Love! Valor! Compassion! and A Perfect Ganesh: Two Plays (Drama, Plume) [Paperback]

Terrence McNally (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

McNally's big hit of last season--Love! Valour! Compassion!is one of those rare works that lives up to its hype. By turns charming and poignant, funny and sad, sweet and sexy, the play follows a group of close gay friends and their assorted boyfriends and family through a season at a summer place in upstate New York. As in life, the great dramatic moments are quiet and underplayed; for example, the betrayal at the peak of the play, which ultimately threatens to tear apart the closest of friends, begins as an unplanned sexual indiscretion. With this play, McNally shows he has become a master at handling serious issues in comic ways or revealing in a breathtaking instant the tragedy that lies just behind comedy. This triumph is paired with McNally's recent bomb, A Perfect Ganesh, a flawed but intriguing work in which we follow a pair of suburbanites on their tour of India. Jack Helbig

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Plume (July 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452273099
• ISBN-13: 978-0452273092
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #822,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, June 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Love! Valor! Compassion! and A Perfect Ganesh: Two Plays (Drama, Plume) (Paperback)

One of the most endearing plays of the 1990's, McNally reaches into the heart of the audience and never lets go. The magical thing about Love! Valour! Compassion! is that even though it details the lives of eight gay men in upstate New York, anyone, gay or stright, man or woman, can relate to it. A fine piece of drama that stands as a testament to the human soul, McNally shows us once again that life consists of successes and failures, truth and lies, and of course, love, valour, and compassion.

5.0 out of 5 stars Love! Valour! Compassion!, November 9, 2010

By 

Kaarin S. Johnston - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love! Valor! Compassion! and A Perfect Ganesh (Drama, Plume) (Paperback)

LOVE! VALOUR! COMPASSION! is a beautiful, poignant, sad, heart-wrenching, and funny play. If one is unused to reading plays with non-realistic settings, or plays that manipulate time as if it were water, this play may be a challenge at first reading. However, anyone with a good theater background or extensive experience as an audience member should enjoy the experience. If this sort of script is somewhat of a challenge for you to read and feel emotion simultaneously, try reading sections or speeches outloud. McNally's dialogue contains a subtle rhythm which reflects the emotional state of his characters. I highly recommend that people who do love, who do strive against obstacles they cannot overcome, and who can feel compassion for others as they struggle to live a caring life, read this play. If at all possible, go see a good production. I also recommend the New York Times review of the Broadway production. If you have lost a friend or lover to AIDS, you will have a special relationship with this play, as will people who are in love, those who have a wonderful marriage, or those who can identify with human beings, no matter their ethnicity, their personality, or their age. I look forward to reading it again.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Where's the drama ?, September 3, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love! Valor! Compassion! and A Perfect Ganesh: Two Plays (Drama, Plume) (Paperback)

The best thing about "Love! Valour! Compassion!" is its technical complexity. The author goes to great lengths to make the play dynamic: forward presentation of key events, overlapping monologues and conversations, onstage transformation of John Jeckyll into James and back, complex stage design. However, after getting through all these twists and turns, one is left wondering: what is all this dynamics for ? What purpose does it serve ? The transactions between characters are trivial, and everything that happens to them is boring and predictable. The characters in the play don't live - they are engaged in self-analysis. Well thank you, but I am capable of analyzing things myself when there is something to analyze. Overall, the play's elaborate complexity only underlines the absence of real drama between the characters.