The Pale King:
(setting in soul-flattening, raging with boredom chamber of the IRS"

"Howard Cardwell turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. "Grovy" Bruce Channing attaches a form to a file. Ann Williams turns a page. Anand Singh turns two pages at once by mistake and turns one back which makes a slightly different sound. David Cusk turns a page. Sandra Pounder turns a page. Robert Atkins turns two separate pages of two separate files at the same time."

"He sits there longer and longer until the audience gets more and more bored and restless, and finally they start leaving. first just a few and then the whole audience, whispering to each otherhow boring and terrible the play is. Then, once the audience have all left, the real action of the play can start."

TIME magazine
Lev Grossman comments:

"Th Pale King is an attempt to stare directly into the blind spot and face what's there. It's an account of accounting."

"... It tells us that all art is a travesty of life, because real life happens in private, alone, before an empty house, without the gaze of an audience to ennoble or redeem it..."

"... The plays' the thing, but the waiting is the play. And the waiting is the hardest part."


Love it, absolutely.