(Daisy Bowie-Sell’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 10/31.)
John Patrick Shanley’s 1983 play is an unlikely love story. It’s the beginning moments which tell you this relationship must surely be doomed – when a sleazy-looking, New York ‘dall’ strikes up a conversation across a bar with a man with bruised knuckles and face and blood splattered on his T-shirt.
31-year-old Roberta lives with her mother and father and her teenage son in the Bronx. She’s unhappy, sarcastic, fearless and looking for company. Danny, on the other hand, has just almost beaten to death someone who ‘asked where I was goin’’ and wants nothing to do with anybody.