Exterior Art by Elizabeth A. Soroka
“Bumps, drunks, egoists, racists, creationists, darwinists – they all live under one roof... and they’re loud.
Don’t talk politics with your crazy family.
Don’t push people’s buttons.
Don’t fall asleep with a smoke in yer drunk yap.
Oh, and don’t misread a book.
‘Cuz if you do, you’ll have a gang of one-dimensional freaks screaming at you – a gang at home with Beckett, Tarantino and the boys from A Clockwork Orange. And they’ll let you know, in no uncertain terms, amid a flurry of shattered ashtrays, broken angels and mind-numbing f-bombs, that they’re no butchers. And in the end, you’ll find out who’s entitled to what, be it religion or meatballs... or maybe a little cheese on the pasta.”
– R L Raymond, www.pigeonbike.com
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“Plath’s play leaves the gate at warp speed and never once looks back. This look at the seamy underside of life is a revelation.”
– John Yamrus, author of Can’t Stop Now! |
“Rob Plath exudes divine madness. He is Quasimodo and the Phantom of the Opera slamming the same keyboard.”
– Dan Fante, author of The Boiler Room |
A Read of Rob Plath’s We’re No Butchers
by Chris Yurkowski, Domesday Notebook
We’re No Butchers: A Play by Rob Plath (40 pages, Epic Rites Press)
Part Seinfeld, part Hubert Selby Jr., and part Quentin Tarrantino, Rob Plath’s We’re No Butchers is a work of black entertainment that showcases the poet’s characteristically dark-edged voice and fairly sophisticated – if also outrageous – satire.
The play is set in what appears to be the fairly standard suburban familial dwelling of retirees Mia and Otto, who live with their 43 year-old son and the boy’s Uncle Dante (who seems to have arrived for an extended, partly unwelcome stay) This dysfunctional group cycles through endless arguments that become ever-more ludicrous and violent over the play’s ten scenes.
Reading a play can be a limiting, two-dimensional experience for the reader, but flipping through Epic Rites’ publication of Plath’s play is actually a rather rich one. The lively but natural dialogue and extensive scene-sketching and stage directions makes it read like a novel – a slightly experimental, yet still narrative-driven one.
We’re No Butchers should also make for an engaging, in-your-face live experience – although don’t be expecting a high school troupe or suburban community theatre group to put this one on. Much of the text is meant to be bellowed – at least from the gobs of Patriarch Otto and hack-off-the-old-block Butch – with a generous amount of obscenities. The constant conflict is either a result of the passive-aggressive baiting by Dante or the simple red meat aggressive-aggressive behavior of Butch (and seconded by Otto, while Mia endlessly prepares meals in the kitchen in the background, apparently serene in her labours).
The thematic core is also much edgier than, say, Kiss Me, Kate. It’s a hyper-parody of a dysfunctional family, with left/right straight/gay religious/atheist hawk/dove dichotomies mixed up in an array of stereotypes all twisted around like a double-helix. With the right cast, it would play like a sitcom set in a nightmare.
“WE’RE NO BUTCHERS! IF WE WERE BUTCHERS YOU’D BE DEAD!” Butch yells at Dante during one of their altercations. And there is the rub – despite their bluster the characters aren’t anything quite so productive. They are certainly consumers, though. Of constant food, booze, sex, TV and emotion. As a familial unit they hang together through enabling behavior that allows them to satisfy their various appetites while making the reader (and/or audience) alternatively laugh, gape and cringe.
The last scene ends on a bit of a whimper rather than the bang that characterizes most of the play. But that ending is entirely appropriate for a play that satirizes contemporary ‘average’ life as full of sound and fury, signifying – well – sound and fury.
– Chris Yurkowski, Domesday Notebook
We’re No Butchers
$
14.50
A play by Rob Plath
40 pages, 8.5” x 11”
$10 + shipping
ISBN: 978-1-926860-07-7
Epic Rites Press, August 2011
“This play has the subtlety of a roadside bomb.” – George Anderson, Bold Monkey
40 pages, 8.5” x 11”
$10 + shipping
ISBN: 978-1-926860-07-7
Epic Rites Press, August 2011
“This play has the subtlety of a roadside bomb.” – George Anderson, Bold Monkey
We’re No Butchers Press Release:
| press_release_-_were_no_butchers_-_pm_print.pdf |
Also by Rob Plath:
About Rob Plath
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