"In the joint publication...we find Walsh writing with a splendid
combination of grace and grit about characters caught in a tape
loop."--Paul Muldoon for the Times Literary Supplement
Praise for The Walworth Farce:
"Complex, dark, and emotionally rich. . . . The central conceit, that
this is a farce within a tragedy, is a master stroke of
meta-theatricality. . . . It rewards with a theatrical experience that
claws at the imagination for days afterwards."--Variety
Praise for The New Electric Ballroom:
"For the second year in a row [at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe] Enda
Walsh supplied the most intoxicating and original piece of writing with
his pitch-dark but tender-hearted play. . . . The New Electric
Ballroom affirms his growing reputation as a contender to take his
place in the long, distinguished line of great Irish playwrights."--The
New York Times
This volume brings together two masterworks by the London-based Irish
playwright Enda Walsh: unmistakably Irish, galloping gothic comedies
about the use of theater and oral traditions to warp family history. In
The Walworth Farce, one-play-playwright Dinny forces his adult sons
Sean and Blake to enact his own version of why they are living in a
rotting London flat, in exile from their native Cork. The New Electric
Ballroom is set in a small fishing village in Ireland, where spinster
sisters Breda and Clara, and their much-younger sibling Ada, replay a
scandalous incident at a dance hall when they were in the bloom of their
youth.
Enda Walsh has been recognized by numerous awards for his plays,
which include Disco Pigs, Bedbound, Small Things, and Chatroom.
He also wrote the screenplay for Hunger, winner of the Camera d'Or
award at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. His work has been translated
into more than twenty languages.
