Rating: 
Summary: What Not To Do and Why To Do It Anyway
Review: Playwright Margaret Edson does everything in this play that playwrighting and directing teachers tell their students not to do. She speaks in jargon. She breaks the fourth wall. She demands a hefty cast. She's digressive.Yet the play, both in performance and as literature, is compelling. This play, in the great expressionist style, creates a world as seen through the eyes of only one character. Events unfold from a distinct point of view that is made comprehensible to us by allowing that POV to address us apart from stage events. Edson, a literature graduate and former oncology ward worker, is knowledgeable about the topics that inform this play: classic poetry and cancer. The connection between the metaphysical lyrics of John Donne and the imminent mortality of uterine cancer provide a smooth harmony in the character of Dr. Vivian Bearing. Thematically and structurally, this play has the theatrical elements that make playwrights from Sophocles to Strindburg to Sam Shepard writers of great significance. This isn't to say the play is easy to stage. Scene shifts take place without a pause to let actors get their feet. Our narrator gets a pelvic exam in full view of the audience. Supporting characters double on the fly, and lead characters have to change ages from scene to scene. At the final moments, our narrator appears in front of us as naked as the day she was born. But these difficult elements contribute to the great meaning that is this play. Without these trials, the production wouldn't touch us in the same way. We need these almost offensive structural components to understand what the narrator must endure. This play is difficult to read, difficult to stage, difficult to watch. Yet the things that make it difficult make it most ultimately rewarding. A modern classic from a forward-thinking mind.
Rating:
Summary: A Miracle of Literature!
Review: This play, as performed to perfection by Ms. Edson, is, to me, a miracle of modern literature and a tour de force in acting. If I were a woman, I would move heaven and hell to play this role. I found it quite by accident as I was channel surfing one day. Ms. Edson's acting and outstanding wit stopped me in my tracks and I sat dumbfounded and delighted throughout the performance. Based on the subject matter alone, I would never have chosen such a title - but, my God, how grateful I am to have inadvertantly stumbled upon it. Having spent many long hours attending to friends diagnosed with AIDS (the experience is quite similar to endstage Cancer), this, for me, opened doors into what the patient is feeling and the miracle of the mind to associate and disassociate as necessary. If you have experienced the end days of a loved one from such a disease - you will thank your stars for this brilliant work!
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