Plays 1: The Ruling Class / Leonardo's Last Supper / Noonday Demons / The Bewitched / Laughter! / Barnes' People

by Peter Barnes

The Ruling Class "is a scorching and savage tragedy, yet its jokes are innumerable…they throw wide open the windows of your mind, they enlarge your field of vision and they blow away the accumulated dust of ages" (Sunday Times); Leonardo's Last Supper and Noonday Demons are "two ironic plays of delusion…Peter Barnes' dialogue is rich in surprising verbal twists, intellectual allusions and splendid jokes". The Bewitched is "a feast for intellectuals as well as a rollicking example of folk theatre" (Plays and Players) while Laughter is a vicious satire on comedy itself and Barnes' People are eight monologues written for some of the great stars of the English stage which "let the listener into a whole and private world…their jokes in the face of existence were both burning and bitter." (Daily Telegraph)

"Peter Barnes is one of the unrecognised geniuses of the English theatre" (Plays and Players)

Genres: Plays

492 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. This entry is for the English playwright and screenwriter.

Reviews

[Red]

Leonardo's Last Supper is a highly amusing play about death and questions contemporary concepts and dealings with death.

[DD]

Encountered this book right after two whole racks of Zola. Especially impressed by an whole shelf of collection of others' writing about Zola. I was attracted by the name "Leonardo's Last Supper", finished the short play, and went out of the library. Only after I checked the author later did I realize the author is one of the earliest anti-naturalist lol. Life is strange.