{"product_id":"barker-howard-barker-9781840028867","title":"Barker: Plays Five","description":"\u003cb\u003eIncludes the plays The Last Supper, Seven Lears, Hated Nightfall and Wounds to the Face\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHoward Barker is one of the most significant and controversial dramatists of his time. His plays challenge, unsettle and expose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBoth \u003cb\u003eThe Last Supper\u003c\/b\u003e and \u003cb\u003eSeven Lears\u003c\/b\u003e exemplify Barker's way with great religious and literary stories, the first placing the willful suicide of a Christ-like prophet, Lvov, in the context of modern chaos, illuminating his moral ambiguities with comic or painful parables, the second taking its inspiration from the significant absence in Shakespeare's play, that of Lear's wife, the queen whose murder is here discerned as the origin as the great family tragedy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe execution of the Russian royal family remains shrouded in mystery - not least that of the identity of two bodies discovered in the mass grave years after the event. In \u003cb\u003eHated Nightfall\u003c\/b\u003e Barker's speculative imagination leads him to identify these as the children's tutor, Dancer, and a recalcitrant servant, Jane. Dancer is perhaps Barker's archetypal hero, febrile, iconoclastic, yet in search of a self-sacrifice nothing appears to justify. In \u003cb\u003eWounds to the Face\u003c\/b\u003e, our complex and sometimes violent relations with our own physiognomy form the psychological link between related scenes of wounding, notoriety, shame and vanity in a play of kaleidoscopic energy and imagery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Howard Barker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1840028866\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781840028867\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oberon Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/28\/2012\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 392\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.75lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.80d","brand":"Howard Barker","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47930893074687,"sku":"9781840028867","price":21.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_245404e2-5733-423a-abc6-7d0808f87f84.jpg?v=1766345003","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/barker-howard-barker-9781840028867","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}