Autobahn: A Short-Play Cycle [Paperback]

Neil LaBute (Author, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2004

"Sitting in an automobile was where I first remember understanding how drama works...Hidden in the back seat of a sedan, I quickly realized how deep the chasm or intense the claustrophobia could be inside your average family car." --Neil LaBute

Be it the medium for clandestine couplings, arguments, shelter, or ultimately transportation, the automobile is perhaps the most authentically American of spaces. In Autobahn, Neil LaBute's provocative new collection of one-act plays set within the confines of the front seat, the playwright employs his signature plaintive insight to great effect, investigating the inchoate apprehension that surrounds the steering wheel. Each of these seven brief vignettes explore the ethos of perception and relationship--from a make-out session gone awry to a kidnapping thinly disguised as a road trip, a reconnaissance mission involving the rescue of a Nintendo 64 to a daughter's long ride home after her release from rehab. The result is an unsettling montage that gradually reveals the scabrous force of words left unsaid while illuminating the delicate interplay between intention and morality, capturing the essence of middle America and the myriad paths which cross its surface.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There is no playwright on the planet these days who is writing better than Neil LaBute."
--John Lahr, The New Yorker

"Neil LaBute is the first dramatist since David Mamet and Sam Shepard--since Edward Albee, actually to mix sympathy and savagery, pathos and power." --Donald Lyons, New York Post

"LaBute [is] our American Aesop, a mad moral fabulist serving stiff tonic for our country's sin-sick souls." --John Istel, American Theatre

About the Author

Neil LaBute is a critically acclaimed writer-director for both the stage and the screen. His recent plays include The Shape of Things (Faber 2001), and The Mercy Seat (Faber 2003).

Product Details

• Paperback: 93 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber; First Edition edition (December 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571211100
• ISBN-13: 978-0571211104
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #334,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Neal LaBute's most recent works for the stage include This Is How It Goes (Faber, 2005) and Fat Pig (Faber, 2004), which won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off Broadway Play.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable on the page or on the stage., December 13, 2006

By 

intentionally_left_blank - See all my reviews

This review is from: Autobahn: A Short-Play Cycle (Paperback)

I have both read these plays and seen them produced at a small theater in Los Angeles. Whether on the page or stage, these plays are always interesting, incisive, and leave you pondering them for days afterward. Much like a good short story, LaBute is able - in just a few pages - to conjure up his worlds and characters in full, letting you know enough about them that you have a good idea (often an unsettling one, to tell the truth) of what happens to characters once the play ends.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. There are laughs throughout, even the occasional sweet moment, albeit against backdrops that aren't 100% wholesome. Although if you are looking for 100% wholesome, LaBute wouldn't be your first choice. From an acting point of view, it's difficult to find material that does a better job of celebrating theater in its most basic form. Difficult to be sure (in many of the plays, one of the characters doesn't say anything at all!), but thrilling when well executed.

The short play, like the short film, doesn't have a lot of marketability in the commercial sphere, and it is a treat that one of our leading playwrights has tried his (expert) hand at them. If you like short stories, or are a fan of good writing for the stage, you'll enjoy Autobahn.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow again, January 30, 2006

By 

Joseph Dewey (Orem, UT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Autobahn: A Short-Play Cycle (Paperback)

I've read all of Labute's plays, and this one is greater than the others in some new and interesting ways. I always read his introduction last, because it usually gives away some of the story. This intro said two really cool things.

He introduces the first cool thing by a fellow playwright wanting to "see his play performed in living rooms, in front of audiences of ten or twelve people. I feel the same way. Theater is anywhere you make it. I hope that with this print edition of autobahn actors take the text and memorize it, gather their friends in their own cars, and take off down the road, filling those intimate interiors with my words and their emotions. That would be a pleasure to behold."

This is really cool, because as I was reading one of the six acts in the play called "long division," I realized that was a play that I would enjoy memorizing and performing in front of friends. I'm not an actor at all, but this book contains a bunch of one person and two person stories that are short enough for the lay person to memorize. That's what I think is cool about this book, is I could picture high school drama classes using this, and it really is some of the best literature out there.

It's also ironic, because all of his books have a warning about needing to arrange a royalty schedule for any public performance of his play.

The second cool thing is about how plays encourage the imagination by having very scaled down and limited sets. I saw a local play that had a limited set about a week after reading this intro, and Labute's discussion on this aspect of theater accentuated my experience.

About the actual stories...I keep using the word "haunting" to describe his work. It's extremely well written, and the stories just stick with me. I keep thinking of the story where the girl tells her mother "I know I'm gonna do everything within my power to use again." For some reason I can't get that out of my mind, and I think that it's kind of an allegory to a bunch of other things in life. The other one that sticks with me is where the husband tries to convince himself that the wife didn't do it again. "You didn't, did you? No, you didn't. I know you wouldn't do that again. Right? You would not...Honey? Angel?"

The rest of the stories are like that...they haunt me because they stick with me.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars autobahn, August 8, 2010

By 

lalalalady - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Autobahn: A Short-Play Cycle (Paperback)

Quick delivery, book was in great shape, would definitely purchase from this person again! Thanks so much!