cover photo by Peter Cunningham
this collection contains three full-length plays:
MCTEAGUE: A TALE OF SAN FRANCISCO
RAGGED DICK
THÉRÈSE RAQUIN
MCTEAGUE: A TALE OF SAN FRANCISCO (adapted from the novel by Frank Norris):
"Frank Norris' novel
MCTEAGUE is a panorama of the U S at the turn of the century:
cowboys, gold mines, the immigrant experience, the advent of
electricity and the movies. At the core is a gruesome cautionary
tale, aptly retitled Greed by Erich Von Stroheim when he made a
nine-hour film of it in 1923.... In adapting it anew...Neal
Bell's script...the second half is riveting. This is a story of
downward mobility, about a miner turned dentist (sans diploma)
who winds up defrocked and doomed in an abandoned mine."
William A Henry III, Time
"Bell weaves a thick, dark
tapestry of themes from MCTEAGUE's epic of incidents. Socially,
the focus is on the helplessness of a rough simpleton in a
rapidly urbanizing and professionalizing America--and on the
determination of immigrants and bootstrap-tuggers to cling to the
middle class rather than fall into the Victorian abyss of want.
Psychologically, it's on the metamorphosis of McTeague's innocent ignorance into
murderous rage—and
Trina's sensible shift into masochistic self-denial. Morally, it's on the
life-choking consequences of treating money as an end in itself rather than a
means toward fulfilling human needs.
Each of these levels resonates
through the adaptation's writing."
Scott Rosenberg, San
Francisco Examiner
originally produced by Berkeley Repertory Theater, CA
5 M, 4 F
RAGGED DICK
"Neal Bell's play RAGGED
DICK is a lurid, poetic and often fascinating study of sex,
politics and poverty.
...Bell's landscape painting of
urban poverty does not take the form of any ordinary docudrama.
Rather, it offers a caustic, stylized impressionistic vision—a
kind of film noir for the pre ragtime era reminiscent of novelist
E L Doctorow's work....
In RAGGED DICK, Bell looks
straight in the eye of everything that can breed in a slum:
venereal disease, ravaged babies, corrupt and brutal cops, child
abuse, warped sex and shattered souls of all descriptions. And he
describes it all in startlingly original terms."
Hedy Weiss, Chicago
Sun-Times
originally produced by The Immediate Theater Company, Chicago
6 M, 3 F, minimum
THÉRÈSE RAQUIN (adapted from the novel by Emile Zola):
"Neal Bell's exciting new
adaptation, from the novel, keeps the grit and erotic animality,
but throws out the cumbersome apparatus, letting the sordid story
breath and compressing it into a series of tight, poetically
written short scenes, using the grotesque tiny details to imply
feelings and situations in vivid shorthand: Naturalism as
haiku."
Michael Feingold, The
Village Voice
"Naturalism and
expressionism collide with shattering effectiveness in THÉRÈSE RAQUIN.
Emile Zola's seminal work of
naturalistic fiction caused an international scandal when
published in 1867. Zola's blunt, unprettified representation of
the most sordid elements of life—infidelity, murder, madness and
suicide--seemed revolutionary in the context of his time.
Especially remarkable was Zola's gritty portrayal of his
eponymous central character Thérèse, a brilliantly radical
departure from the simpering female prototypes of Victorian
convention.
Playwright Neal Bell's
expressionistic adaptation of Zola's masterwork is both allusive
and bold. Bell, who understands that less is more, tersely
renders a psychological suspense story that keeps us on the edge
of our seats."
F Kathleen Foley, The Los
Angeles Times
first produced at New York University
5 M, 3 F
PLAYS BY NEAL BELL
I S B N: 0-88145-143-6, $16.95