Samuel French, Inc. The House of Plays & Musical Plays for Over 175 Years

Stunning
[29209]

$8.95

ISBN 978-0-573-69781-4

David Adjmi

2m, 4f

Drama

David Adjmi is a receipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Foundation Drama and Performance Art Fellowship

Sixteen year old Lily knows nothing beyond the Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn where she lives a cloistered life with her much older husband. Soon an unlikely relationship with her enigmatic African-American maid opens Lily’s world to new possibilities – but at a huge price. David Adjmi’s daring new work shifts from caustic satire to violent drama as it exposes the ways we invent and defend our identities in the melting-pot of America.

David Adjmi received the first ever Steinberg "Mimi" Playwright Award in 2009

"Impossible to dismiss...An artist...whose next work I can't wait to see” —Hilton Als, The New Yorker

"Virtuosic playwright David Adjmi nicely evokes an arrestingly skewed subculture onstage...coolly witty...A stinging portrait of an insular Syrian Jewish community in contemporary Brooklyn." —Jason Zinoman, The New York Times

"Stunning dazzles...there's nothing "emerging" about this show: It's fully hatched...Adjmi's ear for dialogue and his sense of the way the community's women constantly push and pull each other are never cliché or less than engrossing. But "Stunning" is much more than a Discovery Channel doc about an exotic urban tribe...The tonal shifts between tension and comedy are perfectly mastered." —Elizabeth Vincentielli, New York Post

" Nearly everything about David Adjmi’s Stunning has an original ring to it, from the setting—Brooklyn’s insular Syrian-Jewish community—to the brassy bleat of the dialogue. (four stars)" —Adam Feldman, Time Out New York

"Nobody is what they appear to be in "Stunning," the razor-sharp satirical tragedy by David Adjmi. It is the latest work from Lincoln Center Theater's new program, LCT3, which was created to showcase daring new work. They have succeeded: "Stunning" frequently lives up to its name, offering a brutal yet witty view of groupthink and slippery identity politics among Syrian Jews in Brooklyn...the hippest ticket in town" —David Cote, NY1

”Unless you happen to live in an insular Syrian-Jewish community, the culture shock of Stunning could be quite ... well, stunning. David Adjmi's eye-opening drama about a despotic rag merchant, his tyrannized child bride and the black maid who challenges the medieval customs of their domestic life has a chilling impact. Riveting performances and super-stylish staging polish the play's satirical weapons of high dudgeon, while adding to the luster of LCT3, the developmental wing of Lincoln Center currently making a splash in its inaugural season at the Duke.” —Marilyn Stasio, Variety

"David Adjmi's off-Broadway debut is a striking, and yes, stunning black satire of the insular Syrian-Jewish community in Midwood, Brooklyn." —Chris Kompanek, Flavorpill

"The advantage of writing about something you know pays off handsomely for multi-award-winning playwright David Adjmi...Careening courageously, but never recklessly, between satire and melodrama —and ultimately tragedy— Stunning is an eye-opening, intimately focused look into the marriage of a couple within a sect that guards its insularity and its ingrained religious/cultural identity....astonishingly provocative" —Curtain Up

"A deft touch for both comedy and drama...Richly defined characters tackle sensitive topics insightfully and often to incendiary effect. David Adjmi is quickly building a reputation for unvarnished presentations of offbeat and disturbing themes" —Variety

FEE: $75 per performance

Character Descriptions:
Lily Schwecky (sixteen) — truly “cute”, slight, naifish, something of an oddball. The “baby” – she’s sixteen going on about 11; she’s a bit regressed. Her mind works quickly but her thoughts are incredibly scattered. A follower, but it’s more out of a need for connectedness than an innate passivity.
Blanche Nesbitt (forties) — Lily’s new housekeeper, African American, an extremely intelligent, industrious, sometimes sassy but terribly sensitive autodidact; she’s a victim of her history, of circumstances out of her control. An outsider.
Ikey Schwecky (forty five) — Lily’s new husband: controlling, brute, bumptious, but there’s something fragile in him, broken — he’s more transparent than he thinks.
Shelly (early twenties) —Lily’s big sister; a leader; she’s got a stentorian quality, but naturalizess this by cultivating “girly” reoccupations. The laziness of her r’s and a’s feels calculated and somehow hostile.
JoJo (thirties, early forties) — Shelly’s uxorious husband; basically a good guy but limited; rather put upon, has trouble sticking to his guns.
Claudine (nineteen) — a bit hysterical; unselfconscious – even brute - in her bids for approval. She has a desperate conformity.

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