The Ends of the Earth

David E. Kemp is chair of the Drama Department at Queen’s University
and the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

This play, which won the 1994 Governor General’s Literary Award for
drama, is propelled by a sensibility that ricochets between the totally
sane and the bizarre and offbeat. The chief protagonists, Frank and
Walker, are ordinary and unremarkable men (save for having been struck
by lightning at the age of 3) who find themselves in a run-down hotel
operated by Willy, a woman with conceptual problems, and her blind
companion, Alice. Driving this strange quartet are fears that become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. With a backward glance at Pinter and Beckett,
Panych blends the surreal and seemingly normal into a unique creation
where subtext and innuendo take on great importance. The Ends of the
Earth is a provocative and wholly absorbing work.