Ben
Brantley

September 21, 2015

Being a shock artist like Thomas Bradshaw carries its own exacting burden. The knowing theatergoer attends this prolific playwright’s work in a state of anxious anticipation, fearing and hoping to be rattled by some fresh violation of the traditionally taboo. Mr. Bradshaw has usually obliged, with works that don’t so much wrestle with as wallow in fraught subjects like racism, pedophilia, incest, sadomasochism and hate crime, all presented without a trace of authorial censure. He has also continued to venture ever further into new frontiers of outrage. “Job” (2012), his provocative reimagining of one of the most provocative books of the Old Testament, portrayed God as a guy of all-too-human capriciousness, while last year’s “Intimacy” was about a wholesome suburban family that stayed together by making pornography together. I will never forget the moment in “Burning” (2011), my first Bradshaw play, in which two gay men, discovered in flagrante delicto by their young adopted son, cheerfully invited the lad to join them in bed. And that was before the scene in which the neo-Nazi brother and sister started to … well, never mind.