Call me odd... most disturbing plays?

[Younger Brother]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 3:30pm

Call me odd but recently I've gotten very much into dark, disturbing plays that leave an audience unsettled whether it be the plot or staging. Anyone have any suggestions? I would rank The Beauty Queen of Lenaane pretty high followed by Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh.

Another very disturbing play is by an Irish writer, Mark O'Rowe called "Our Few and Evil Days"

 

Click Here To Toggle Spoiler Content

The plot is a sorta "meeting the parents" approach with lots of suspected secrets and hidden knowledge. A lot of this centres around the character of the son who has ran away when he was I believe nine or ten years old and hasn't been since apparently. As the play progresses we realise the reason the son ran away was because he raped his mother which of course, led to a huge confrontation and he ran away in fear. Pretty twisted but it progresses to get even darker; the mother wants to know her son is still alive despite everything that happened. Every night she sleeps downstairs and allows her son to "break into" the house and rape her again, a way of her knowing that as long as he continues to come back, he's still alive. Pretty twisted.

 

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 3:39pm

Blasted by Sarah Kane.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 3:39pm

I thought Bug by Tracy Letts was pretty disturbing. I only saw the movie version though.

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 3:57pm

The Pillowman 

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 4:01pm

Saved, by Edward Bond

 

But most critics, it seemed, were damning and vituperative. They despised Bond's characters, his "slavishly literal bawdry", the lack of artistry in his writing. In particular, the baby stoning scene, which filled the Telegraph's WA Darlington with "cold disgust", was condemned as the "ugliest", "nastiest", "most sickening and revolting" exercise in "brutality" ever seen on the modern stage.

 

Further reading (The Guardian)

[Wee Thomas2]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 4:33pm

Second vote for Pillowman.

 

Beauty Queen is up there, too (hmm, what do these shows have in common?)

 

I haven't seen Bug, but Tracy's other show "Killer Joe" is pretty rough.

[Kad]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 4:36pm

TotallyEffed said: "Blasted by Sarah Kane."

That was my first thought, too.

[uncageg]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 4:39pm

Pillowman

Mercury Fur

Doubt (Not in a frightening/scary way)

[The Other One]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 6:19pm

You are odd.  Well, you asked.

 

Extremities, by William Mastrosimone

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 6:32pm

TITUS ANDRONICUS

MISS JULIE

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI

GHOSTS

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF

KING LEAR

[Up In One]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 6:33pm

Matilda and sections of Finding Neverland

[Fantod]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 6:34pm

4:48 Psychosis

The Power of Darkness (Leo Tolstoy)

[LuminousBeing]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 8:18pm

"Let the Right One In"

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 8:23pm

Would Equus count? I feel like that should have been mentioned by now. Did I miss it?

[Ado Annie D'Ysquith]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 8:34pm

All right, I'd never heard of Blasted, so I bit the bullet and checked Wikipedia. I only have three words (letters?) of reaction: W. T. F?!

Who in their right mind writes that kind of s***? I don't care if you're trying to be "edgy" or write some kind of "provocative art," you do NOT need to go to extremes like that. No one will ever change my mind about this: there IS such a thing as limits, even in the theatre.

[vegas2]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 9:03pm

The Nether.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 9:51pm

Blasted would make a great musical.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 10:12pm

Mysterious Skin, my company produced an award nominated production of it and the show was a hit but with the act 1 and act 2 finale and the subject matter it affected a lot of people. 

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 10:36pm

Mysterious Skin is another one where I've only seen the movie. I wasn't particularly disturbed by the movie but I bet it would be an entirely different experience in a theatre with live actors.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 10:43pm

The play is beautifully constructed to maximise the impact of the horror the 2 boys went through. The rape (we did full frontal and brutal as it's very much needed) is incredibly upsetting but powerful. 

[JBroadway]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 10:43pm

Yet another vote for The Pillowman. Defnitely the most disturbing play I've ever read/or seen. Some other notable ones for me: 

 

Equus

Oedipus (an obvious yet easy-to-forget one)

Dog Sees God

Hand to God

 

 

[phantomcrazy14]

Posted: 3/1/16 at 11:48pm

Boy Gets Girl by Rebecca Gilman

We read it in our Script Analysis class after first moving to New York. Everyone was terrified.

[mikem]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 12:33am

I saw Blasted in the 2008 production at Soho Rep.  It was the first time I ever saw Reed Birney on stage. 

 

SPOILERS FOR BLASTED

 

Over the course of the play, Birney had to say homophobic, racist, and misogynist things; strip and have an extended nude scene; drink water dripping from the ceiling (and who knows how clean that water was); and simulate getting anally raped, having his eyes gouged out, and eating a dead baby.  Birney did an excellent job, as you would expect, but it was the craziest set of stuff to make an actor go through every night.  As I was applauding at the curtain call, I was thinking, "Well, it's a living..."

[Ranger Tom]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 1:11am

Marat/Sade

Quills

Corpus Christi

Pillowman

Equus

[Mr Kelly]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 3:08am

Up In One said: "Matilda and sections of Finding Neverland

 

"

I agree. throughout Finding Neverland I was thinking of the odd relationship between Barrie and those boys and how two would end up committing suicide.