BroadwayHD announces today that Thom Pain, the Geffen Playhouse’s filmed adaptation of its stage production of Will Eno’s lauded play Thom Pain (based on nothing) starring Rainn Wilson (“The Office,” founder of Soul Pancake), will be available on BroadwayHD beginning January 11, 2018. The play was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and has been translated into more than fifteen languages, with more than 100 productions mounted worldwide. Thom Pain, the film, will open the Indie Memphis Film Festival today and will also screen as part of the Dallas VideoFest this weekend.
Of the play, Charles Isherwood in his review in The New York Times wrote: “It’s one of those treasured nights in the theater – treasured nights anywhere, for that matter – that can leave you both breathless with exhilaration and, depending on your sensitivity to meditations on the bleak and beautiful mysteries of human experience, in a puddle of tears. Also in stitches, here and there.”
First performed to rave reviews in 2004 at the Edinburgh Festival where it won every major honor including a First Fringe Award, Thom Pain (based on nothing) next moved to the Soho Theatre in London and then on to the DR2 Theatre in New York, where it ran for more than 350 performances. In 2004, the London Daily Telegraph declared, “It’s hard to imagine more dazzling writing on any stage.” Ten years later, in 2014, Lyn Gardner of The Guardian was moved to write that the play is, “still one of the best monologues I’ve ever seen.”
Multi-faceted, award-winning actor Wilson and playwright Will Eno became friends more than 20 years ago, well before the play’s critically acclaimed world premiere. Eager to bring the play to Los Angeles, the two had spoken about working together for years. It was only recently that all the stars aligned. The Geffen Playhouse stage production was directed by OBIE Award winner Oliver Butler. Eno and Butler co-directed the film adaptation, which was produced by the Geffen Playhouse.
Thom Pain (based on nothing) concerns the life of a tragic and hilarious character named Thom, who has been described as, “just like you, except worse. He is trying to save his life, to save your life – in that order. In his quest for salvation, he'll stop at nothing, be distracted by nothing, except maybe a piece of lint, or the woman in the second row.”
“Mr. Eno might be called a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation... To sum up the more or less indescribable: Thom Pain is at bottom a surreal meditation on the empty promises life makes, the way experience never lives up to the weird and awesome fact of being. But it is also, in its odd, bewitching beauty, an affirmation of life's worth.” – The New York Times
The presentation of Thom Pain marks the second collaboration between the Geffen Playhouse and BroadwayHD. In March, BroadwayHD presented a live stream of the Geffen’s production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, starring Jane Kaczmarek and Alfred Molina, in its first-ever live stream from a U.S. theater outside of New York City.
For more information on this production and others click here.