The Whale
Opening Night: November 5, 2012
Closing: December 9, 2012
Theater: Playwrights Horizons
On the outskirts of Mormon Country, Idaho, a six-hundred pound recluse (Shuler Hensley) hides away in his apartment eating himself to death. Desperate to reconnect with his long-estranged daughter (Reyna de Courcy), he reaches out to her, only to find a viciously sharp-tongued and wildly unhappy teen. Big-hearted and fiercely funny, The Whale tells the story of a man’s last chance at redemption, and of finding beauty in the most unexpected places.
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
November 6, 2012
There may be no more startling image on a New York stage right now than the one greeting audiences at Playwrights Horizons when the lights go up on “The Whale,” an affecting new drama by Samuel D. Hunter that opened on Monday. On a soiled plaid couch visibly warping beneath him sits a bulbous behemoth of a man weighing in at more than 500 pounds. He will remain there — beached, to employ the author’s own metaphor — for much of the evening’s nearly two-hour running time, an image of the human body at its most grotesque, at least according to conventional notions of good looks, to say nothing of good health.
READ THE REVIEW