Synopsis
Savage in Limbo
$13
Published by Dramatists Play Service
2 Male 3 Female
The setting is a slightly seedy neighborhood bar in the Bronx, where a group of regulars (who all happen to be the same age-thirty-two) seek relief from the disappointments and tedium of the outside world. The first to arrive is Denise Savage, a perennial loner who announces that she is still a virgin, but would like to remedy the situation
She is joined by an old school friend, Linda Rotunda, whose problem has been the opposite-too many lovers (and illegitimate children) but who is now fearful that her current boyfriend, Tony Aronica, is losing interest in her. And when the macho Tony comes bursting in shortly thereafter and announces that he is leaving her to pursue "ugly girls," girls who have read books and can teach him something, Linda is desolate. Denise, sensing an advantage, makes a play for Tony, and the action quickens, moving swiftly from zany comedy to tense confrontation which requires the muscle and mediating skills of the taciturn bartender, Murk, who, heretofore, had been content to keep the glasses filled, including that of his mixed-up girlfriend, April, a failed nun who is also a classmate of the others
In the end tensions subside, Linda recaptures Tony, Murk proposes to April, and only Denise remains as she was-still in the limbo of loneliness from which she so desperately wants to escape
"John Patrick Shanley has written an often searing, existential and dramatically compelling work dealing with our search for roots and purpose in an often purposeless world" ~ BackStage
"Although filled with comic lines, Savage In Limbo has the serious intent of laying bare the unstated dreams and thwarted possibilities of its artfully drawn denizens" ~ Drama-Logue
"Conceived with sharp insight into the lives of losers, conveyed with a friskly and often hilarious wit" ~ NY Daily News