Overview

A keen, passionate portrait of the author as a poetry-spouting romantic punk torn between literary dreams and his roots in the Bronx... Prodigal Son is pure, splendid Shanley: shaggily idealistic and always scratching a philosophical itch underneath jokes and banter." -- Davide Cote, Time Out New York

“Shanley chooses characters stretched to the breaking point between rage and love… His are characters of obsessive passions who match those passions with hyper-melodic language.” --BOMB magazine

When a troubled but gifted boy from the South Bronx arrives at a private school in New Hampshire, two faculty members wrestle with how to help him adjust to his new environment. The boy is violent, brilliant, alienated, and on fire with a ferocious loneliness. As with his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Doubt, John Patrick Shanley has drawn on his personal experiences to create an explosive portrait of a young man on the verge of either salvation or destruction.