Heroes of the Fourth Turning
Awards
- Short-listed, Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2020
Description
Night. Wyoming. Four young conservatives have gathered to toast the newly inducted president of their tiny Catholic college. Their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos and clashing generational politics, becoming less a celebration than a vicious fight to be understood. On a dark night, in the middle of America, Will Arbery’s haunting play speaks to the heart of a country at war with itself.
Reviews
“An astonishing play.”
- Jesse Green, New York Times
“A stunning play… Heroes of the Fourth Turning is so frighteningly well written, it’s hard to write about. It’s a rare play—lyrical and scary, brave and terribly gentle.”
- Sara Holdren, Vulture
“It’s hard to talk about Arbery’s play, in a way, because there’s so much talking in it, and the voices aren’t ones we hear often Off-Broadway. They are deeply religious, profoundly Catholic, proudly conservative, sometimes messianic. Arbery’s plays are important explorations of language… He’s showing us how language, even at its most beautiful, can destabilize a mind, a backyard, the world.”
- Helen Shaw, Time Out New York
“Flawless… A work of singular distinction, one for which the word ‘remarkable’ is an understatement. Arbery is a greatly talented writer who has given us a drama as exciting and challenging—nay, daring—as any new play I’ve ever reviewed.”
- Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal
“The complexities of faith, politics, and personal history collide in Will Arbery’s bracingly original Heroes of the Fourth Turning, throwing off enough sparks to start a forest fire… While Heroes is a work of drama, not advocacy, the play takes its characters and their ideas seriously—and then goes the extra, necessary step of forcing them to confront the personal cost, for them and for us, of living out those ideas.”
- Don Aucoin, Boston Globe