The Great God Pan

Playwrights Horizons, New York

(212) 279-4200

“Amy Herzog is becoming a leading specialist in American amnesia,” said Scott Brown in New York magazine. Her plays After the Revolution, 4000 Miles, and now The Great God Pan focus on characters who resist confronting the past—until they’re forced to. Jamie, her latest protagonist, is a just-past-30 commitment-phobe whose passive, easygoing manner is shaken when a forgotten childhood friend re-emerges and claims that Jamie might have been molested at age 5. Jamie doesn’t remember such abuse, but starts to wonder if he erased it from his memory. “A certain flatness” mars the ensuing drama, but it’s also possibly “the most devastatingly accurate portrait I’ve seen” of the “moral paralysis” of the typical 30-something American male.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Great God Pan also affirms Herzog as “one of the bright theatrical lights of her generation,” said Charles Isherwood in The New York Times. The 33-year-old possesses “a keen sensitivity to the complex weave of feelings embedded in all human relationships.” As Jamie (Jeremy Strong) gingerly questions those who knew him as a child about his possible molestation, Herzog’s handling of this sensitive material is “gentle, probing, and unfailingly honest.” The play “may not satisfy theatergoers looking for highly charged drama” or “tidy resolutions,” but as Jamie becomes increasingly uncertain of whether a forgotten trauma has shaped his entire personality—including his faults—his growing despair becomes something I’ll not soon forget.