Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer (NHB Modern Plays)

By Michel Tremblay

A bold, quirky play from the renowned Quebecois writer, translated by Martin Bowman & Bill Findlay into a robust earthy Scots.

On six moonlit Montreal balconies on a sultry summer's evening, eleven people tell their stories of love. Isabelle and Yannick are alive and ecstatic with the thrill of first love. Jeannine and Louise are in torment that their love may be dying. Rose and her son, Mathieu, are suspended in silent complicity, fearful of the other's pain. Gaston and his daughter, Mireille, are caught in a trap of need and blame. Yvon and Gérard are bound to one another through longing and guilt. The Widow sits alone with the memory of a perfect love...

Inspired by the discovery of a lost mass by Berlioz, Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer dispenses with religion but keeps the ritual to lay its characters bare.

'Like nothing seen on the Scottish stage before. It is a quirky work that none the less hits home with its classic themes of love, loss and redemption' Mail on Sunday

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Dec 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781780018461

Michel Tremblay

A major figure in Québec literature, Michel Tremblay has built an impressive body of work as a playwright, novelist, translator, and screenwriter. To date Tremblay’s complete works include twenty-nine plays, thirty-one novels, six collections of autobiographical stories, a collection of tales, seven screenplays, forty-six translations and adaptations of works by foreign writers, nine plays and twelve stories printed in diverse publications, an opera libretto, a song cycle, a Symphonic Christmas Tale, and two musicals. His work has won numerous awards and accolades; his plays have been published and translated into forty languages and have garnered critical acclaim in Canada, the United States, and more than fifty countries around the world.