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Gruesome Playground Injuries; Animals Out Of Paper; Bengal Tiger At The Baghdad Zoo: Three Plays (2010)

by Rajiv Joseph(Favorite Author)

4.17 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Soft Skull Press

review 1: "The Blood Beneath The Whimsy"All three plays have these elaborate flights of fancy that seem to be intertwined with a very real-world sense of danger. Kids who play out their relationship over wounds and illness in various hospitals and school nurse's offices. Origami artists, their fans and how both types' emotions are as delicate and fragile as the paper they fold. The ghosts left behind by various killers in Baghdad are doomed to haunt their killers and themselves as they wander the blood-drenched land in search of a God who will not answer their questions. Each play will stay with me, if only because of how much I don't know after reading them.
review 2: I don't read many plays but I'm glad I read these three. I got the book during intermission at Bengal ... moreTiger at the Baghdad Zoo on its closing day on Broadway. All three plays deal with powerful themes, characters seeking some kind of resolution but it's the intensity of what is not said in Gruesome Playground Injuries that makes me like it a lot. There's this tension between the two characters in this first play that is the mark of great writing. In reading Animals Out of Paper I was directly reminded of the question lingering in the previous book I had finished minutes before (Reading Lolita in Tehran): How do you cope? I had this question in the back of my mind as I really got into the characters in this second play. I've read the third play twice, maybe because the memory of Brad Fleischer as the character of Kev is still fresh in my mind - it was performed with such intensity (actually all of the actors were phenomenal) - that I wanted to replay it in my mind. I can't help but read the Tiger's lines with Robin Williams' image. This play is the most intense one of the three for me - precisely because I think I saw it performed. But if you didn't see it I still recommend it. I love the existential themes, the "fights" with God, with life, with war, and the questioning. I love the short sentences that create such rage and intensity. I look forward to more works by Joseph - hopefully more on Broadway as well! less

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