THE POISON TREE
Straw Hat Award, Best New Play, 1973
“A moving, compassionate play…raising issues demanding of our consideration. No sensitive person can see ‘The Poison Tree’ without remembering Attica or thinking once more on the justice that places men beyond society, bereft of rehabilitation.” — Clive Barnes, The New York Times
The Poison Tree [is] an old-fashioned, well-made, realistic, and continuously exciting melodrama about life in prison. Ronald Ribman devised a plot in which questions of morality were raised and resolved in an atmosphere of extreme urgency and under the shadow of the playwright’s implied conviction that injustice is as old and unalterable as man. The inmates of the prison, which is gratuitously identified as being in a Western state, are mostly black and their keepers are mostly white…Ribman is white, and in an aesthetic sense he took enormous risks in daring to enter so freely into the minds of blacks and to write in a mocking and passionate scatological prison argot that cannot be his at first hand. As far as I could tell, he brought off his tour de force with complete success.” — Brendon Gill, The New Yorker
“…a powerful work on an important theme by a significant American playwright in a crucial period of his development…Under current cultural tensions it isn’t easy for a white artist, an ‘outsider,’ to seize upon this subject. And Ribman focuses on the black inmates—the whites are only maddened voices screaming from their segregated cells offstage. Prison is a universe as complex as hell. Ribman’s attempt to map its murderous terrain may not be definitive, but it is the product of a remarkable effort of empathy and compassion. His major contribution is to show, with frightening poignancy, the death of spirit that grips guards as well as inmates in this metallic world that is society’s outrageous attempt to imitate a wrathful god.” — Jack Kroll, Newsweek
“…a potent, unswerving and shattering look at life. Ribman has said he was writing about prison injustice, but like every good dramatist writes about man on the edge of revelation.” — Daniel Webster, Philadelphia Inquirer
“The Poison Tree…is exhilarating.” — Joe Adcock, The Evening Bulletin
“A powerful provocative prison drama, ‘The Poison Tree’ points out the inequities and injustices in a western state penitentiary and brings, too close to home, man’s inhuman behavior toward his ‘brother’…an interesting, intricate and frightening play. — Beverly Koehler, Redding Pilot
“For the theater-goer seeking real serious drama this is a fine play. It is stark drama all the way with no light touches to ease the ever suspenseful tension…Last week in Philadelphia the play was given a standing ovation by the audience.” — Fred Russell, The Bridgeport Post
Sample Excerpt:
Available At:
The Poison Tree: Playbill for the Ambassador Theatre, 1976: Ronald Ribman: Amazon.com: Books
http://www.samuelfrench.com/p/9075/poison-tree-the
*Original first editions also often found through eBay and Coming Soon in eBook.