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 Shepardsince Edward Albee, actuallyto 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

 

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