Lawrence and Holloman

David E. Kemp, a former drama professor at Queen’s University, is the
author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Morris Panych, a Vancouver-based playwright who has written more than 10
plays, won the Governor General’s Award for drama in 1994 for his Ends
of the Earth. The two characters featured in Lawrence and Holloman are
polar opposites. The self-promoting Lawrence is an eternal
optimist—despite such calamities as a downturn in his sales record,
being discovered in flagrante delicto by his fiancée, a fire in his
apartment, and being hit by a car—while the timid and retiring
Holloman is an eternal second banana. The relationship between these two
disparate characters is at the heart of this smart, carefully crafted,
and genuinely funny play. The humor, it should be noted, is extremely
black. As one reviewer commented, “Lawrence and Holloman can make
nihilism seem like a party.”