The violence in this play -- though some downright physical -- is so harsh as to keep you flinching as the characters go at each other, the things they say infinitely more damaging that the rattle and crash of the pots and bottles constantly being thrown upstairs, outside, and right in the kitchen which doubles as a poker parlor.
In his autobiography, "Lullaby of Birdland" (2004), written with Alyn Shipton, Mr. Shearing recalled that his first attempts at making music involved throwing bottles from an upstairs window: milk bottles for a classical sound, beer for jazz.
I carried my clothes upstairs, threw them on the floor, and went to bed.
Jeff had been beaten, strangled, stabbed, and finally his body was thrown into the upstairs bathtub.
Fela was beaten close to death, and his elderly mother thrown from an upstairs window, afterwards dying of her injuries.
He suffered a fractured skull, arm and leg in the onslaught and his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window.
After kissing Liz goodbye, Kate ran upstairs, threw on her latest piece of Dior couture, made a brave little face to herself in the mirror, sighed, and headed out into the night.
Later, in the old city, we have to leap out of the way of a bucket of water thrown from an upstairs window onto the Palestinian shops below.
But in subbing, as in life, just when you get comfortable when you've hit that sweet spot of showing up to work violently hungover while managing to not get fired the (literal) man upstairs throws you a curve ball.
When his eyesight began to fail he became depressed and tried to commit suicide by throwing himself out of an upstairs window, but failed.
