Call me odd... most disturbing plays?- Page 2

[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. 

[trentsketch]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 6:39am

If you count musicals, as well, Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe

I'm also throwing my hat behind The Pillowman.

Updated On: 3/2/16 at 06:39 AM

[gfaustswa]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 9:23am

Equus

[temms]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 11:31am

I was very disturbed (in a good way) by a play I saw at Fringe a few years ago called "Viral" by Mac Rogers.  A suicidal woman falls in with a group of people who have a sexual fetish for watching people die, but peacefully as opposed to violently.  They propose to help her carry out the suicide if they can film it to sell as porn.  I don't think it's been done since Fringe, but it got good press and I still remember it vividly.

[oncemorewithfeeling2]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 12:39pm

Bent...powerful and important, but disturbing

 

Just about anything from the "In Yer Face" movement would count.

[eperkins]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 4:05pm

'night, Mother

[PepperedShepherd]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 4:25pm

A few more:

 

Suddenly, Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee

The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh

Guards at the Taj by Rajiv Joseph

George Orwell's 1984 by Robert Icke & Duncan Macmillan

 

 

Updated On: 3/2/16 at 04:25 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 4:28pm

Buried Child

Agnes of God

The Children's Hour

Updated On: 3/2/16 at 04:28 PM

[MusicAndPassion]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 5:45pm

Anything by Sarah Kane. I've read all of her plays and have written about them a few times. I particularly found Cleansed to be very uncomfortable, especially with rape, behandings, and rats eating body parts, and I'm pretty sure Tinker is the character Kane bases off of a theatre critic that disliked her.

Edward Bond's Saved, which was an inspiration for Kane's Blasted, has a disturbing scene involving a baby. I don't want to give it away, but I can only imagine how the audience felt during this scene.

Got to love the twisted British playwrights. They're so damn good.

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 8:00pm

The main character's big reveal at the end of "Red Dog Howls"  is one of the most disturbing I've ever read.

Updated On: 3/2/16 at 08:00 PM

[perfectlymarvelous]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 8:21pm

The Pillowman is one of my favorite plays but it really messed me up. Equus is another crazy one. I also just read Halley Feiffer's I'm Gonna Pray For You So Hard and found that pretty disquieting.

[Glittergrrl]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 10:11pm

I don't have anything new to add.  I saw Pillowman twice and I loved it.  Don't know what that says about me. All of Martin McDonagh's plays are on the dark side, although they're mixed with humor. His only play I haven't seen is Behanding in Spokane, and I'm still upset  I missed it.  I saw Bug at Barrow St and that was pretty disturbing.  I wish I saw Killer Joe because I like the film a lot.  Can't think of anything else.  I think Neil LaBute has some darker stuff. 

[Stage Door Sally]

Posted: 3/2/16 at 11:16pm

Veronica's Room by Ira Levin

[trentsketch]

Posted: 3/3/16 at 10:51am

Neil Labute's Autobahn collection is really disturbing, too. One of the plays is about a woman trying to remember the details of her rape. Another involves a young man who suddenly grows to fear her girlfriend when she reveals all the horrible things she did to the last man who tried to break up with her. Wild stuff.

[JRybka]

Posted: 3/3/16 at 12:13pm

I remember how incredible "LULU" was when I saw it at the Berkeley Rep. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPOILER:  The ending was really intense when jack the ripper slices Lulu's mouth off and it is in his hands dripping blood.  

[Ranger Tom]

Posted: 3/3/16 at 12:58pm

Thanks Peppered - forgot Suddenly, Last Summer.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 3/3/16 at 2:28pm

1984 at the ART was one of the most disturbing shows I've ever seen.  In a good way....mostly.

[elphaba.scares.me]

Posted: 3/3/16 at 3:28pm

The f*#%$*g Pillowman.  Not just because it's about child abuse but because it seems to find so much humor in it.

 

Pissed me off. Left at intermission.

[Wee Thomas2]

Posted: 3/4/16 at 7:54am

Glittergrrl said: "I don't have anything new to add.  I saw Pillowman twice and I loved it.  Don't know what that says about me. All of Martin McDonagh's plays are on the dark side, although they're mixed with humor. His only play I haven't seen is Behanding in Spokane, and I'm still upset  I missed it.  I saw Bug at Barrow St and that was pretty disturbing.  I wish I saw Killer Joe because I like the film a lot.  Can't think of anything else.  I think Neil LaBute has some darker stuff. 

"

I stagedoored Realistic Jones' just to ask Tracy Letts about Killer Joe and he said "he hoped" it would be revived in NYC in the near future.

 

Of course that was 2 years ago.

 

I've seen the film and I saw a very dark version in a small black box in Watertown, MA a couple years ago.

[ajh]

Posted: 3/5/16 at 12:46pm

For me, the two most disturbing plays I've seen would have to be Philip Ridley's MERCURY FUR and Sarah Kane's CLEANSED (the current revival at the National Theatre in London actually caused me to do something I've never done before in a theatre...I passed out, albeit briefly).

Both of them contain horrific imagery that stayed with me long after the actual performance, and MF also has some descriptive passages in the dialogue that are truly the stuff of nightmares.

[That Groovy Guy]

Posted: 3/7/16 at 4:59am

The Crucible

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 3/7/16 at 1:30pm

Going back to 1974, "Find Your Way Home" by John Hopkins.

[Ado Annie D'Ysquith]

Posted: 3/7/16 at 2:50pm

Well, I gotta say- that bit someone posted about the boys in Finding Neverland who killed themselves certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Now I'm rethinking everything I thought I knew about THAT story...oof...

[broadwayindie]

Posted: 3/7/16 at 4:33pm

Punk Rock as it was staged by Griffin Theatre... especially the end