The Giant (NHB Modern Plays) - Softcover

Gripping and ambitious...the Florentine politics - in which sodomy is all the rage - lend a gritty, comic context...a credit to all concerned. --WhatsOnStage.com

Who wouldn't want to join in speculation as to the provenance of a sculpture that really has to be experienced firsthand to get a tangible sense of its overwhelming power...the artist's task is to lift the ordinary male mortal into something nearly blessed. --New York Times

Sher has exercised a good deal of poetic licence, but his ambitious play makes one want to hop on a plane to Florence to gaze at the awesome statue all over again. --Guardian

The Republic of Florence wishes to commission a giant sculpture - of David confronting Goliath - for the cathedral. Among the contenders are the little-known Michelangelo Buonarotti, 26, and the most famous painter in Florence, Leonardo da Vinci, 49. Michelangelo wins...As the magnificent figure emerges from its marble block, Michelangelo is visited not only by Leonardo, who has a new career as a inventor of war machines - though he has also taken a commission from a Signor Giacondo to paint his wife - but also by interfering local potentates, notably a political fixer called Machiavelli. Complicating matters is a beautiful 18-year-old quarryman from Carrara, whom Michelangelo takes on as a model while Leonardo woos him as a lover...