Forms of Heaven

Last year, with the publication of Incarnations, Clive Barker made three of these plays available to readers, actors, and directors alike. Now, in this second collection, Barker offers us three new journeys, each creating a real and vividly painted world touched by the strange and the transcendental.

In Crazyface, we follow the adventures of Tyl Eulenspeigel, a great clown cast adrift in the midst of Europe's Dark Ages, where he finds a line between comedy and tragedy so fine it can be crossed in the blink of a fool's eye. In Paradise Street, Barker creates an indelible dramatic portrait of his native Liverpool, whose grim, gray streets are transformed before our astonished eyes by an extraordinary band of time-travelers.

In Subtle Bodies, a play which mingles sensuality and sexuality in a truly outrageous fashion, we are taken to swim in the sea of dreams which will later appear (as Quiddity) in such Barker bestsellers as The Great and Secret Show and Everville. Here - in the kind of theatrical coup all three plays revel in - the power of desire and rage transforms a commonplace hotel into a ship that sails the dark waters of the dream-sea until misfortune overtakes it.