Two Immorality Plays: The Pimp; Solitude
By (Author) Dic Edwards
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Oberon Books Ltd
28th May 2008
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
822.914
Paperback
96
Width 130mm, Height 210mm
The two plays in this collection bring fascinating new changes to the well-worn contrast between a writer's life and work.
The biographical play The Pimp is an elegant dance of death for four characters: the poet Charles Baudelaire, his mixed-race mistress Jeanne Duval, his respectable but repressed mother and his hypocritical legal adviser. Each of them has a part to play in the poetry as well as the tragedy of Baudelaire's life.
In the brilliant, often surreal Solitude, the blocked writer Trecci (a character loosely based on the novelist Alexander Trocchi) wishes to be left alone on his barge, only stepping out for a riotous visit to the pub and an occasional sexual encounter with his neighbour's one-legged wife. But when his only friend brings round a potential conquest - an attractive young man who turns out to be an attractive young woman - Trecci is unwillingly drawn back into the world outside.
Dic Edwards was born in Cardiff. He studied at St Davids College, Lampeter, University of Wales, Cardiff and University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He has written over 20 plays, including 'Lola Brecht', 'Utah Blue ', 'The Juniper Tree ', 'Beggars New Clothes ', 'Regan', 'The Fourth World', 'Antigone Now', 'The Free Wheelers', 'Vertigo', 'Kid', 'David', 'The Man Who Gave His Foot For Love', 'The Shakespeare Factory', 'Moon River/The Deal ' and 'Over Milk Wood' which have been performed throughout the British Isles. He teaches creative writing at Aberystwyth.