Shanley's Play PRODIGAL SON No Doubt Deserves a Pulitzer

John Patrick Shanley (b Amer 1950)  is a prolific and highly acclaimed playwright.  His plays & screenwriting have earned him a Tony, an Oscar and a Pulitzer (DOUBT.)  His new play, PRODIGAL SON is perhaps his most autobiographical.  A program note from the author claims "It is a true story for the most part."  The story is told by 15 yr old Jim Quinn.  Our young hero from the Bronx has been given a scholarship to a prep school in NH. Quinn struggles to find himself, his voice & his place in the world.  In doing so, Quinn battles wits with the headmaster much to his chagrin.  The  play starts with Quinn looking back at his old school.  He turns and asks the audience if we remember what it felt like at 15.  He recalls it felt like Hell.  Quinn is not your quintessential teen by any means.  He's precocious, beguiling, a prolific reader and a bit of a kleptomaniac.  Quinn comes under the tutelage of the English teacher, Alan Hoffman (a wink to Abbie Hoffman?) played by Robert Sean Leonard.  Leonard played a similar student role back in "Dead Poets Society."  The torment and travails of young Quinn are written with brazen fortitude and poetic solitude.  To say Shanley is a master at his craft is an understatement.  Literary references abound as do topics of war, good & evil and atheism.  Shanley often references Lord Byron in his plays.   DOUBT leans towards Byron's words: "Sorrow is knowledge.'   In PRODIGAL SON, Shanley's takes a more hopeful tone "Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey." (Byron)