User’s Guide to Hell in the New York Times!

Here’s the latest from our recent mention in The New York Times!

The Money’s Gone; the Drama Lingers Bernard L. Madoff (or His Influence) Takes the Stage

‘A User’s Guide to Hell, Featuring Bernard Madoff’

By Lee Blessing

Previews begin Sept. 5 at Atlantic Stage 2

PLOT Mr. Madoff (Edward James Hyland) is back home, but this New York isn’t the place he left behind, as a satanic tour guide (David Deblinger) and various furious residents are quick to remind him.

SPECIFIC INSPIRATION “What I wanted to do,” Mr. Blessing told a video interviewer, “is examine my concept, and other people’s concepts, of the afterlife — hell specifically — and I imagine that I chose Bernie Madoff because, you know, if there’s anyone we can theoretically presume maybe going to hell, should there actually be a hell, Bernie would be a pretty universal candidate.”

HOW CLOSE TO MADOFF STORY Mohammed Atta and Josef Mengele make guest appearances, and the comedy is very, very, very black. When he hears that Mr. Madoff fleeced his fellow Jews, Mr. Atta announces: “You are my hero. God rain peace upon you.”

TELLING LINE “Come on, Bernie. Lie down here. Stay a couple millennia.”

David Deblinger in rehearsal for the play “A User’s Guide to Hell, Featuring Bernard Madoff.”