13 by Shanley

by John Patrick Shanley

Thirteen plays by the Oscar-winning author of Moonstruck . “The Big Funk ” “Savage in Limbo ” “Danny & The Deep Blue Sea ” “Welcome to the Moon ” “The Red Coat ” “Down & Out ” “Let Us Go Out Into the Starry Night ” “Out West ” “A Lonely Impulse of Delight ” “Women of Manhattan ” “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow ” “Italian-American Reconciliation ” and “Beggars in the House of Plenty.” Also includes an introduction by the author.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

370 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

John Patrick Shanley was born in The Bronx, New York City, to a telephone operator mother and a meat-packer father. He is a graduate of New York University, and is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre.

For his script for the 1987 film, Moonstruck, Shanley won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.

In 1990, Shanley directed his script of Joe Versus the Volcano. Shanley also wrote two songs for the movie: "Marooned Without You" and "The Cowboy Song."

In 2004 Shanley was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame.

In 2005, Shanley's play Doubt: A Parable was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Drama Desk Award and Tony Award for Best Play. Doubt: A Parable, is featured in The Fourth Wall, a book of photographs by Amy Arbus in which Shanley also wrote the foreword.

In 2008, Shanley directed a film version of Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams.

Reviews

[John Burns · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd like to report that I really enjoyed this but sadly I can't. Shanley writes screenplays with sweet and wonderfully delirious monologues and snappy dialogues. I love some of the films he's written. His plays are the same, very entertaining, full of life. But there's also an odd theatrical quirk here which I can't quite get into. People behave as if they're not real people in the real world but as if they're metaphors, as if they know they're metaphors, espousing certain truths about relationships and storytelling. They'll talk to the audience. They'll openly discuss all their childhood traumas and dreams and desires. They'll do some peculiar action which appears to be there for purely thematic reasons and doesn't feel at all realistic. The whole thing was just a little too pretentious and theatrical in too many places. It had the goofy, wide-eyed, joie de vivre that I love in his movies but it also had this really odd, highbrow, chin-stroking stuff which left me cold. I kind of felt like "who is this written for? Is it written for anyone who appreciates great theatre or is it written for a bunch of Manhattan snobs who want to laugh loudly at the appropriate moments so that their friends and acquaintances know that they get the gags and the references?"

I also wasn't really into the whole short play thing. I always find that short stories end before I've really gotten to know the characters and I felt similarly about these plays. Mostly when I finished one of the thirteen plays I would try to think back over the characters and find that I couldn't really remember any of them. I think this might be a general problem with Shanley. Though I love his screenplays I sometimes have a hard time remembering what happens in them. Though they're full of life I guess having these quirky characters do and say a lot of random, high-spirited stuff is not enough for the action and dialogue to make a significant impression on your psyche.

I kind of enjoyed it. I don't think I liked it enough to recommend it though. I would strongly recommend everyone interested in his work check out Wild Mountain Thyme and Moonstruck. Those films really blow me away. On the page though, hm, I'm not convinced.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Who am I? This is a courageous question. As a writer and as a man I am involved in one central struggle - to discover and accept who I am. I believe all fear has its roots in denial. I have, at one time or another, denied everything. Every fact of my specific self. My parents, my Bronx origin, my Americanness, my Irishness, my appetites, my mortality, my need for love and acceptance, my jealousy, my violence, my anger.”

[Richard Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even the plays that I didn’t care for in this book were ones that kind of blew me away.

The ones I did care for had me underlining lines constantly and imagining how I’d put up my own stagings of them and how I’d direct and who I’d cast. Seeing John Turturro’s name as part of the original cast of more than one of these made me desperately want to watch his work.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection, I definitely noticed a progression of maturity as the plays went on. It reminded me of the progression of Paddy Chayefsky’s collected plays, from bare, humanistic character pieces, to more experimental, where they played with structure, and interesting staging. The one play I didn’t really enjoy in here was The Big Funk, yet it still has plenty of virtues.

Selected thoughts about the various plays:

- Danny and the Deep Blue Sea: One of my favorites in this collection.

- Welcome to the Moon (and others): These were each wonderful. The two that stood out to me the most were Out West, and A Lonely Impulse of Delight. Out West was a hilarious deconstruction of Western genre tropes. Lonely Impulse… was very interesting because I suspect that the movie producer Brian Grazer plagiarized this idea for the movie Splash (1984). The play was first produced in 1982, and it's about a guy from Manhattan who falls in love with a mermaid. Brian Grazer doesn’t have a lot of writing credits, so it would have been weird for him to come up with such a novel story idea for a movie only that one time. It's neat that Tom Hanks starred in that movie and would later go on to star in John Patrick Shanley’s next magically strange romantic comedy, set around the sea, Joe Versus the Volcano (1990).

- Women of Manhattan: There was a funny line in this play that also evoked Joe Versus the Volcano: “… I want to be in a movie! An adventure movie where half my clothes are torn off… and I’m thrown in a volcano but I survive…”

- the dreamer examines his pillow: I love the line when Tommy is explaining why he believes in god, “There ain’t no athletes in foxholes, cause I’ve been there now and when the bombs go off for real you are weak. I called on God.” - Athletes, I love it. I also love when the Dad later tells Tommy, “… as a result of all your pain and experience and self-examination you haven’t learned zip about dip.”

- Italian American Reconciliation: This was my favorite play in the collection. I love when Teresa says, “I have feelings, you know. I’ve got pride, an a shitload of other stuff, too.” Later, the whole long exchange between Aldo and Janice, as she stands at the Juliet balcony, and he was trying to woo her - was extraordinary. He finally says to her, “How ‘bout I come up stairs and we rip up the bed a little bit?” - great stuff.

- Beggars in the House of Plenty: This had a lot of turns, and strange tone shifts in it. I am sure different performers would impact greatly how the overall tone of it comes across. Ultimately it’s clearly a very personal play to Shanley. The first Act reminded me a lot of Steve Martin’s play WASP, as a very comical deconstruction of white American household dynamics. As the family is gathered around they are alone in their own heads, and speaking past one another. The dad’s outbursts reminded me of the SNL sketches of the tense family dinners with Will Ferrell sawing at his plate shouting, “I drive a Dodge Stratus!” I love the religious stuff in the play too, which seemed to hold some early seedlings for Doubt: A Parable, as the family all prays together with the nun, “Holy Mary, Mother of Misery, Mother of this mindless muttering, Mistress of us grey galley slaves in this DEAD religion of the DEfunct Roman Empire…” - I love it! Finally, when Joey physically attacks Johnny, and calls him crazy, and Johnny responds, “Okay, you strangle me and I’m crazy. I invite you to diagram that fucking idea.”

As Shanley’s work matured through this collection, the rate of memorable exchanges like that increased a lot. And his most recent work that I’ve read, Cellini and Doubt, had even more of of them. It was still wonderful and worthwhile to catch up with all of these early plays. I hope they finally put out a second collected volume of his work, otherwise I’m sure I’ll pick them up individually.

[Brigitte Williamson]

Happy to have finally finished this.

I have to go with a 3/5 because though there are a few plays in this collection I think are brilliant, others I did not connect with or like as much... at least on the page...

I'm just going to go down the line and record what I can for future reference.

I am not currently prepared to talk about "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea." I am a little biased because I watched the final scene of it being workshopped by my classmates several times and had a difficult time disassociating it from their work.

The only miniplay in the subcollection "Welcome to the Moon and other plays" that I almost liked was "Welcome to the Moon" itself. Some seemed too short and simple ("The Red Coat"), others too heavily symbolic (ahem "Down and Out" and the rest) for my taste.

I love "Savage in Limbo." I think it's brilliant. Having seen it worked through by my classmates does not negatively affect my affection for it, which is the case with "Danny." It is complex and detailed and funny and there are no clear answers. I do not particularly care for the ending but I like most other things about it.

My feelings are just slightly less strong for "Women of Manhattan." Three women in three different phases of A Relationship. Interesting, good.

"the dreamer examines his pillow" freaked me the hell out, which is maybe why it is so great. It also spurred a long, on-going conversation with myself about transparency and space, why people hurt each other, women and men and being trapped, and cycles, and generations, and on and on. And it scared me.

"Italian American Reconciliation" was fine, less interesting to me but I liked the format.

"The Big Funk" and "Beggars in the House of Plenty" brought back the heavy symbolism from the miniplays, and I did not really care for either. I'd like to look at them again in several years to see if I get more out of them in the future. I will say "Beggars" felt very dangerous to me, a little nightmare-ish.

So my opinion of John Patrick Shanley isn't set yet. Some of his work I think is fantastic, and some I just don't like.

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is that I've performed and seen the performances of a few selections. I've played Denise in a scene study class of "Savage in Limbo", also played Linda for the whole production of it and I've seen 2 different productions of "Welcome to the Moon", which is one of my favourites. I've also seen "Danny and the Deep Blue Sea", as a scene, but reading the plays versus watching or performing and three different experiences. As much as I've enjoyed the language, I hope to see all of these shows performed. Luckily, our next Master Playwrights Festival will feature his works and I'm hoping to buy a festival pass for it.

[Evie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know Shanley wrote Moonstruck, even though it's one of my favorite movies. This is a remnant from my theater days. I've read Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and Savage in Limbo, which I really liked. The characters are in pain and struggling to understand and make meaning out of their lives. I look forward to reading more by Shanley.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now Shanley I like, even if I have trouble finding monologues that work for me. I basically bought this because there were scenes from two of the plays in my class and I loved them, particularly Italian American reconciliation, or whatever it's called. Really good stuff. This stuff is easy to identify with.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And when I move in my writing, I have moved in my life. There is no illusion. It is all the same thing."

"Writing is acting is directing is living your life."

Raw characters in sometimes wonderfully abstract / surreal worlds.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shanley does write great dialogue, and great parts for women, but I like John Guare better, so this collection only gets three stars.

[river · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently directing "The Red Coat" by Shanley for my Directing I Final. Love his work!
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I need to read Doubt too...

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great playwright but he lost me with some of the experimental stuff in this series.

[Anne Wrider · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some Shanley is terrific (Moonstruck, Outside Mullingar are two favorites) but there are some attempts that fall way short of the mark in this collection. One unsuccessful attempt seems to be a try at what ended up being Moonstruck. But mostly these are not his best work.