The Happiest Song Plays Last

"As ever, Hudes’s writing is poetic but wry, full of swagger and poetry. There’s live music, but oh, how the lines sing too." — David Cote, Time Out New York

"Ms. Hudes draws all her characters with precision and understanding... this warm-blooded play underscores how the disorienting flux of life can be navigated with the help of carefully tended family ties." — Charles Isherwood, New York Times

"Delightful... Hudes is a very accomplished storyteller, a playwright with an emergent, fulsome American narrative." — Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

At the dawn of the Arab Spring in an ancient Jordinian town, an Iraq War veteran struggles to overcome the traumas of combat by taking on an entirely new and unexpected career: an action-film hero. At the same time, halfway around the world in a cozy North Philadelphia kitchen, his cousin takes on a heroic new role of her own: as the heart and soul of her crumbling community, providing hot meals and an open door for the needy.

The final installment in Hudes’s three-play cycle, which began with the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue and Pulitzer Prize-winner Water By the Spoonful, The Happiest Song Plays Last is about the search for redemption, humility and one’s place in the world.

Quiara Alegría Hudes is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful, the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue. Her other works include Barrio Grrrl!, a children’s musical; 26 Miles; Yemaya’s Belly and The Happiest Song Plays Last, the third piece in her acclaimed trilogy. Hudes is on the board of Philadelphia Young Playwrights, which produced her first play in the tenth grade. She now lives in New York with her husband and children.