Knuckle, by David Hare (American adaptation by Richard Scharine), directed by Nan Weber tells the story of a girl who disappears at Utah Lake. Suicide, murdered, or just missing? Her brother, a soldier of fortune long alienated from the family, returns to Provo to look for her. Can her roommate, the manager of a local bar, help? Their legislator/banker father? Her newspaper reporter boyfriend? Or should they all be under suspicion? That is, if she’s really dead.
Adapter’s Notes: David Hare’s Knuckle was first staged in 1974. On a 1978 performance tour of England and Wales, I picked up a copy of Knuckle at a local bookstore after seeing Hare’s Plenty at the National Theatre. Over the next 40 years, I periodically re-read it, being attracted first to the noir quality of the hardened detective operating according to a code in a society deliberately wearing blinkers in the presence of the truth. Years later, I became aware of the contrast between the open honesty of the despised gun runner, and the admiration lavished on the legislators and bankers who willingly sacrificed human lives (including their own family) on the altar of money. Finally, as I grew old myself, more and more I saw Knuckle as a family tragedy in which the twisted relationship of father, son, and daughter denied the possibility of peace and love for them all. Recovering from cancer in the autumn of 2020, I decided that what I had always thought as an English drama was in fact a universal story and sat down to make the surface changes that would make the play’s universal elements obvious to a local audience. How well I achieved that you are about to determine. (Richard Scharine)
Wasatch Theatre Company Box, 124 South 400 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Friday/Saturday/Sunday, Sept. 10-25, 2021 Friday/Saturday 8:00 PM, Sunday 2:00 PM
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