In the Great Together: One-Act Plays

Seth Alan Barkas was film critic for Baltimore Magazine and theater critic for Show Business newspaper when he was mugged and murdered on a Manhattan street at the young age of 23. These unproduced plays show the genius of this poet and playwright whose talent was far advanced for his years.

Each of these four one-act plays have sharp, memorable dialogue and diverse and powerful themes, plots, and characters. Although plays are meant to be performed, and these plays are no exception, they are "good reads" in their own right. Each one will also be welcome new performance material for college and regional theater groups. "Maximilian" takes place in 1867 in a make-shift prison cell the night before the execution of 35-year-old Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. It is a fascinating political theater peace that explores politics, war, 1oyalty, and friendship. As Constandne, a 17-year-old fellow aristocrat, smuggled into the prison as a stable boy, tries to talk his master into leaving the prison and leaving his adopted country of Mexico and returning to Austria, rather than be executed. Maximilian replies, "I can't". He continues, "Can't you understand that I can't leave my country?" Constandne replies: "Do you think it is any easier to leave a friend?"

"Scorpio", explores the relationship between 20-year-old Tom, a woman, and Stanley, a 19-year-old who wanders into Tom's apartment as he was going door to door selling. In this two-character play, they explore their contrasting childhoods and inhibitions through their chance encounter.

"Cry of theBoy" is more existential in its themes and more esoteric in its story line as it delves into the everyday life of a 17-year-old boy and his relationship with his mother and father.

The fourth one-act play, "The Devil and Don Quixote", is a fascinating application of the classic Cervantes tale to the story of Don Quixote, a man who has just escaped from an old age home and who wears a home-made suite of armor with a pot as a helmet.

The key poetry selection in this collection is a lengthy prophetic poem, written by Barkas just weeks before his own death, where he bemoans the premature deaths of two contemporaries, Don McNeil, a writer for the Village Voice, who drowned, and a childhood friend, who overdosed. As Barkas concludes in his powerful poem, "In the Great Together, "And whether I liked him or not, it's unimportant, sooner or later, I'm going to join him in the great together. It scares me". r