Spatter Pattern

When a screenwriter becomes entangled in the life of a university professor under investigation for a grisly murder, what begins as self-interest soon gives way to empathy, and a bond between men from seemingly opposite worlds deepens. An eerie, grimly funny whodunit, SPATTER PATTERN is a brutally honest and touching elegy about survival and the guilt that accompanies it. "Leave it to Neal Bell. So many recent plays have made forays into the noir genre - conscious or unconscious, spoofing or surrealist - that I had assumed there was nothing new to be gotten from it. But Bell walks in, boldly and knowingly, where legions have trod before, and instantly finds new paths to explore, new matches of tone and subject, new sources of moral perturbation. His title, from forensic medicine, describes both the directions in which blood has spurted from a fatal wound and the aesthetic tactic his script employs. His topic, achingly visible under the sprayed droplets of his story, is responsibility ..." -Michael Feingold, The Village Voice "Bell's writing is so sharp, so focused and so consistently interesting - not a word is superfluous - that you come away with a surprisingly theatrical experience ... This is a tense, beautiful, speedy drama set in a right-now world of urban menace and fear. It's a theatrical discovery by a major talent. And it will stay with you long after the final, breathless blackout." -Jacques le Sourd, The Journal News "Neal Bell is one of those playwrights you keep expecting to hit big ... The immaculate stylist writes clean, crisp lines for characters quivering with urban angst. His humor is droll and laced with self-deprecating irony, and while his central theme might be summed up as 'spiritual alienation,' his topics are usually timely, reflecting a macabre interest in crimes of passion and a rather academic curiosity about what compels humans to violence ..." -Marilyn Stasio, Variety