Study the greats. That’s the advice to all budding playwrights. And there are few contemporary dramatists more worthy of appreciative scrutiny than Bruce Norris, whose savage and hilarious comedy, Clybourne Park, bagged the Pulitzer Prize in America before transferring to the West End where it stunned audiences with its macabre revelations about bourgeois attitudes to racism. But an apprentice writer analysing such an accomplished work will probably be overawed by its self-confidence and polish. Far more interesting to study Norris in an earlier phase of his development. Purple Heart, from 2003, was the first of his plays to be performed outside the United States.
The date is 1972. The setting is a crummy house in the Midwest occupied by a trio of trailer-park losers. Both details are unfamiliar. Norris specialises in up-to-date locations and in rich, well-educated characters ensconced in affluent neighbourhoods. With this play, he seems to be stuck in Sam Shepard’s world. That’s because Norris isn’t yet Norris. He’s only a quarter of the way there.
The central character, Carla, is a pregnant widow whose husband has been killed in Vietnam. He was a violent, whore-hiring brute, apparently, but Carla misses him so badly she consoles herself by supping back gallons of neat vodka. Her boozy woes are compounded by her domestic obligations. Her hyperactive 12-year-old son, Thor, likes to play Led Zeppelin albums at full volume while she dozes on the sofa in a vodka fug. And she’s tormented by her mother-in-law, Grace, an autocratic nuisance who gets her kicks by preventing everyone else from getting theirs. Grace creeps around the house squirreling away bottles of liquor as if she were in training to become an alcoholic. Yet she considers herself a model of good-tempered saintliness.

Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in