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Beautiful Child

$13.00
Qty:
Full Length, Drama
2 men, 3 women
Total Cast: 5, Flexible Set
ISBN-13: 978-0-8222-2004-6


MIN. PERFORMANCE FEE: $105 per performance.
THE STORY: How do we love someone who falls outside our moral code? BEAUTIFUL CHILD presents Harry and Nan, a couple whose marriage has become a comfortable battleground of witty barbs and infidelity. Everything they think they know, however, is called into question when their son, Isaac, an art teacher and painter, comes for lunch and asks if he can stay. The world’s no longer safe for Isaac, as his secrets are about to become public—he has fallen in love, and has been having an affair, with one of his students, an eight-year-old boy named Brian. Harry and Nan search for clues, desperate to make sense of this horror, alternately looking for exoneration and punishment for what must be their fault. They want to help their son, who was, as Harry ruefully recalls, a beautiful child. They want to love him. But how? And what is their responsibility to the world and to the children in Isaac’s future? Magically, this tragedy brings Harry and Nan closer together as they arrive at a decision that’s terribly painful and magically restorative.
“A decade after he captured critical attention with Pterodactyls Mr. Silver continues to shape sentences that have the vibrant, poisoned lusciousness of a John Currin painting.” —The New YorkTimes.

“BEAUTIFUL CHILD is compelling…darkly demented, blazingly articulate and cheerfully outrageous…The return of Nicky Silver’s voice is a pleasure!” —Newsday (NY).

“Superb…BEAUTIFUL CHILD exudes a compelling fascination…” —Associated Press.

“An intelligent and engaging drama.” —Time Out New York.