Self Torture and Strenuous Exercise

Harry Kondoleon has said his plays are “sad, scary, funny.” Though his work has been compared to that of Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde, John Guare and Christopher Durang, his acute and elegant voice has from the first been distinctively his own.

Kondoleon’s tragicomedies are peopled by extremists, their behavior bizarre. And yet these curious characters are driven by the most familiar of passions. Abandonment and betrayal define their pasts, shadow their present. They are needy and lonely and fu...