Pity

by Rory Mullarkey

Overview

Two bombs in one day is a foul coincidence
Don't forget the lightning strike

A normal day. A person stands in the market square watching the world go by.
What happens next verges on the ridiculous.

There's ice cream. Sunshine. Shops. Some dogs. A wedding. Bombs. Candles. Blood. Lightning. Sandwiches. Snipers. Looting. Gunshots. Babies. Actors. Azaleas. Famine. Fountains. Statues. Atrocities. And tanks. (Probably).

Rory Mullarkey's new play asks whether things really are getting worse. And if we care.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350096349
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	09/20/2018
Series:	Modern Plays
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	64
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Stockport native Rory Mullarkey graduated in 2009 from Cambridge, after which he studied at the State Theatrical Arts Academy of St. Petersburg. A translator of Russian Drama, Mullarkey's translations have been produced by the ADC Theatre, The Royal Court and the Free Theatre of Belarus. Plays include Single Sex (Royal Exchange); Remembrance Day (Royal Court), Tourism (Headlong) and Come To Where I'm From (Paines Plough). Mullarkey spent 2010 as Writer-on-Attachment at the Royal Court Theatre, London, and 2011 as the Pearson Writer in Residence at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. His The Grandfathers was programmed as part of the National Theatre's 2012 Connections: Plays for Young People. In 2014, Rory Mullarkey won the Harold Pinter Playwriting Prize, the George Devine Award (jointly with Alice Birch) and the James Tait Black Prize for Drama for his play Cannibals, published by Methuen Drama.
Rory Mullarkey's original plays include Pity, The Wolf from the Door (Royal Court Theatre), Saint George and the Dragon (Royal National Theatre), Each Slow Dusk (Pentabus Theatre/UK Tour), Cannibals, Single Sex (Royal Exchange, Manchester), The Grandfathers (National Theatre Connections, then Bristol Old Vic/National Theatre) and On the Threshing Floor (Heat&Light Company, Hampstead Theatre). His adaptations/translations include The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (Bristol Old Vic/Manchester Royal Exchange), The Oresteia by Aeschylus (Shakespeare's Globe) and Remembrance Day by Aleksey Scherbak (Royal Court). He has written the libretti for The Skating Rink by David Sawer (Garsington Opera), Coraline by Mark-Anthony Turnage (Royal Opera House) and The Way Back Home by Joanna Lee (ENO/Young Vic). He has won the Abraham Woursell Prize (co-winner 2017), the James Tait Black Prize for Drama (2014), the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright (co-winner, 2014), the Harold Pinter Commission for the Royal Court (2014) and the Pearson Bursary for the Royal Exchange, Manchester (2011).

Editorial Reviews

Rory Mullarkey's poetical, darkly funny but never murky adaptation proves stimulating and surprising . . . makes you laugh one moment and shudder the next” —The Times (on Saint George and the Dragon)

“It's no surprise that there's a lot of theatre right now preoccupied with tyranny and freedom, as well as the power of nationalism to divide a country rather than hold it together. Rory Mullarkey's new play addresses all these issues, favouring an anarchic style that at times brings to mind Blackadder and Monty Python...There are ticklish jokes and moments of enjoyable mischief...” —Evening Standard (on Saint George and the Dragon)

From the Publisher