This is a thoughtful, self-reflective quandary fashioned into a play. It's one engaging wordy conjecture after another, a sincere struggle to find meaning in a dangerous world. The script meanders into universal territory, as we all must find ways to rationalize our relationships with lovers, friends, and how we fit into populations on the macro scale. However, though it seems to try, the play never quite breaks free of its playwright's personal view in life and history.
Despite a momentary and awkwardly-injected resolution, the production maintains its constant philosophically-needling tone. The first half strongly engages, but the dramatic arc, though strong on tension, isn't very curvy, and that same tone feels a bit stale after the intermission.
The script offers some healthy explorative thinking on individual innocence and its loss, blame and guilt, and how each of us as part of humankind share some commonness with both the victims and conspirators of the holocaust. Arthur Miller seems to be struggling for an appropriate coping tool for a guilt he toggles between owning and blocking. It's the study into hope that feels interjected, but undeveloped here.
Excellent acting, sweet simple aesthetic set design, and apt use of video to suggest memories.
-- Click here to see Books by Ross Anthony, Author --
|