cover design by Charlotte
Strick
cover photographs by Jeff Williams
"There is no playwright on the planet
these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute, whose magnificent new play,
THE MERCY SEAT, only goes to prove that it's always darkest before it's totally
black....
Labute...is a subtle story teller, and his furtive heart reveals
itself through cunning, powerful indirection. Here, he lets the accumulation of
detail...lure the imagination into a numbed terrain of unspoken desperation....
...Here, with extraordinary daring and elegance, he faces the
division in every heart, including his own. History will decide if THE MERCY
SEAT is a great play; certainly, for me, it is the work of a master."
John Lahr, The New Yorker
"Neil LaBute is the first dramatist
since David Mamet and Sam Shepard—since Edward Albee, actually—to mix sympathy
and savagery, pathos and power."
Donald Lyons, New York Post
"LaBute [is] our American Aesop, a mad
moral fabulist serving stiff tonic for our country's sin-sick souls."
John Istel, American Theater
originally produced by the Manhattan Class Company
1 M, 1 F
Faber and Faber, I S B N 0-571-21138-0, $12.95