The Deer Park: A Play

Mailer's stage adaptation of his 1955 novel The Deer Park, published by Dial on 7 August 1967 after a New York run at the Theatre de Lys (31 January-21 May 1967, 127 performances). Narrower and more harrowing than the novel, Mailer said, but dug to deeper water.

The Deer Park: A Play (New York: Dial, 7 August 1967; simultaneously in softcover from Dell; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970; 192 pp., $4.50) is Mailer’s stage adaptation of his 1955 novel The Deer Park (55.4). The published version follows the production that ran from 31 January to 21 May 1967 at the Theatre de Lys in New York (127 performances), which Mailer underwrote. It is “markedly different in form, but consistent in spirit” with the dramatic fragments Mailer published in 1959 and 1960 (see 57.2, 59.11, 59.13, 60.4).

Mailer ranked it high among his works: “There were times when I thought I even cared more for it than the novel from which it was delivered; it was certainly different from the novel, narrower, more harrowing, funnier I hoped, sadder, certainly more tragic. It was also more multi-layered… If the compass was obligatorily more narrow, the well was being dug to a deeper water” (67.3).

Dedication

The book is dedicated to director Leo Garen and producer James F. Walsh, to stage manager Paul John Austin, and “the brave players in the first New York company” — Rip Torn, Rosemary Tory, Hugh Marlowe, Will Lee, Beverly Bentley, Mickey Knox, Gene Lindsey, Margaret Fairchild, Mara Lynn, Joe McWherter, Marsha Mason, Gary Campbell, and Bernard Farbar — and to the company of the first production at Act IV in Provincetown (1966).

The opening and its aftermath

The 31 January opening and its 500-guest after-party at Mailer’s Brooklyn Heights apartment were widely covered (67.1, 67.4, 67.4a, 67.4b, 67.5, 67.6); Pete Hamill described a fistfight at the party (67.4b). Mailer’s paid “Statement of Aims by the Playwright” (67.3) called it “a play about sex… Hollywood and hypocrisy and artistic integrity,” while the working-script version read, more bluntly, “a play about fucking.”

Related pages

• 1967 | Dial Press | The Deer Park | Theatre de Lys
• A Statement of Aims by the Playwright | Mr. Mailer Passes Out the Cigars | Norman Mailer's "Deer Park": Countdown Drama
• Mailer Finishes First Stage Work (57.2) | Scenes from 'The Deer Park' (59.11) | Advertisements for Myself (59.13) | Excerpts from 'The Deer Park' (60.4) | It Happened Last Night (67.4a) | Opening Night at the Theater (67.4b) | Norman Mailer, Playwright (67.5) | Norman Mailer Has Calmed Quite a Bit (67.6)

First published: 1967-08-07
Form: play
Lennon & Lennon: 67.13
Cite as: /works/1967-deer-park-a-play
Last updated: 2026-06-18