{"product_id":"9781849432689","title":"Barker: Plays Five","description":"\u003cp\u003eIncludes the plays \u003ci\u003eThe Last Supper\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSeven Lears\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHated Nightfall\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWounds to the Face\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHoward Barker is one of the most significant and controversial dramatists of his time. His plays challenge, unsettle and expose.Both \u003ci\u003eThe Last Supper\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eSeven Lears\u003c\/i\u003e exemplify Barker's way with great religious and literary stories, the first placing the wilful 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 \u003ci\u003eHated Nightfall\u003c\/i\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 \u003ci\u003eWounds to the Face\u003c\/i\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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Oberon Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47136216973552,"sku":"9781849432689","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781849432689_p0.jpg?v=1763751996","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781849432689","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}