Ashes: David Rudkin’s Play (Joseph Papp Public Theater)

David Rudkin (born 1936) is a major figure in postwar British theatre. The critic Kenneth Tynan acclaimed his play, Afore Night Come, as “the finest debut since Look Back in Anger.”

Ashes, which drew favorable reviews during its New York premiere engagement last month at the Manhattan Theater Club, was transferred by Joseph Papp to the Public/ Anspacher Theater, with previews. beginning January 25, 1977.

The play is a co‐production of the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Manhattan Theater Club.

Lynne Meadow, executive director of the Manhattan Theater Club and director of the original New York production, will restage the work at the Public Theater, with the same cast—Brian Murray, Roberta Maxwell, Penelope Allen and John Tillinger.

Ashes marks, among many innovations, the first time that a character is called upon to masturbate into a specimen jar. The bold actor then turns his back to the audience and punctures the fourth wall by asking: “Well, what were you expecting to see?”

Decades later, he has the candor that can still cause embarrassment over where to look, or what not to hear.

The dazzling whiteness of the set seems to present the characters as specimens in their own biological experiment.

Rudkin’s long, discursive drama is undeniably of its time–pre-IVF–and written as comment on the escalating troubles in Northern Ireland, which become the subject of oblique, extended monologue in the second half.

With stark realism, harrowing insight, and dark humor, their efforts to achieve this blessing are portrayed.

The embers of their hopes become the ashes of their dreams, and with bitter experience they summon the strength and love to go on.

Although science has progressed and the political situation has moved on, you are aware of a cussed, confrontational, highly original voice which is still capable of stirring up quite a storm.

Ashes: David Rudkin’s Play (Joseph Papp Public Theater)

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