THE STORY: VALHALLA intertwines two stories: the life of Ludwig of Bavaria, the 1880s Mad King responsible for building a series of storybook castles inspired by Wagnerian operas, and the fictional adventures of James Avery, a wild Texas teenager of the 1940s. These two iconoclasts are tracked from childhood through their deaths, and while they embody separate eras, they are ultimately revealed as time-traveling soul mates. The play explores questions of beauty and madness, as both Ludwig and James pursue lives of operatic passion, bringing them in contact with such diverse figures as a high-school quarterback, the prettiest girl in Dainsville, Texas, most of the characters of Lohengrin and princess Sophie, who declares herself "the loneliest humpback in Europe." VALHALLA is a comic epic, confronting the price to be paid for wanting, and getting, everything you dream of.

"You can be sure that a winsomely wicked bon mot will fly by every minute or so." - NY Times. "Paul Rudnick's most ambitious andhis strongest work yet." - The New Republic. "a dizzy, brisk diptych that connects 19th-century Bavaria to 1940s Texas in a unified field theory of gayness." - Time Out NY. "a juggling act skillful enough to revive vaudeville." - Village Voice. "If, as Paul Rudnick contends, 'opera is music gone mad,' what's it called when a giddy profusion of one-liners achieves the lunatic rhythm of music?" - NY Newsday. "Quips fall with the regularity of autumn leaves." - Associated Press.

Publisher

Dramatists Play Service Inc.

Format

Play

Binding

Softcover

ISBN

9780822220213

Stock code

9780822220213

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