Unmerciful Good Fortune - Softcover

Sanchez, Edwin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0881456454 ISBN 13: 9780881456455

Publisher: Broadway Play Publishing, Incorporated, 2016

Synopsis

Arrogant young Puerto Rican Fatima, who works as a counter girl at a fast-food restaurant, has been arrested for the murder of 14 people, poisoned at her workplace. Young attorney Jeremy has been assigned to defend her and asks a Latina colleague, Maritza, to be his translator. But Fatima refuses to talk to anyone but Maritza, and she's enough of a manipulator to get her way. Fatima claims she has been blessed or cursed with psychic powers. By merely clasping the hand of an individual, she says, she can immediately grasp everything about him/her including past, future, and innermost secrets. She tells Maritza that her murders were mercy killings: She "read" each of her victims and killed them because they wanted to die. Maritza is first incredulous, then indignant at Fatima's playing God. She firmly resists letting Fatima clasp her hand, but Fatima is persuasive, constantly shifting from pugnacious, foul-mouthed street girl to wise and wily seductress to gentle, compassionate young woman. Maritza finally offers up her hand, yielding her secrets and placing her fate in Fatima's grasp. "Since graduating from the Yale School of Drama in 1994, Edwin Sánchez has won more fellowships and foundation grants than most playwrights receive in a lifetime. Go see UNMERCIFUL GOOD FORTUNE and you will understand why. The drama's premise is intriguing, and the action often riveting, but what really sets the play apart is the dialogue. Sánchez's characters can change moods on a dime." -Virginia Gerst, Pioneer Press "Many years ago, playwright Tom Stoppard demonstrated the art of creating suspense to an audience ... Playwright Edwin Sánchez probably did not attend that lecture, but he certainly knows how to create the same mood in his latest work, UNMERCIFUL GOOD FORTUNE ... The audience is kept on the edge of their seats. While they cannot predict what will come next, each twist and turn of the plot seems exactly right as it unfolds. The play centers on two Latinas: Fatima, a clairvoyant, uneducated hourly wage earner-turned-murderer, and on a successful, highly educated assistant district attorney, a single parent caring for her dying mother. From this unlikely pairing, Sánchez builds a story that examines class, racial and gender conflicts, family and professional relationships, friendship, heterosexual and homosexual love, self-realization, personal worth, and the ethics of euthanasia ..." -Beverly Friend, Lerner

About this title

Review:

Since graduating from the Yale School of Drama in 1994, Edwin Sánchez has won more fellowships and foundation grants than most playwrights receive in a lifetime. Go see UNMERCIFUL GOOD FORTUNE and you will understand why. The drama's premise is intriguing, and the action often riveting, but what really sets the play apart is the dialogue. Sánchez's characters can change moods on a dime. --Virginia Gerst, Pioneer Press

Many years ago, playwright Tom Stoppard demonstrated the art of creating suspense to an audience.... Playwright Edwin Sánchez probably did not attend that lecture, but he certainly knows how to create the same mood in his latest work, UNMERCIFUL GOOD FORTUNE.... The audience is kept on the edge of their seats. While they cannot predict what will come next, each twist and turn of the plot seems exactly right as it unfolds. The play centers on two Latinas: Fatima, a clairvoyant, uneducated hourly wage earner-turned- murderer, and on a successful, highly educated assistant district attorney, a single parent caring for her dying mother. From this unlikely pairing, Sánchez builds a story that examines class, racial and gender conflicts, family and professional relationships, friendship, heterosexual and homosexual love, self-realization, personal worth, and the ethics of euthanasia. --Beverly Friend, Lerner

Many years ago, playwright Tom Stoppard demonstrated the art of creating suspense to an audience.... Playwright Edwin Sánchez probably did not attend that lecture, but he certainly knows how to create the same mood in his latest work, UNMERCIFUL GOOD FORTUNE.... The audience is kept on the edge of their seats. While they cannot predict what will come next, each twist and turn of the plot seems exactly right as it unfolds. The play centers on two Latinas: Fatima, a clairvoyant, uneducated hourly wage earner-turned- murderer, and on a successful, highly educated assistant district attorney, a single parent caring for her dying mother. From this unlikely pairing, Sánchez builds a story that examines class, racial and gender conflicts, family and professional relationships, friendship, heterosexual and homosexual love, self-realization, personal worth, and the ethics of euthanasia. --Beverly Friend, Lerner

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadway Play Publishing, Incorporated
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0881456454
• ISBN 13: 9780881456455
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 68