Customer Reviews

Red Light Winter: A Play

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really loved this script, but anyone else I have lent it to hated it. :)

It's a pretty brutal, sick look at humanity. It has the same sort of ugly undertones as plays like "Closer" or "The Shape of Things." It has some very graphic sex scenes and good monologue material for an early-20s male actor.

I picked up Adam Rapp's plays mostly due to his connection with one of my favorite actors, his brother Anthony. Red Light Winter was the first play of his I read, and it absolutely stunned me. The story has stuck with me for several days and I recommend it highly.

Typical grunge and shock value playwriting, substituting nudity, sex and drugs for storytelling or character development. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against sex and drugs on stage- if anything we need more of it. But that doesn't change this from being and underdeveloped narative that starts nowhere, goes nowhere, and seems to be written more as an excersise in stream of consciousness. Vague notions of "love" are tossed about, people behave in ways no one would ever behave in order to pad the length and create a sense of manufactured depth. "Important things must be happening, look how strange everyone is behaving!" Ugh.

Still, it could be excellent fodder for students, some decent scene work to be pulled from it, maybe a monologue or two. All in all, I don't see any real reason to put this onstage unless you're looking for an excuse to be naked on stage. For that try Alan Bowne, Sam Shepard or John Patrick Shanley; vastly superior authors with vastly superior plays.

I like this book a lot. Pretty quick read. Worth it. Adam Rapp is very silently dark, I would describe it. I enjoyed this play very much.

I read this play in college and performed a scene for a showcase. I had originally borrowed it and finally decided to purchase it after I was asked to do a reading of the scene a few years later. This play was a runner up for the Nobel Prize, so it's definitely worth your time!

Last year there was a producton of Red Light Winter performed at my school. I thoroughly enjoyed it because Adam Rapp has a talent for creating believeable characters. This play is set in Amsterdam. Hence "Red Light" Winter. It follows two friends vacationing and the prostitute they stumble upon. What ensues is highly entertaining and fun. I would recommend this play to anyone who wants to escape through a play. When reading this play I feel like I am in Amsterdam. A great read.

This play (and this playwright) have been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of years, so I was expecting something new and exciting. There was nothing really new here, however. It is pretty straitforward realism, with a fairly interesting story set-up: 2 young American friends, traveling around Amsterdam together, both get attracted to the same woman. She only likes one of them - arrogant, entertaining, hotshot Davis, who has no intention of taking her seriously. Lonely, melancholy playwright Matt might really appreciate her, but he does not turn her on. The girl is a French prostitute who is quiet and sweet and apparently looking for a cool American boyfriend. The dialogue is not very interesting, pretty standard college guy talk. I got bored after 10-15 pages and skipped to the end. It was not terrible, but if this is the best he has got, then Adam Rapp is not on his way to being the next Albee or Miller.