←Recommendations of The Condemned, a Monologue

FRANCIS BOYLE’s monologue, “The Condemned”, is powerful not only for what it says about the condemned but also our society. We may wish someone dead. We may openly talk about our hope this person is killed. But, our society will not, should not, condone murder.

A short but potent indictment of a fickle culture that seems to be intent on hating both its incompetent leaders and those who actually do something about them. The speaker may be condemned, but he also condemns society for its capriciousness.

Be careful what you wish for, because you just may get it. And Francis Boyle's "The Condemned, a Monologue" imagines just such a scenario with our current national crisis, with all the attendant hypocrisy flurrying about the actions of the titular monologist. The genius of Boyle's work is that he has presented it all so clearly, so dispassionately, and so powerfully. A truly stunning, necessary work.

A brave and challenging piece of writing, forcing the reader to examine morality, ethics, and legality – where they overlap and where they don’t. This assassin, in taking this life, may have helped save a nation. Or they have not have. It depends on who the victim was and what might have happened if that person had lived. The beauty in the piece is that the assassin has taken justice into their own hands twice, with the victim’s life and their own. There’s a moral balance being negotiated between salvation and atrocity with no easy answers. Bravo!

The character is cold, clinical, rational, emotionless. A psychopath, and a driven one, compelled by everyday people's words. We, the audience, are complicit, and that nauseated me. This is a controversial, unforgettable monologue.

Francis Boyle's work tackles the nature of group/individual hate and how one's conscience might be forced to reconcile how the things angrily "said" or "thought" contributes to a toxic public discourse that inevitably leads to violence. The Condemned character throws all that back in the reader's face to contemplate during this thought-provoking monologue.

Wow. This monologue grabs you in the first line and holds you through to the end. Boyle has a command of language throughout, it’s disturbing, totally relatable and entirely too believable. Really well done.

This monologue commands attention immediately with a dynamic voice that speaks of a taboo desire satisfied. Many would identify with the speaker, obviously not in sense they are criminal awaiting execution; they would identify with the desire for destroying the enemy -- to destroy that which they deem evil. As if doing so is not some sick pleasure, rather a holy act, righteous and undamnable. This monologue would appeal to people of cities and cultures dominated by nationalism outside North America; this has universal appeal. Certainly to be a controversial choice for any theatre. But it would get applause.

Chilling and powerful. Reading this, one wonders where all the hatred that people spew on the internet is landing. Is there any irony left? Are there too many people willing to do the will of the people. This monologue is thought provoking. Where do we draw the line?