Humpty Dumpty and Other Plays

by Eric Bogosian

“I want theater to wake me up, not lull me to sleep. My theater is not about fantasy, it’s not about seduction. My theater is not an outline for a film. It is not a TV sitcom onstage. I want my theater to be an event. I want it to push limits, bite the hand that feeds it and bang heads. It’s about my fears, my ideas, my blind spots, my isolation.”—Eric Bogosian Eric Bogosian is one of our most singular and exhilarating commentators on American life. His award-winning solo performance works have been performed with acclaim all over the world. As the New York Times has pointed out, “Bogosian is a born storyteller with perfect pitch.” That is never more evident than in his newest book, which collects his three most recent plays.

In Humpty Dumpty , five friends gather for a holiday at a mountain getaway where unforeseen events bring them to the brink of the end of the world. Griller is set in a New Jersey backyard, where a barbecue gathering turns sinister and deadly. Red Angel is Bogosian’s riff on Von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel , reset on a college campus in 1990s New England.

One of America’s premier performers and most innovative and provocative artists, Eric Bogosian’s plays and solo work include suburbia (Lincoln Center Theater, 1994; adapted to film by director Richard Linklater, 1996); Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll , Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead ; Griller ; Humpty Dumpty ; 1+1 ; Skunkweed ; Wake Up and Smell the Coffee ; Drinking in America ; Notes from Underground and Talk Radio (Pulitzer Prize finalist; New York Shakespeare Festival, 1987; Broadway, 2007; adapted to film by director Oliver Stone, 1988). He has starred in a wide variety of film, TV and stage roles. Most recently, he created the character of Captain Danny Ross on the long-running series Law & Criminal Intent . In 2014, TCG published 100 (monologues) , a collection that commemorates thirty years of Bogosian’s solo-performance career.

Genres: Drama, Theatre, Plays

240 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2004

About the author

Eric Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, and historian. Descended from Armenian-American immigrants, he grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Chicago and Oberlin College. His numerous plays include Talk Radio (1987) and subUrbia (1994), which were adapted to film by Oliver Stone and Richard Linklater, respectively, with Bogosian starring in the former.
Bogosian has appeared in plays, films, and television series throughout his career. His television roles include Captain Danny Ross in Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2006–2010), Lawrence Boyd on Billions (2017–2018), and Gil Eavis on Succession (since 2018). He also starred as Arno in the Safdie brothers' film Uncut Gems (2019). He has also been involved in New York City ballet production, and has written several novels as well as the historical nonfiction Operation Nemesis (2015).

Reviews

[Trin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three Y2K-era plays that, as Bogosian fully admits in the intro, never really took off. Griller starts along familiar themes -- the hypocrisy of the upper middle class -- but really starts cooking at the end; Humpty Dumpty is like that in reverse: a tense, brilliant set-up that loses steam in the final scenes (Eric: stop working a gun into your climaxes). Red Angel is the outlier, a tart, complex battle of the sexes that I wish I could have seen performed, not just because Bogosian played a character who gets jerked on stage. Not just.

[Erinina Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Humpty Dumpty by Eric Bogosian

A wonderful little play that addresses our ties to technology. When New Yorkers escape to the country and the power is lost on a massive scale indefinitely, how sane will they stay? It was engaging and hard to put down, even if it wasn’t my favorite genre and I hated the characters that I recognised all too well from some of my real New York neighbors.

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Griller - 1 star
Humpty Dumpty - 2 stars
Red Angel - 4 stars

...also features a short throwaway piece, "Non-Profit Benefit."

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humpty Dumpty is like an eff'd up fairy tale reminiscent of the film The Trigger Effect. I was fortunate enough to see it at Princeton's McCarter Theater when it premiered. Griller (which I have now read but have yet to see performed) is a fun backyard piece featuring a handful of personae Bogosian developed in his solos. But I think my favorite of the three is Red Angel. I had the great pleasure of seeing Bogosian perform in Angel in Williamstown and it's a very powerful play, sort of a postmodern Pygmalion. This edition also includes a bonus one-act, apparently commissioned by the McCarter. Buy this book, get the rights, and stage one of these shows!