n/a

n/a

n/a

New End Theatre, Hampstead, London >>>

2003

Barrie C Stead productions in association with Brian Daniels

-

-

I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

One-Man Show

Play/Drama

1

-

-

revived as by "The Mercy Man" at The Apollo, London 2008

Don't hold your breath waiting for gun-toting mobsters to appear during this two-hour show. What you get instead is a strange, gangly bloke wearing sunglasses and a jazzy drape jacket who delivers an illustrated lecture. But this is not the dry and dusty sort. The anonymous narrator, who describes himself as "one of the world's surviving authorities on the history of the American Mafia", delivers the kind of highly detailed, Chandleresque prose which lays its sticky fingers on your attention and then stealthily tightens its grip. Spanning the dawn of the last century up to a couple of years ago, he reveals the nickname, lurid crimes and well-deserved deaths of every significant US hood who ever prowled the mean streets. So outrageous is the brutality of these young thugs (mostly twentysomethings in the early days) and so helpless and corrupt the authorities, the effect is grimly fascinating.
Helen Chappell, What's On