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Buried Inside ExtraThomas BabeProduced by New York Public Theatre (1983) & Royal Court Theatre, London The scene is the newsroom of a small-city newspaper, the time late in the evening. The morning edition has just been "put to bed" and, ironically, so has the paper - as the editor has received word that this edition will be the last. The tired staffers - the editor; his long-time mistress (who edits the women's page); the ageing copy boy (who used to be a promising reporter until drink and frustration took over); and the brashly self-confident cub reporter - are further jarred by a report that a bomb has been planted in the building and will explode within the hour. Dealing with this double-edged crisis leads to challenging and revealing confrontations, which reach a climax in two particularly vivid and dramatically gripping scenes - the unexpected appearance of the editor's neglected wife, and the exposure of the bomber. In the end the building is saved, but the paper must still die and, with it, the purpose and focus of the wisecracking, cynical, fallible but essentially decent people for whom it has been a real home for so many years. |