Sticks and Bones
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Average rating5
A savagely comic portrait of an archetypal, middle class family, Ozzie, Harriet, David, and Rick, falling apart. When David comes back from the war blinded, he is pursued by furies that haunt him. Wanting to return their son to normal, Ozzie offers camaraderie, while Harriet cooks and bakes the foods he once loved, and shares her faith in her beloved religion. But David grows even more vengeful. Ozzie feels the foundation of his world crumbling. In a darkly hilarious scene, a Catholic priest called in to give his blessing is, ingeniously, rebuffed by David. Finally, Ozzie and Harriet break under the pressure, for it seems David is about to turn their home into his nightmare. It's up to guitar-playing, fudge-eating Rick to save the day and allow the family to return to their cherished status quo with a tidy, ritualistic atrocity all their own.
Series
Featured Series
2 primary books#2 in The Vietnam Plays
The Vietnam Plays is a 2-book series with 2 released primary works first released in 1971 with contributions by David Rabe.
Reviews
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Reviews with the most likes.
David returns home after he is wounded in the Vietnam War. He is blind, yet he sees better than anyone. He comes back to a family that couldn't have been more typical of its era. Denial, racism, a deep desire to hide everything under the carpet. A father that is an absolute brute, a mother whose weakness prevents her from keeping the family together, a younger brother whose only ‘'ideals'' are pretending to play his guitar, eating chocolate cake and fucking girls in the back seat. How can David not fall into despair?
David Rabe's play is a constant punch in the stomach. It throws you on the ground, and receive blow after blow, unable to move. You are frozen, witnessing the struggle of a young, broken man whose life and love have been destroyed, whose family home becomes Hell on Earth, worse than the worst battlefield. We could refer to PSTD, racism, middle-class narrow-mindedness, rednecks living in their own distorted microcosm. For me, these are just words. What horrifies me is the absolute lack of any kind of tenderness, not to mention love, from the parents to their child, the cruelty inflicted on the son who fought for an empty cause. When your home becomes a snake pit, what can you do?
From the beginning to its shocking closure, Sticks and Bones is one of the most terrifying, complex, demanding plays in American Drama, a treasure that we need to bring out of its present oblivion. If anyone is listening...
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