The Sunset Limited is a play by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and modernist genres. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road...

. McCarthy's second published play, it was first produced by the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 on May 18, 2006, and it traveled to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 later that same year. The play was published in a paperback edition about the same time that it opened in New York. Some consider it to be more a novel than a true play, partly because its subtitle is "A Novel in Dramatic Form."

Plot

The play involves only two nameless characters, designated "White" and "Black", their respective skin colors. Offstage, just before the play begins, Black saves White from throwing himself in front of a train, the Sunset Limited. All of the action takes place in Black's sparse apartment in urban New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, where the characters go (at the behest of Black) after their encounter on the platform. Black is an ex-convict and an evangelical Christian. White is an atheist and a professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

. They debate the meaning of human suffering, the existence of God, and the propriety of White's attempted suicide.

Critical reception

Critics from the two major newspapers in the two major cities in which the play has opened both noted concerns about the genre of the work.

The Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

critic, Chris Jones, notes that the play is hardly traditional theater, because dialogue rather than action drives the story, yet McCarthy's language is so rich that it makes up for the lack of incident. "Now if only McCarthy would write an actual play," Jones writes. The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

calls the play "a poem in celebration of death," yet the play's paperback version (as if anticipating the criticism) includes the intriguingly suggestive subtitle "a novel in dramatic form", which raises many questions about the work's proper genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

.

Adaptation

The play was adapted for film

The Sunset Limited (film)

The Sunset Limited is a 2011 television film based on the play written by Cormac McCarthy. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson....

 by the playwright for a version directed and executive produced by Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones is an American actor and film director. He has received three Academy Award nominations, winning one as Best Supporting Actor for the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive....

; it began airing on HBO in February 2011. Jones also stars, opposite Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American film and television actor and film producer. After becoming involved with the Civil Rights Movement, he moved on to acting in theater at Morehouse College, and then films. He had several small roles such as in the film Goodfellas before meeting his mentor,...

.

External links

• "Sunset Limited", from Cormacmccarthy.com.