When Will Eno's one-person play Thom Pain opened in New York in February 2005, it became something rare-an unqualified hit. Before that, the play was a critical success in London and received the coveted Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival. Dubbed "stand-up existentialism" by the New York Times, this monologue is both lyrical and deadpan, sardonic and sincere. It is Thom Pain-in the camouflage of the common man-fumbling with his heart, squinting into the light. This revised edition will be published in conjunction with a revival production at Signature Theatre in New York in the fall of 2018, starring Michael C. Hall.
"Astonishing in its impact. . . One of the treasured nights in the theatre that can leave you both breathless with exhilaration and, depending on your sensitivity to meditations on the bleak and beautiful mysteries of human experience, in a puddle of tears. . . Thom Pain is at bottom a surreal meditation on the empty promises life makes, the way experience never lives up to the weird and awesome f
New York Times
"Bold, original, and most important of all, entertaining without sacrificing its artistic leanings, Thom Pain is the work of a writer finding his voice."
Chicago Theatre Review
"Will Eno is an original, a maverick wordsmith whose weird, wry dramas gurgle with the grim humour and pain of life. Eno specialises in the connections of the unconnected, the apologetic murmurings of the disengaged, those who have suppressed their humanity to survive."
