Waiting for life to begin

Oh, well, not really.  I've just been listening to Once on This Island on my iPhone a lot lately.  I love that song, and it does sort of apply to how I'm feeling, though.  Ish.

I've been SO exhausted lately.  I mean, I've always been relatively lazy, but this is different.  At least, I think it's different.  I wasn't this tired last year at this time after all the surgeries (not counting when I was on narcotic drugs, of course).  All the doctors told me it would take me about a year to feel like myself, since I'd had so much anesthetic throughout the surgical process.  So, I've been waiting to magically feel like myself again.  Not yet.

Even taking into account my lack of exercise and weight gain, I'm just beat.  Some days, it's all I can do to even get out of bed.  I'm late for work most days.  I'm not getting nearly as much done in a day as I used to.  I'm having to stay in the office later and later just to stay relatively on track.  At my recent job review, it was mentioned I sometimes seem 'unhappy' at work.  I'm not unhappy!  I'm struggling to stay awake!  And on the weekend?  I pretty much sleep through it.  I'll clean a little bit of the apartment, lie down, clean some more, lie down.  It's dumb.  And the apartment is a bit of a mess.  I've only cancelled a few get-togethers, but I make very few plans these days.  And I don't fully enjoy the parties I do attend.  I hate that.  One of my greatest pleasures is enjoying time with my friends.  But one Saturday this summer, it took so much energy just to get to a friend's picnic, I could barely speak to anyone once I got there, that just took too much effort.  Some nights, I'm even not looking forward to going to the theater.  I've pretty much stopped buying tickets for the near future.  I mean, I have stuff coming up, but I bought the tickets a while ago.  I've never felt this tired before.  So then I start to worry.  Worry that something new is going on.  Worry that those five errant cells have found a place to land and are starting something up.  And the worry wakes me up when all I want to do is sleep.  It's a vicious circle.

When I saw Dr. Pay-in-Advance in March, she took blood, just like any oncologist would do after all my stuff last year.  I didn't hear anything back, so I figured nothing was wrong.  When I saw her again in July, I told her about being so tired and she said, let's do a blood test.  I told her she had done one already (sigh. if I have to pay in advance, the least she could do is look at my chart before my appointment.  but I digress).  She looked at the results and said, oh, you're really low on vitamin D.  Take a 5,000 IU supplement.  Uh, ok.  I guess all those years of staying indoors and the massive amounts of sunscreen that led to my lily-white complexion are coming back to haunt me.

Oddly enough, all of the 5,000 IU supplements I saw online were made with gelatin, which makes them not-so-vegetarian.  I briefly toyed with just taking the gelatin pills and using them as an excuse to eat bacon again, but thought, no, I can figure this out.  I found a vegan supplement that was only 2,000 IU, but I figured it would be better than nothing.  Dr. Pay-in-Advance assured me that other patients who started taking the supplement felt more alert immediately.

Not so much.  Still tired.  So when I went to my annual gyno exam in early September, I told my doctor (I've never given her a nickname - why is that, I wonder?!?!) about being so tired and she decided to do another blood test.  Fingers crossed my insurance doesn't explode.  But a week later (as opposed to having to wait four months), she called me and told me that I'm anemic AND massively low on vitamin D.  So she gave me a prescription for 50,000 IU of vitamin D to take once a week for eight weeks (ok, your normal multivitamin has about 800 IU in them, so WOW that's a lot of vitamin D!!!), and a prescription for iron supplements.  After the eight weeks, I'm to go back and get my blood checked again.

I've been taking them for a week, I guess (second dose of huge vitamin D pill was yesterday), so I'm ready to feel better.  Not yet.  If I hadn't had a massive deadline at work, I would've stayed home Thursday and Friday.  As the saying goes, I'm awfully tired of being tired.  Though I'm glad nothing worse turned up.

Clearly, I took good health for granted all these years and now I'm being forced to work harder on my own wellness.  I should be exercising and cooking for myself, but that takes a lot of energy.  Energy I need just to function some days.  It's become like a slowed-down hamster wheel, where each day I'm spinning the wheel and trying to make something new happen and I'm so ready to jump off and feel like myself again.  I feel lame starting up with the complaints and the worries again, but maybe if I think aloud and put stuff out there, I can talk myself into feeling like me again... 

Another look at An Enemy of the People

A friend called me Tuesday to invite me to join him at An Enemy of the People.  Although I’d already seen it, I took him up on his kind offer, because I knew his seats would be great and because I’d seen the show before early in the preview process.  I was hoping to get a better sense of the production, since they’re opening tonight.

Anyway, I’m glad I went!  I thought the production was really good and most of the pacing problems that I had noticed before weren’t evident last night.  Boyd Gaines has really honed and tightened his portrayal – the scene in the town meeting is terrifying (in a good way) and the last scene is heartbreaking.  The ‘duel’ still seems awkward, but now in a character way instead of an unsure actor way.   Dr. Stockmann is a very complex character and Boyd Gaines captures this complexity beautifully.  Just the way he sheds his coat and shoes in the first scene says so much about this character.

Richard Thomas, who I also found to be excellent last month, was even more terrific the second time.  He’s really found such wonderful shadings of evil and spite, yet you still see the wounded brother with regrets.  Really expertly done.  The scenes between Gaines and Thomas just crackle, though I did wonder if they would REALLY sit at that table for so long...

The other actors are grand as well.  No complaints about the acting at all.  Oddly enough, the aspects I noticed the most at my second visit were the lighting and the adaptation.  Oh, and the set curtain.  From the first row of the mezzanine, the set curtain looked odd.  From the tenth row center, it looked (and worked) great.  I wonder why that is…  I hadn’t noticed last time how well the lighting works with the intimacy of the piece, even across a vast stage.  There are lots of use of pin spots and fades that really work beautifully.  Thumbs up on the lighting design.

The adaptation.  Hmmmm.  Again, I don’t really know the play well enough to accurately critique this version, but it did again appear to me to be really chopped.  The turnaround of the newspaper editor comes within the space of a few seconds--I know Richard Thomas could talk me into anything, but really?  One sentence sways the Editor?  And if the point is that the Editor is so stupid that one sentence would work on him, that didn’t get played up before.  I could buy the quick reversal of Aslaksen, the printer, but I just feel like some of the guts of the scene between the Mayor and the Editor have been excised for time.  I enjoyed the lean and mean aspect of the piece and the way it propelled forward, but a little more in that scene could’ve helped set up the horror of the town meeting even more.

This really is the perfect play to be presenting during an election season.  The strength of a single voice against a sea of dissenters is a powerful image right now.  I really do think this Enemy of the People is especially worth seeing now – not only because of its message, but because the message is being conveyed by two of the best stage actors in America right now.

(I took these photos the day after I saw the performance – I was playing with a new phone app so that’s why there are different effects.  Of course, as I was taking these photos, Richard Thomas walked by and smiled.  I was frozen, like a lump, and couldn’t say a word.  Sigh.  I hate when that happens.  Hopefully, if I see him again, I can tell him how much I enjoyed the show…)

 

 

New York (Theater Community) State of Mind

I've enjoyed feeling a part of the New York theater community over the last few days.  Sunday, my office had a table at the Broadway Flea Market, which is always a ton of fun (and a ton of work - my feet STILL hurt!), then last night I attended the 2012 New York Innovative Theatre Awards.

My office has been participating in the Flea Market for eight years or so - we don't have a lot of stuff to sell, but it's great to meet so many people and to get the names of writers out into the world.  It was fun to see the look on people's faces when they saw the Edward Albee bath towel (I should've gotten a photo!  I'm so dumb!); hats donated by Sheldon Harnick were a big hit; signed scripts by recent Pulitzer winners went quickly; and the free Halloween candy generally got a smile out of everyone who stopped by.  It was so cool to have the author of a book we had on our table randomly stop by to sign it so we could get more money for it.  This year, our table was in front of a truck selling large items like posters and theater signs, so we got all their money, too!  I definitely should've gotten a photo of the good-looking young men handing me money every few minutes!  :)  We made our biggest monetary amount ever, so that was exciting!  A great big thank-you to everyone who came and helped out at the table, did all the lifting and carrying for me, and to everyone who purchased something with a smile.  The curmudgeons were few, so it was an especially happy day.  Although it was really blustery where our table was stationed, it was a lovely day to be outside and see tons of theatrical goodwill across 44th Street.  Oh, and I got a Free Man of Color magnet!  Bonus!  An excellent day all around. 

 

Last night's IT Awards was another celebration of the theatrical community and I was so grateful to be part of it.  Happily, I was asked to announce some of the nominees a couple of months ago, so it was nice to see who walked away with awards!  Actually, all of these artists are winners, making art wherever they can find a space and an audience.  All of the recipients were so grateful and moved - their speeches were very touching.  The presenters were great, too!  I didn't know the host, Harrison Greenbaum, before last night, but I thought he was quite charming and very funny.  He kept the show moving very well.  I didn't know many of the winners, or their work (which I definitely need to work on), but I was very excited by several writers who received awards: Chisa Hutchinson, Donnetta Lavinia Grays and the Five Lesbian Brothers.  I was fortunate enough to do a reading of The Secretaries a few years ago, and one of the Brothers came to see it.  What a thrill!  I'm attaching a photo of our cast and our special guest.  

 

I make such an effort to see theater, but I need to make more of an effort to expand my theatrical horizons.  All of these shows sounded fascinating and I was sorry to have missed them.  This is something to think about for the future.  But even though I may not have seen all the nominated shows, the spirit of community was alive and well and I basked in its glow...

 

Review - Cyrano de Bergerac

 I got a TDF ticket to last night's performace of Cyrano de Bergerac at the American Airlines Theater.  I got there early enough to attend their pre-show discussion and listened to one of Roundabout's literary assistants discuss the play, the author and this production.  It was very interesting and the moderator was quite good at getting a lot of information across in a short time, without seeming rushed or making the crowd feel bombarded.  I might have to check out more pre-show discussions at Roundabout.

I adored Douglas Hodge in the most recent revival of La Cage aux Folles, so when he was announced as Cyrano, I knew I wanted to see it.  Plus, I love the play so much.  It's so gorgeously, sadly romantic.  The balcony scene alone is worth the price of admission, generally.  So I was very excited to go.

It seems like yesterday when we had the Kevin Kline revival of Cyrano, but it was five years ago already.  My oh my, time flies.  And I never thought I would miss Jennifer Garner's Roxane, but well...I kinda did.  More on that later.

I enjoyed the production quite a bit, on the whole.  It's beautifully designed and briskly directed.  I swear, the nearly-three hour run-time flew by.  I thought the wigs and costumes were particularly fine.  I'm not sure I was completely on board with the songs inserted, but Douglas Hodge performed them with 'panache.'  I'm also not sure if I loved this translation/adaptation by Ranjit Bolt.  It used rhyming couplets, which are always hard, and sometimes used contemporary vulgarities or turns of phrase.  They sort of ruined the music and the poetry of the language for me at times.  I especially found it awkward during Cyrano's first big monologue when he's composing the poem as he's dueling.  That just didn't land the way it usually does and certainly not because Douglas Hodge was lacking in any way.

I thought Douglas Hodge was incroyable (just felt like throwing some French in, sorry).  He was warm yet solitary, passionate yet restrained, whip smart and laser focused.  He didn't wallow in the melancholy, but instead frequently had a smile on his face which made his internal sadness that much more poignant.  I'll admit he didn't fit the image in my mind of Cyrano, which is physically closer to Kevin Kline, but he completely won me over about ten minutes into the piece.  And he is chock-full of panache.  I was so moved by the raptures of the balcony scene, and at how gently he convinced the doomed Christian of Roxane's love.  In fact, I think the chemistry between Cyrano and Christian was much more moving than the chemistry between Cyrano and Roxane.  These men had quite a wonderful rapport.

Clemence Poesy as Roxane just seemed too young and too shallow to inspire such feeling from any man, let alone three, though she is certainly lovely.  She barely seemed like a tween, let alone a woman old enough to have spent time in her youth with Cyrano, or a woman sophisticated enough and so in love that she could fool de Guiche into keeping Christian in Paris instead of at the front.  She sort of chirped and bounced around - I guess this could be a valid interpretation, but it didn't work for me.  I lost the romance and the sweep and the poetry.  Luckily, Douglas Hodge was more than up to the task of providing all of that himself, but imagine how much more wonderful this production could be if Poesy were his equal.

Patrick Page, as always, was wonderfully grounded and expert.  His transformation in the battle scene was terrific and very in-the-moment.  I had a momentary giggle to see Max Baker as le Bret, since he played Ragueneau in the Kevin Kline revival, but he was a terrific foil to Hodge.  Bill Buell was grand as Ragueneau and Kyle Soller was a fine Christian.  He could've used a little more oomph, but he may have been tempering himself in response to what Poesy was giving, or not giving, him.  You know though, it's early in previews.  Perhaps it's unfair to write her off so soon.  Maybe she'll grow into the role.  I'll hope so.

I was in the front row, so I felt really fortunate to see up close all the lovely work Hodge was doing.  The gents in the ensemble were also doing very nice, specific work.  I guess the only issue with sitting up front was I could really see the falseness of the 'nose.'  I could see where the makeup broke and it was a little distracting.  I'm sure that farther back it looked more natural.  Well, huge, but real.  I may try to see the show again and sit further back - I'd be interested to see Hodge after more performances under his belt.  And maybe I'd get more 'sweep' if I weren't so close.  The house certainly wasn't full last night, unfortunately.

So, as you might have guessed, thumbs up from me.  :)    I'll be interested to see what the critical response is to this one.  I've certainly been far afield of real critics before...

**six years ago, I caught an off-Broadway musical called The Rockae; five years ago, Signature presented a first-rate revival of August Wilson's Seven Guitars...**

Food, glorious food (in NY & Chicago)!

I had to be in Chicago again last weekend for business, so it was time to check out some more restaurants.  Luckily, my work pal was game to try the restaurants on my list!  After lots of research, I narrowed my choices down to one Top Chef Master candidate and one Next Iron Chef contestant.  :)

I've been watching this season's Top Chef Masters and have really enjoyed it, though I will admit that most of my favorites have already been elimated.  I really enjoyed Takashi Yagihashi - he was just so fun and humble and his food looked amazing.  I read on the Bravo website that his restaurants were in Chicago, so...yay!  I chose Slurping Turtle as a lunch spot.  It was an excellent choice.  The restaurant is light and airy, with a festive atmosphere.  Our server, Eddie, was enthusiastic, but not overly intrusive.  He was very knowledgeable about the menu and was helpful when we were trying to choose from all the delicious-sounding options.  I was disappointed that they were out of sweet corn croquettes, but I guess that means I have to go back!  I got the chahan, or, Japanese fried rice, with vegetables.  It was SO yummy.  It had ginger and pickled daikon, along with squash, mushrooms and bok choi.  The fried rice also came with a tasty bowl of miso soup and a small salad.  Thumbs up on the fried rice lunch - it was delicious and really filling!  My work pal enjoyed his meal too, and a dear friend from college also met us there!  We were a happy party and had a good time eating a ton of food.

Of course, that didn't stop us from getting dessert!  Eddie brought us a cream puff, on the house, and we ordered some macarons in various flavors.  My favorite was the caramel soy, though the yuzu was pretty darned tasty.  Oh, please, everything was tasty!  And then, as we were paying our check, I saw Takashi himself come into the restaurant!  I couldn't stop myself from squealing like a little girl!  He looked over and I smiled and clapped.  He came right over to meet us.  He's just as charming in person as he was on the show.  He asked us what we had for lunch and if we enjoyed it, asked us where we were from and just chatted for a few minutes.  I was too excited to ask for a photo, darn it!  I'm a dope.  I did get a very blurry photo of him by the windows.  It's goofy, but oh well.  Now I really love me some Takashi and have to go back to Slurping Turtle.  I'd also like to try his higher-end restaurant sometime.  Maybe next trip to Chicago. 

I'm very fortunate that my work pal let me decide where we were going to eat and indulged my tv chef obsession.  For dinner Saturday night, I chose Vermilion, Maneet Chauhan's restaurant.  I enjoyed watching Maneet on the Next Iron Chef and I like her comments as a judge on Chopped.  Plus, Latin-Indian fusion/small plates sounded intriguing to me.  So, off we went, dragging another Chicago-area co-worker along for the ride.  I started with an amazing ginger lime margarita, though I forgot to say 'no salt,' so it was a little too salty at the end to finish.  I'll remember next time, because it was tast-ee.  I opted to have two small plates and a side instead of one main course.  That way, I could taste as much food as possible.  ;)

 

 I got the artichoke pakoras, which were incredible, with an amazing eggplant coconut sauce that had a pomegranate vinegar reduction on top.  I could've eaten a bowl of that and been happy.  In fact, I started dipping everything into that sauce.  The coconut rice side dish tasted especially wonderful in the eggplant sauce.   I also got a dosa/taco (which is how they bill it on the menu) with potatoes and tamarind chutney.  It was yummy, though the potatoes were a tad spicy for me.  But once dunked in the eggplant sauce I mentioned above, I could get by.   The picture I took of the dosa was terrible, so I'll include a photo of my work pal's duck in mole.  Gorgeous.  I did take a little taste of the mole and it was amazing.  I wonder if they would do a vegetarian dish with it...

Those were the most fantastic meals of the trip - we did also have a very nice lunch at a bar, where I had a tasty catfish po' boy (don't tell the vegetarian police, please) and I also had a nice breakfast panini at a cafe near the hotel.  All in all, the weekend in Chicago was fun (my work pal and I always have a great time together - we laugh a lot) and the food was fantastic.  I'm already planning where we'll eat next time we go.

When I got back to NY Sunday, I met an old friend from Ohio for dinner (even though I was EXHAUSTED).  We met at a restaurant I hadn't tried yet, 508 Grill.  They apparently brew their own beer, but I don't drink beer, so I didn't try any.  The wine I got, the torrontes, was very nice.  Again, I decided to try two small plates instead of one main course.  Why not stick with a good plan?  I got the fresh bufala ricotta with lemon zest, honey and sea salt (OMG, so good) and the kabocha squash croquettes (again, SO good).  Both dishes were fantastic, so I definitely want to go back and try other dishes there.  Plus, our server was really great and the atmosphere was quite cozy.  In fact, it may have been TOO cozy.  I was so sleepy, I barely remember being there, but the photos help.  Next time, I'll try to be more awake.

 

I'll include some random Chicago photos to finish.  Here's to more trips, more good food, and more laughter!  Definitely what the doctor ordered...

 

 

 

 

 

Review - Enemy of the People

I had a benign dream the other night that featured Richard Thomas.  Perhaps I've been watching too many repeats of The Waltons.  But, anyway, in the dream, I was at a theater and he came out to greet all of the patrons to thank them for coming to see him in the show.  I figured this was a sign to get a TDF ticket to see Enemy of the People.  And maybe Richard Thomas would thank me for coming.  :) 

 

I've read Enemy of the People a bit over the years, but have never seen a production of it.  I'm not so familiar with it, though, to know how loose this adaptation by Rebecca Lenkiewicz is, but my oh my, now is a particularly good time to be doing this play.  It offers a lot of biting commentary about politics, politicians, mob mentality and singlemindedness.  The audience frequently chuckled or gasped with recognition at some dialogue that seemed particularly pertinent to our times.  Thumbs up for Manhattan Theatre Club for adding the play to their season.  Since it's so early in their preview process, though, I don't think I'll be as nitpicky as usual...

 

Boyd Gaines, a theater treasure if there ever was one, plays a brilliant, though perhaps socially inept, doctor who discovers something terrible about the town's water supply.  Richard Thomas is his brother, the mayor of the town.  They play off each other fantastically well and have several combustible scenes that are very exciting.  Richard Thomas is especially good at showing the dual nature of a politician, who will behave one way in private and another way in public.  His almost priggish demeanor in his scenes with his brother turns into silky smooth charisma when he's addressing the town.  The change was quite marvelous.  And Boyd Gaines' passionate railing against the town was very moving - his speech during the town meeting was nearly a master class in acting, reacting and building to a climax.  I loved him - though, truth be told, I generally do.

 

I enjoyed John Procaccino as the newspaper editor very much, and James Waterston (son of Sam) was good as a young revolutionary who perhaps isn't as revolutionary as he first appears.  Gerry Bamman was his usual fine self.  The ladies were fine, especially Kathleen McNenny as Boyd Gaines' wife, and the rest of the townspeople were good as well.

 

I enjoyed the show, on the whole, very much, though I will say the pacing of the production seemed a little unsteady, but they just started their second week of previews, so I will cut some slack.  The play has been cut down, it seems to me, to be a lean two hours, so the fact that there was a lag in some of the scenes was a little bothersome.  The last scene, which must always be tough after that town hall meeting, felt a little wobbly, especially the 'fight.'  I'm sure these are things that will be worked out as previews continue and I expect the play to get very strong reviews.  Boyd Gaines and Richard Thomas are doing wonderful work in an extremely topical play - who wouldn't want to give that a good review?  Never mind.  Don't answer that.

 

I'm very excited about the upcoming theater season and hope to see many wonderful things as the fall stretches on...

 

 

Reviews - The Train Driver and Tender Napalm

Blah blah blah, I love the new Signature Theatre, I love Athol Fugard, blah blah blah.  You've heard it all before, right?  Well, fasten your seat belts, you're going to hear it again.  :) 

I recently took in the final production in Signature's Athol Fugard series, The Train Driver, also directed by Fugard.  I had deliberately kept myself in the dark about the plot, the cast and everything else.  I wanted to go in completely fresh with no preconceptions.  Wow, talk about a huge undertaking - letting a Fugard play just wash over you isn't all that easy.  There's so much language, so much imagery, so much in miniature, that it's hard to digest everything.

Set inside the Linney Theater, the stage design is amazing.  This doesn't even look like the same space that hosted My Children, My Africa.  That play was done in three-quarter thrust (sort of), but this one is proscenium-style, with the set extending from wall to wall, with seemingly endless sand and debris and squalor.  We find out we're in a graveyard, which is moving enough in itself.

More a sort of tone poem than a play, in my opinion, The Train Driver deals with overpowering guilt and how a person can become connected to another.  Like several of Fugard's other plays, we have a black man and a white man, coming together by random circumstances, and they are forced to learn something from each other.  Set in post-apartheid South Africa, the things they learn are different, yet, sadly, still rather the same.

First we meet Simon Hanabe, played by Leon Addison Brown, the black caretaker of the graveyard.  He has a simple and powerful opening monologue about his first sighting of the white man wandering the graveyard.  That man, Roelf Visagie (played by Richie Coster), is looking around the graveyard for a particular grave.  But because he doesn't know the deceased's name, he is looking in the section of the graveyard reserved for the 'nameless ones.'  That this section of the graveyard is so immense is so sad, but sets up a lot of the despair and poignancy of what is to follow.

I don't want to give much away - not there's a lot of plot to speak of, there's not, but hearing it unfold I think is part of the power of the piece.  And I do think The Train Driver is powerful, though it may be a bit overwritten (some of the conversations seem to repeat themselves for no thematic reason) and, paradoxically, the ending may be underwritten.  It just sort of...happens.  The play is over and you think, huh?  But...maybe that's the point.  Just like life and death, things just...end.  I couldn't tell if it was purposeful, though.  But the beauty and the power of the play comes from the performances of these two men, delving deeply into themselves and revealing such raw pain and guilt.  It's hard to watch, but it's theatrically stunning.

Richie Coster, especially, has to really bare himself down to almost a primal essence.  Some of what he does and what he says caused me to wince and close my eyes, it was so raw.  I'll admit to being a fan of his tv and film work, but he's always typecast as a villain, so it was great to see him onstage playing with AND against the stereotype.  I was very impressed.  Leon Addison Brown was also extremely fine, though I think his role is a tougher nut to crack and perhaps there is another layer to be found.  Again, that could just be me.

So, thumbs way up from me, unsurprisingly, but in the interest of full disclosure, there were some walkouts during this intermissionless piece and the people next to me, though they stayed, HATED it.  Perhaps my predisposition to enjoy Fugard boosted my enjoyment, but enjoy it I did.  Well, maybe 'enjoy' isn't quite the right word.  This isn't an easy play to experience, by any means.  But I was definitely theatrically thrilled and engaged.  That, to me, indicates a thumbs up.  Your mileage may vary.

Last night, a chum had an extra ticket to see Philip Ridley's Tender Napalm, at 59E59.  He had seen a Ridley play before, but I hadn't.  I'm always game to check out a new (to me) writer, plus my chum and I always have a good time together, so I was happy to join him.  This play has gotten rave reviews in London and here, but I didn't really read anything about the plot or dramaturgy before going, so I could be surprised.  Again.  Besides, I had a tasty margarita before the show, so that should help me through the surprises... :)

I'll admit that, at times, this piece seemed like a glorified MFA project to me.  The acting and the writing were so artificial.  I really had to fight my way through some of the piece.  But, ultimately, it really grabbed hold of me.  I finally let my brain go, I guess, and immersed myself in the ferocity of the language and the construct.  I HAD to know where this would all lead.

A man and a woman are locked in verbal combat for over ninety minutes - is this real?  Is it imagined?  Are they crazy?  Do they do this every night?  What the heck is going on????!!!!  Realism and fantasy are intertwined, sometimes in the same monologue.  Even though this kind of writing generally isn't my cup of tea, I acknowledge that this writer is kind of brilliant.  Who else puts stuff together this way?

Again, I don't want to give away too much.  But you get the full gamut here - love, lust, hate, rage, pain, sadism, tenderness, fantasy, reality.  It's not like anything I've ever seen before.  And the way the otherworldliness of the beginning of the piece wrapped itself around to the last scene was genius.  I was so moved by the end, I shocked myself.  I admit to being in and out, fighting myself throughout, but the ending totally had me.

Again, full disclosure, this piece was not appreciated by everyone else in the audience.  it was easy to tell, since the theater is itty bitty and only seats around 50, no more than 25 on each side.  And one lady, as my chum and I were exiting, said "That was the strangest thing I've ever seen!  (pause) But I'm glad I saw it."  Clearly, she's never heard about the five-block rule, but it was an honest admission that made us laugh.

I've been thinking about this play constantly since last night.  And, as I type these reviews, I'm noticing similarities between the Fugard and this one.  The rawness, the pain, the interconnectivity.  Maybe I'm trying too hard, but I really found these plays as two sides of the same coin.  And I really like this coin.  Two not-easy shows in two nights.  Not a lot of laughs to be had, but certainly a lot of cathartic pain.  I may need to see a farce next.  Oh, wait, my next show is Enemy of the People.  If it's a farce, that would be bad...