The Pain and the Itch

Playwrights Horizons opens its 2006/2007 season with the New York premiere of The Pain and the Itch, the controversial and blistering comedy by Bruce Norris that rocked Chicago during its 2005 world premiere production at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Anna D. Shapiro directs.

With a young daughter in serious need of attention and a ravenous creature possibly prowling the upstairs bedrooms, what begins as an average Thanksgiving for one privileged family unravels into an exposé of disastrous choices and less-than-altruistic motives. The Pain and the Itch is a scathing satire of the politics of class and race, a controversial, painfully human examination of denial and its consequences.