Our Late Night & A Thought in Three Parts

by Wallace Shawn

“[Our Late Night is] a short play, but a savage one...Neurosis, panic and sexual surreality underlie Shawn’s startling vision of New Yorkers at play.”—Guardian

Wallace Shawn’s OBIE Award-winning, never before published Our Late Night premiered in New York in 1975 under direction of André Gregory, and was revived in London in 1999 under direction of Caryl Churchill. A Thought in Three Parts—currently out of print—created an uproar with its 1977 London premiere, investigated by the vice squad for its allegedly pornographic content.

Wallace Shawn is a noted actor and writer. His politically charged and controversial plays include Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Designated Mourner, and The Fever.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama

120 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Wallace Shawn, sometimes credited as Wally Shawn, is an American actor and playwright. Regularly seen on film and television, where he is usually cast as a comic character actor, he has pursued a parallel career as a playwright whose work is often dark, politically charged and controversial. He is widely known for his high-pitched nasal voice and slight lisp.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are two of the best plays ever written, and I'm thrilled that they're both back in print.

The problem is, Wallace Shawn has edited some of the teeth out of them. Compared to the "Thought in Three Parts" published in 1982 and the "Our Late Night" published in 1984 (in an edition of 75 or something), these newly published versions feature smoother dialogue, more elegant phrasing, and even a lower level of invective (reading the 2008 versions, you may have a hard time imagining that the level of invective could have once been higher, but trust me, it was). Wallace Shawn's new foreward and afterward are charming, but largely toothless: he makes a few tentative attempts to suggest how sexual content in a play -- or nudity in the New York Times -- could possibly open up political alternatives to our current political predicament, and I thank him for these, but I mean, this is the guy who wrote the afterward to Aunt Dan and Lemon, which is one of the human species' best essays on political theater. I hate to gripe at an artist I love just because I expected more based on his previous work -- but, this is 2008, and after eight of the most frightening political years I've ever lived through, I don't "expect" more from Wallace Shawn, I *NEED* more from him.

Okay, enough griping. The plays are still plenty jagged, unique, and disturbing, and they're still two of the best plays ever written. Don't wait to read them until you find the original printings, because you're simply not going to find the original printings (I take it back -- a used copy of the original "Our Late Night" is now selling on Amazon for $200), so read these, and if you're dying with curiosity to know what the originals were, send me a message.

And let me give Shawn credit: some of his rewrites in the first scene of "Thought in Three Parts" are really very nice.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wallace Shawn is a fascinating,challenging writer and a clear, sharp thinker. The introduction and afterword are outstanding and on their own make this volume worth reading. The plays themselves are pretty difficult, and almost guaranteed to offend. They require an ability to step back from what passes as the narrative in order to see how Shawn examines interpersonal interaction in an almost clinical way—pulling banal interactions into high relief by continually inserting absurdly inappropriate behavior that reveals underlying aspects of our baser nature in a kind of grotesque caricature.

It's vertiginous, bewildering, disgusting, and interesting if you like art that doesn't let you off easy.

[Mahak · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Afterword presented by the author was the best part so don't anyone quibble with me. What a surprise! :)