About this item
Highlights
- "Nearly everything about David Adjmi's Stunning has an original ring to it, from the setting . . . to the brassy bleat of the dialogue.
- About the Author: Is the recent recipient of the 2009 Kesselring and Bush Artists Fellowships.
- 280 Pages
- Drama, American
Description
About the Book
The first collection by a striking new voice in the American theater.Book Synopsis
"Nearly everything about David Adjmi's Stunning has an original ring to it, from the setting . . . to the brassy bleat of the dialogue." -Time Out New York
This volume of distinctive work includes Stunning, set in an insular Syrian Jewish community, where a teenage bride's world is disrupted by her intellectual African American housekeeper; Evildoers, about the collapse of two privileged couples; and Elective Affinities, a post-9/11 monologue.
David Adjimi's other plays include Marie Antoninette, 3C, Strange Attractions, and Caligula. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writers' Award and Steinberg Playwright Award, among others. Stunning was selected to appear in The 2012 Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays. His as-yet-untitled memoir is forthcoming from Harper Collins. Adjimi is a member of New Dramatists, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and the Juliard School. This is his first play collection.
Review Quotes
Stunning
"Virtuosic playwright David Adjmi nicely evokes an arrestingly skewed subculture onstage: a stinging portrait of an insular Syrian Jewish community in contemporary Brooklyn. Coolly witty." - New York Times
"A razor-sharp satirical tragedy. Stunning offers a brutal yet witty view of groupthink and slippery identity politics among Syrian Jews in Brooklyn ... the hippest ticket in town." - NY1
"David Adjmi's off-Broadway debut is a striking, and yes, stunning black satire of the insular Syrian-Jewish community in Midwood, Brooklyn." - Flavorpill
"The advantage of writing about something you know pays off handsomely for multi-award-winning playwright David Adjmi...Careening courageously, but never recklessly, between satire and melodrama --and ultimately tragedy-- Stunning is an eye-opening, intimately focused look into the marriage of a couple within a sect that guards its insularity and its ingrained religious/cultural identity...astonishingly provocative" - Curtain Up
"Unless you happen to live in an insular Syrian-Jewish community, the culture shock of Stunning could be quite...well, stunning. David Adjmi's eye-opening drama about a despotic rag merchant, his tyrannized child bride and the black maid who challenges the medieval customs of their domestic life has a chilling impact. Riveting performances and super-stylish staging polish the play's satirical weapons of high dudgeon, while adding to the luster of LCT3, the developmental wing of Lincoln Center currently making a splash in its inaugural season at the Duke." - Variety
The Evildoers"Slashingly funny...Mr. Adjmi is certainly skilled at writing dialogue that both captures and softly lampoons the fluid eloquence and showy wit that perfumes the air at Manhattan restaurants and dining rooms." - New York Times
"Adjmi is a writer with a distinct voice, style and ambition. In The Evildoers he attempts nothing less than a reality check for the post-Baby Boom generation as it hits middle age - entitled-yet-ambitious, needy-yet-emotionally removed. He tears down the façade that masks veneer upon veneer with stinging detail, idiosyncratic loopiness and shocking incident." - Variety
"A culmination of the last four centuries of theater, playing with theatrical forms from Jacobean tragedy to drawing-room comedies, while adding its own very modern twists... You'll need someone to stabilize you when you walk out of the theater shaking. But drag a friend, an enemy or a professor along for perhaps the most thought-provoking stage production you'll encounter this year." - Yale Daily News
"The world premiere of David Adjmi's The Evildoers will open your eyes to a new level of depth perception in the study of human relationships. And you'll keep them open (maybe joined by a mouth) right to the final moment of the play. Filled with exquisite metaphor.. a great theatre piece." - Connecticut Critics' Circle
Elective Affinities"A brilliant monologue ... a disturbing, slyly amusing piece about the blithe ignorance of a sophisticated, upper-class American lady who in her civilized, patrician way argues that political torture is reasonable. Yet Mr. Adjmi makes his heroine oddly appealing. -There's hope for our political theater!" - New York Observer
"Elective Affinities has well-heeled Alice taking afternoon tea. With every blithe word, the thin mask of civilization - applied as carefully as her makeup - begins to slip, until all that is left is the monster within. As chilling as sticking your head in the ice box." - Guardian
"If you're one of the lucky few whom [Alice Hauptmann] has summoned to tea this month...I strongly urge you to accept." - New York Times
"Adjmi's playlet is tiny, but its eloquent, perverse core of coolly rationalized cruelty continues to gain mass and weight in my head." [Four stars] - Time Out New York
"A pure demonic delight." - New York Magazine
"Elective Affinities belongs to the rarely explored genre of metaphysical theatre..." - The New Yorker
"Lays bare an unimaginably violent anger lurking in American society." - The Stage.co.uk
Stunning
"Virtuosic playwright David Adjmi nicely evokes an arrestingly skewed subculture onstage: a stinging portrait of an insular Syrian Jewish community in contemporary Brooklyn. Coolly witty." - New York Times
"A razor-sharp satirical tragedy. Stunning offers a brutal yet witty view of groupthink and slippery identity politics among Syrian Jews in Brooklyn ... the hippest ticket in town." - NY1
"David Adjmi's off-Broadway debut is a striking, and yes, stunning black satire of the insular Syrian-Jewish community in Midwood, Brooklyn." - Flavorpill
"The advantage of writing about something you know pays off handsomely for multi-award-winning playwright David Adjmi...Careening courageously, but never recklessly, between satire and melodrama --and ultimately tragedy-- Stunning is an eye-opening, intimately focused look into the marriage of a couple within a sect that guards its insularity and its ingrained religious/cultural identity...astonishingly provocative" - Curtain Up
"Unless you happen to live in an insular Syrian-Jewish community, the culture shock of Stunning could be quite...well, stunning. David Adjmi's eye-opening drama about a despotic rag merchant, his tyrannized child bride and the black maid who challenges the medieval customs of their domestic life has a chilling impact. Riveting performances and super-stylish staging polish the play's satirical weapons of high dudgeon, while adding to the luster of LCT3, the developmental wing of Lincoln Center currently making a splash in its inaugural season at the Duke." - Variety
The Evildoers"Slashingly funny...Mr. Adjmi is certainly skilled at writing dialogue that both captures and softly lampoons the fluid eloquence and showy wit that perfumes the air at Manhattan restaurants and dining rooms." - New York Times
"Adjmi is a writer with a distinct voice, style and ambition. In The Evildoers he attempts nothing less than a reality check for the post-Baby Boom generation as it hits middle age - entitled-yet-ambitious, needy-yet-emotionally removed. He tears down the façade that masks veneer upon veneer with stinging detail, idiosyncratic loopiness and shocking incident." - Variety
"A culmination of the last four centuries of theater, playing with theatrical forms from Jacobean tragedy to drawing-room comedies, while adding its own very modern twists... You'll need someone to stabilize you when you walk out of the theater shaking. But drag a friend, an enemy or a professor along for perhaps the most thought-provoking stage production you'll encounter this year." - Yale Daily News
"The world premiere of David Adjmi's The Evildoers will open your eyes to a new level of depth perception in the study of human relationships. And you'll keep them open (maybe joined by a mouth) right to the final moment of the play. Filled with exquisite metaphor.. a great theatre piece." - Connecticut Critics' Circle
Elective Affinities"A brilliant monologue ... a disturbing, slyly amusing piece about the blithe ignorance of a sophisticated, upper-class American lady who in her civilized, patrician way argues that political torture is reasonable. Yet Mr. Adjmi makes his heroine oddly appealing. -There's hope for our political theater!" - New York Observer
"Elective Affinities has well-heeled Alice taking afternoon tea. With every blithe word, the thin mask of civilization - applied as carefully as her makeup - begins to slip, until all that is left is the monster within. As chilling as sticking your head in the ice box." - Guardian
"If you're one of the lucky few whom [Alice Hauptmann] has summoned to tea this month...I strongly urge you to accept." - New York Times
"Adjmi's playlet is tiny, but its eloquent, perverse core of coolly rationalized cruelty continues to gain mass and weight in my head." [Four stars] - Time Out New York
"A pure demonic delight." - New York Magazine
"Elective Affinities belongs to the rarely explored genre of metaphysical theatre..." - The New Yorker
"Lays bare an unimaginably violent anger lurking in American society." - The Stage.co.uk
About the Author
Is the recent recipient of the 2009 Kesselring and Bush Artists Fellowships. Other plays include "The Evildoers" (Sundance & Yale Rep), "Elective Affinities" (Royal Shakespeare Company), "Marie Antoinette" (Soho Rep W/D Lab, Sundance/Public Theatre Residency, Goodman Theatre New Stages Series), "Caligula" (Soho Rep Studio Series), and "Strange Attractors" (Empty Space). Honors: McKnight Advancement Grant, Jerome Fellowship, Helen Merrill Award, Marian