PLAYS

“A major playwright who should be nationally celebrated.” — Martin Gottfried, Vogue

“Ronald Ribman has been developing quietly, methodically and meticulously into one of the most haunting dramatic poets our stage has ever seen.” — Robert Brustein, The New Republic

“Mr. Ribman has long been one of our most independent-minded and daring playwrights.” — The New York Times

“A young man provoked by the magnitude of recent ‘crimes against humanity,’ so terrible that they searched our collective conscience, asked a philosopher, ‘Where was God in the concentration camps?’ ‘He wasn’t invited,’ the philosopher instantly replied.

“As poet-playwright, Ronald Ribman has, throughout thirty years of writing, confronted the questions of what is man’s and what is God’s role, if any, in man’s behavior. Suffusing his work are anger and satire, more often sorrow and haunting mystery, but always the mocking spirit of the grotesque behind the action, be it commonplace or exalted. Ribman’s plays consistently reveal man’s universe as abandoned by God but inextricably webbed into His rules, rules only hinted at as boundless in range and consequence. A corrosive absurdity at the heart of tragedy.

“With such infinite possibilities left to human ordering, Mr. Ribman’s people have created many worlds in a great many plays with landscapes both familiar and abstractly bizarre. In these plays reality is created anew each time by characters whose capacity for mythmaking is prodigious and whose anguish at recognizing the recycled essence of their illusions is profound. …

“Ronald Ribman makes time his ally but erases the arbitrary categories of past, present, and future. What is has been, what was remains. His creation of various modes of reality demands that he collapse all history into the immediate moment. No matter on which century he lifts the curtain, he sees the mutual embrace of lunacy and reason, cruelty and compassion, innocence and cunning. And always he hears the sounds of mordant laughter, the fool’s malicious jests couched in paradox, the cries of pain and astonishment at the confidence man’s swift manipulations of certainties into illusions, and the sighs of the weak yearning for the seats of the powerful. The transformed realities that emerge in his theatre cling to us, embrace us, invade our secret places of self-knowing.” — Arthur Hagadus, American Theatre July/August 1987

THE JOURNEY OF THE FIFTY HORSE: “a work of extraordinary power and humor.” — Robert Lowell

COLD STORAGE: “A beautifully detailed comedy celebrating the miraculous, irreducible essence of life in the face of death.” — Newsweek

THE BURIAL OF ESPOSITO: “a tightly-written tragedy… a model of short play construction and economical characterization. The author enables the audience to understand a man’s life in a matter of minutes… Ribman’s writing is taut and exciting.” — Variety

THE CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE : “The intensity and sustained beauty of the full-blooded prose is a gluttonous feast of the English language.” — London Daily Mirror

SWEET TABLE AT THE RICHELIEU: “The “remarkable‘Richelieu’… Ronald Ribman’s mysterious and unsettling play… Sweet Table at the Richelieu is a demanding piece of work about the casual horror of human suffering, and it’s played out in the gilded atmosphere of an Alpine spa…Ribman has imagined a world that has degenerated “until there is nothing left.” — Kevin Kelly, The Boston Globe

TELEVISION & FILM

THE FINAL WAR OF OLLY WINTER: “The most moving original television play of the season…a brilliant introduction of the CBS Playhouse…advanced the artistic horizons of television drama…in all ways an occasion.” — The New York Times

“A gripping, glowing, emotionally shattering play.” — The Cleveland Press

“The Final War Of Olly Winter was one of television’s most memorable original plays of all time, one that enhances the medium and raises fresh hopes for the future.” — Memphis Press-Scimitar

“High quality, original drama returned to television last night and provided an evening that was worth remembering.” — The Washington Post

“Television’s quest for quality drama this season took an impressive step forward.” — St. Louis Globe Democrat

“Ronald Ribman’s first television script would have stood out in the palmiest season of the middle Fifties. — The Baltimore Sun

“A haunting, mordant work of infinite pathos.” — The New York Daily News

“The Golden Age of Television Drama returned for 90 minutes last night…This was, in the best definition of the term, meaningful drama.” — The Detroit News

THE SUNSET GANG (Adaptation): “The Sunset Gang realistically and delightfully animates life in a southern Florida retirement village…Anybody who’s dealt with parents or grandparents in the throes of resettlement will immediately connect with these vibrant senior citizens…One of the characters (Harold Gould) in tonight’s opening episode has the honesty to admit that he doesn’t even like his own children, let alone love them. ‘Where is it written you have to love your children?’ That kind of candor underscores the felicitous writing by adapter Ron Ribman.” — Los Angeles Times

“Ronald Ribman’s adaptations of the three stories are strictly kosher; they’re also solid entertainment…a beautiful production of a trio of touching human tales.” — Variety

THE ANGEL LEVINE (Adaptation): “GRADE: A. What price does an elderly Jewish man and his sickly, dying wife pay for the loss of his faith in G-d? That is the question pondered (and ultimately answered) in this funny, haunting and moving rumination on Divine silence based upon Bernard Malamud’s seminal short story…Didactic, challenging, at times even uncomfortable to watch, this unusual film raises many serious issues without pretending to have all the answers, making it a one-of-a-kind look into the heart and soul of a noble but tired Jewish man struggling with faith and the trials of earthly realities.” — Jewish Film Guide