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Title and Deed / Oh, the Humanity and other good intentions

Title and Deed / Oh, the Humanity and other good intentions

By Will Eno
Imprint: Theatre Communications Group
Paperback : 9781559364652, 128 pages, November 2014

Description

Known for his wry humor and deeply moving plays, Will Eno's "gift for articulating life's absurd beauty and its no less absurd horrors may be unmatched among writers of his generation" (New York Times). This new volume of the acclaimed playwright's work includes five short plays about being alive: Behold the Coach, in a Blazer, UninsuredLadies and Gentlemen, the RainEnter the Spokeswoman, GentlyThe Bully Composition; and Oh, the Humanity, as well as Title and Deed, a haunting and severely funny solo rumination on life as everlasting exile.

Reviews

"Title and Deed is daring within its masquerade of the mundane, spectacular within its minimalism and hilarious within its display of po-faced bewilderment. It is a clown play that capers at the edge of the abyss... Eno’s voice is unique; his play is stage poetry of a high order. You can’t see the ideas coming in Title and Deed. When they arrive—tiptoeing in with a quiet yet startling energy—you don’t quite know how they got there. In this tale’s brilliant telling, it is not the narrator who proves unreliable but life itself. The unspoken message of Eno’s smart, bleak musings seems to be: enjoy the nothingness while you can."

- John Lahr, New Yorker

"A haunting and often fiercely funny meditation on life as a state of permanent exile... The marvel of Mr. Eno’s voice is how naturally it combines a carefully sculptured lyricism with sly, poker-faced humor. Everyday phrases and familiar platitudes 'Don’t ever change,' 'Who knows' are turned inside out or twisted into blunt, unexpected punch lines punctuating long rhapsodic passages that leave you happily word-drunk."

- Charles Isherwood, New York Times on Title and Deed

"Eno is a supreme monologist, using a distinctive, edgy blend of non sequiturs and provisional statements to explore the fragility of our existence... There are a lot of words, but they are always exquisitely chosen... Oh, the Humanity reveals that we are beautiful walking tragedies blinking with absurd optimism into the camera lens of history."

- Lyn Gardner, Guardian