Books
Enda Walsh

Ballyturk (NHB Modern Plays)

A gut-wrenchingly funny, achingly sad play featuring jaw-dropping moments of physical comedy.
The lives of two men unravel over the course of ninety minutes. Where are they? Who are they? What room is this, and what might be beyond the walls?
Ballyturk premiered at Galway International Arts Festival in 2014. It subsequently toured Ireland before opening at the National Theatre, London.
'a richly theatrical experience' combines manic physical comedy with a meditation on the brevity of our earthly existence' imagine Under Milk Wood interpreted by Buster Keaton and you get the picture' Guardian
'delirious and captivating' this is thrilling theatre, visceral and cerebral, hilarious and sad' Irish Examiner
'ferocious physical slapstick comedy is interspersed with heartbreakingly tender and delicately poetic explorations of the soul… it throbs with searing poignancy at times, is riotously funny at others' a remarkable achievement' Irish Independent
49 printed pages
Copyright owner
Bookwire
Original publication
2014
Publication year
2014
Have you already read it? How did you like it?
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Impressions

  • Pony Neónshared an impression5 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    🐼Fluffy
    💧Soppy

Quotes

  • Valentina Casanovahas quoted9 years ago
    1.…and dawn shining now. (Slight pause.) It warms the air around him and pushes back all that was yesterday. (Pause.) And in his mouth he tastes the drink from last night, beneath his nails the dirt from Marnie’s garden, in his jacket the smells of her new perfume, the dust of glass from her window. His eyes close and the noises he carries are churned into one another and pounding out now into the dawn. They crash over their hills and through the woods and down into the stream that runs through Ballyturk.
    A breath in the darkness – 1 barely flinches.
    Marnie Reynolds would be waking up to her burnt kitchen – she’d smell the smoke from beneath her new perfume and hear the embers and she’d know that it was him. In the dawn he is barely the man he was yesterday. Poisonous his envy. Inescapable his crime. And the air is whispering still – (Slight pause.) ‘Larry Aspen has a knife. He will never see the full morning.’

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