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Live at 19:00 GMT on Thursday 18th December
The Sunset Limited, a rare play by writer Cormac McCarthy, tells the story of two men in crisis whose lives collide at a New York train station. A clash of cultures, race and religion ensues, unfurling in a dialogue of such philosophical intensity that McCathy referred to it as a ‘novel in dramatic form’. Join UnHerd for a live rehearsed reading of this vital play and an open discussion of its themes, led by columnist Aris Roussinos.
I’m enjoying this reading!
It has finished. Still in raptures ?
I can hear every word and phrase in this play. It sounds deeply thought out. The characters are genuine, fraught, real. Racial tension is there. It makes me feel up-to-date with the the intelligentisia. I’ll buy it ! (oh I just heard it)
But I don’t live in London. So I have to apply the horse-poo test. Can I shovel it ? No.
Please somebody, tell me why I should listen to stuff like this
It’s a mandatory requirement
can’t hear the questions
McCarthy’s unmistakable bleak vision expressed in this play I hadn’t heard of before. Nihilism vs Faith. And we know which side McCarthy believes represents the true state of things. Same kind of despair that ‘Blood Meridian’ concludes with. Is there any redemption? I’ve yet to read anything by McCarthy that suggests there is. Maybe the struggle is the redemption.
PS just watched the after show discussion. I found ‘The Road’ the weakest of McCarthy’s novels that I have read so far. I haven’t read them all. I agree with Aris Roussinos that not all his characters are uniformly evil or morally compromised. John Grady Cole in ‘All the Pretty Horses’ is a precocious teenage boy with a solid heart of goodness.
And more power to the elbow of ‘The Base’. Push back against this intolerant, illiberal consensus in the creative industries. Too right. f**k the gatekeepers!
As for the ‘play’ itself. No, it’s not an entertainment. The Socratic dialogue of the two poles, Black and White, was engaging. I read it as Faith vs Nihilism. I didn’t read it as a particularly right-wing or conservative piece. These are inadequate terms now anyway. It is catholic in the universal sense. And McCarthy has a Catholic aesthetic. His work is about Faith in humanity.Or lack of it. Religion is just the form this faith expresses itself in. The narrative that it uses. The search for meaning.
Kudos to Unherd for staging this work and for the engaging conversation after the performance.
Full disclosure: I watched about fifteen minutes of the performance then shifted to the post-performance discussion. This “play” is, imo, too deep, or impenetrable, to be swallowed whole in one sitting. For me, I have to listen to 10 minutes then go back to the beginning and further digest what I just heard, and so on throughout the performance.
I don’t think it works as a play, but this piece nonetheless has much to say that’s applicable to modern life. Again, much respect to the drama company, Unherd and performers who staged this piece.
I greatly enjoyed the comments of the dark-haired guy (sorry, I didn’t catch his name) from the drama company that put on this performance. Kudos to them for pushing back against the “liberal” dictatorship in the arts.
Finally, if anyone from Unherd happens to read this comment and, even less likely, cares about the comment of a random on-line subscriber, I couldn’t hear the audience questions and often couldn’t here Aris (although he has a tendency to mumble). At a minimum, Flo should summarize questions from the audience; more importantly, Unherd has been hosting on-line events for several years now. It really should have figured out the technicalities, such as effective sound for the on-line audience, by now.
Minor griping aside, well done Unherd.
This reminded me of a company party where everyone is a bit uncomfortable. I haven’t read anything from Cormac McCarthy, the 10 minutes of the play I listened to reminded me a bit about Raskolnikov’s internal conflict but the whole thing was extremely boring.