregations out priests and pastors face first, and drive them up into the mountains, up the boniest, bleakest stretches of the Sperrins and the Mournes, and he'd flay them into the rock, until the Christianity was scourged out of the very marrows of their bones, he'd expunge religion once and for all from off the face of this country, until the people could discover no mercy except in each other, no belief except to believe in each other, no forgiveness but what the other would forgive, until they cried out in the dark for each other and embraced their own humanity... that's the only redemption he'd offer them. Never mind believing in Jesus Christ. That's the point at which Jesus Christ might just begin to believe in us.

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[Caoileann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really very very good. He deserves alot of recognition this old Parker guy. It's a pity his plays don't seem to be the done thing anymore, or maybe I'm just out of touch

[Kellyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

(read Pentecost)

[Matylda Tyler]

Read only Northern Star.