Did you know that the only way you can get my play Louis Slotin Sonata is to order it as an e-book available here? That’s an offer so exclusive I can’t even take advantage of it. (I don’t have a Kindle or any other kind of e-reading device.) So until Houghton Mifflin decides to publish the deluxe coffee table edition of the script, this is the only way of owning it.
If you don’t know the play, here’s a synopsis:
At 3:20 PM on Tuesday, May 21, 1946 Louis Slotin‘s hand slipped– a small, practically insignificant blunder, except that Slotin was the chief -bomb builder at Los Alamos, and at that fateful moment he held in his hands a plutonium bomb core named “Rufus”. The slip caused a chain reaction that in turn released a deadly “prompt burst” of radiation. Slotin and others saw a blue glow and felt a momentary flux of heat on their faces. Slotin flung the shell to the floor but it was too late. The damage was done. In the milliseconds it took for the plutonium to spit its deadly neutrons, Louis Slotin became a walking dead man.
With a structure inspired by classical music’s sonata allegro form, LOUIS SLOTIN SONATA traces a brilliant scientist’s last nine days, as his body and mind gradually succumb to the chaos wrecked by radiation. Reliving the moment of his accident again and again, Slotin slowly makes his own unique way to redemption.
If you do know the play, please consider adding your review to the Amazon page. It would help me out a lot.
* WINNER of the LA Weekly Award for Best New Play
* WINNER of the Backstage West Garland Award for Playwriting
* Nominated for Theatre LA’s Ovation Award for Best Writing – World Premiere Play
* Pick-of-the-Week, The New York Times
* Excerpted in The Best Men’s Stage Monologues of 1999, Smith & Kraus.
* WINNER of The Seattle Times Footlight Award for Best New Play
The New York Times “…a crafty narrative… irresistibly gripping…. as a historical episode suitable for dramatizing, you can’t do much better.”
The Los Angeles Times “…a rare bird– a new play that wraps intellectual complexity, emotional depth and theatrical derring-do in one tight and memorable package. It’s bleak, it’s cheeky– it’s dazzling…. Be there!”
WBEZ Chicago Public Radio “… Intellectually thrilling and rigorous. It really is a must see.”
Backstage West “…a powerful play, full of ideas, extremely verbal, creatively written and extraordinarily presented… imaginative, gut-wrenching, thought-provoking, and unexpectedly, highly amusing.”
The LA Weekly “… drama and symbol couldn’t be more delicately interwoven.”
The Seattle P-I “…Like the crazed geniuses in science fiction, Mullin mixes gobs of this and gobs of that and then — Good heavens! It’s alive! It’s powerful!”
The Seattle Times “…a tumultuous, tour-de-force staging that spreads plenty of intellectual and emotional fallout.”
