Wow! eBook
The River
Author(s): Jez Butterworth (Author)
- Publisher: Nick Hern Books
- Publication Date: 18 Oct. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 64 pages
- ISBN-10: 184842289X
- ISBN-13: 9781848422896
Book Description
On a moonless night in August when the sea trout are ready to run, a man brings his new girlfriend to the remote family cabin where he has come for the fly-fishing since he was a boy. But she’s not the only woman he has brought here – or indeed the last.
A bewitching story from the author of the global smash hits Jerusalem and The Ferryman, Jez Butterworth’s play The River was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in October 2012.
It received its Broadway premiere in October 2014, starring Hugh Jackman in the central role.
The River is also available in the volume Jez Butterworth Plays: Two.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Emotionally wired and deeply poetic…magical, bucolic, gothic and even sacramental…This is plainly the best new play in town. The Stage
Strange, eerie, tense … endlessly mysterious… it leaves one unsure whether one is watching a ghost story, gothic thriller or parable… Confirms that Butterworth possesses a singular talent. Guardian
A subtly crafted piece of chamber music. It is teasing, haunting and hushed… beautifully written, “mixing memory with desire.”… Butterworth’s thrilling nature writing really sings. Telegraph
The River is pure magic. A magnetically eerie, luminously beautiful psychodrama about the changes that happen in dark places… A swirling mist of memory, magical realism and hinted-at folklore, bound by some terrific acting and the gorgeous bucolic lyricism of Butterworth’s language. Time Out
If you did want to make comparisons with Jerusalem you could say that the longer play was violent dynamite-fishing, a great brawling splash throwing up all manner of deep monsters, whereas this is delicate: a fly-fisherman’s piece of trickery, ripples and reflections. Its iridescent beauty and menacing hook hover just out of reach, so that we snap breathlessly up towards meaning, half-hungry, half-afraid. The Times
Spellbinding… Lyrical and tricksy, occasionally droll and ultimately desolating… unfolds like a tantalising cross between a piece of deeply felt poetry and a sleight-of-hand puzzle. Independent.
Bewitchingly strange, watery and wild but deftly crafted. Evening Standard
Here’s a puzzle play, alluring and unsettling in turn… marking Butterworth out anew as the most singular voice in town… sexy and sorrowful… the play pulsates with sexual possibility and declarations of love that get revised. –Arts Desk
The River is a piece of gorgeously sensitive writing, utterly beguiling in its subtle deconstruction of the way we conduct ourselves in relationships -the facades erected, the lies told, the declarations made, the pasts conveniently ignored… A play of luminous beauty, hauntingly affecting in its intimate surroundings. –oughttobeclownsblogspot.co.uk
About the Author
Mojo won the George Devine Award, the Olivier Award for Best Comedy and the Writers Guild, Critics’ Circle and Evening Standard Awards for Most Promising Playwright. Jerusalem won the Best Play Award at the Critics’ Circle, Evening Standard and WhatsOnStage.com Awards, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play.
Jez wrote and directed the film adaptation of Mojo (1998) starring Ian Hart and Harold Pinter, and Birthday Girl (2002) starring Nicole Kidman and Ben Chaplin, and co-wrote and produced Fair Game (2010) starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. In 2007 he was awarded the E.M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
