The Butterfingers Angel, Mary & Joseph, Herod the Nut & The Saughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree: An Entertainment

by William Gibson

Book by Gibson, William

Genres: Plays

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1975

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

William Gibson was a Tony Award-winning American playwright and novelist. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1938.

Gibson's most famous play is The Miracle Worker (1959), the story of Helen Keller's childhood education, which won him the Tony Award for Best Play after he adapted it from his original 1957 telefilm script. He adapted the work again for the 1962 film version, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay; the same actresses who previously had won Tony Awards for their performances in the stage version, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, received Academy Awards for the film version as well.

Reviews

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Performing as Mary in a half baked production of a fine enough script. Dated. Maybe Gibson was more into writing a humanist script than a religious one so his church would stop asking him to write things for them.

[Thom Dixon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was cast as the sheep in my church’s dramatic reading of this play. It was fun to see the cherry tree legend come alive, as this is one of my favorite Christmas carols.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something I never expected in my life was to write a five star review for a Christmas Pageant but Gibson's modernist take on the traditional Christmas play is poignant, sharp, and somehow still reverent without ever being preachy. He creates a multi-faceted play where each of the principals (Mary, Joseph, the Angel of the Lord) is a complex human being, and his twist at the end, stolen from Ovid, elevates the play from mere Christianity to a more universal meditation on the miraculous and the unexpected. He turns this very familiar story into an exploration of the mythology of our lives, our belief that we control what happens to us and that we matter, while still imploding the pessimism of the post-modern era that maintains we are powerless and meaningless. Excellent dialogue and a kind of poverty/small town aesthetic makes for a highly producible and castable show, with fine roles for men, women, and children. The only thing that doesn't work is the title, which doesn't exactly promise the high quality play you're about to engage with… but then maybe that's the point? Everything about Gibson's play is more than it initially seems.

[Lyf · Rating 5 out of 5]

This just gets better each time I read it!

[Frank Lawler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Confusing existentialist deconstruction of the Christmas story. Tries to be funny and sweet, but is neither. Gave up 25 pages in.