The Dying Gaul By Lucas, Craig

Here is a modern American tragedy about a grieving screenwriter who compromises his ideals to make a small fortune that enables him to climb from invisible poverty into the rarefied seductions and surreal beauty of the Hollywood Hills. Robert's gay lover endured horrific and protracted suffering before Robert helped him to die. Robert's subsequent struggle to come to grips with his own incomprehensible survival and his deep need to find a place in the world that doesn't burn push him into a lush and intoxicating world of sexual ecstacy and intrigue, even as he privately delves into the techniques and teachings of Buddhism for some footing, no matter how tenuous. With breathtaking speed, Robert is caught in a love triangle with a powerful, ruthless and rapacious film producer and his fascinating but woefully under stimulated wife. The lies that Robert perpetrates become inextricably interwoven with theirs each person lying to themselves as much as to their partners and the ones they are betraying. Killingly funny and heart stoppingly elegiac, this play is a thrilling dramatic experience.