What I liked
The design team has done a fantastic job in this small space of creating tension, variance of mood and tone, and telling the story to great effect with Mallory McAfee’s eerily spot-on make-up and costume design taking the cake. Rosie Glen-Lambert’s impeccable direction keeps the pace tight and the foot on the gas as we barrel roll through time while keeping the frame firmly focused on the hard questions this play asks us. Hailey McAfee’s powerhouse performance is arresting and devastatingly moving and she manages to walk the knife’s edge of playing a character that, for many of us, will be hard to agree with on anything but who has an undeniable charisma we can’t help but be pulled in by. The script — what is there to say about a script that is so well-crafted?! The language is both accessible and rich, evocative and funny, shocking and poetic. It both draws from and transcends Mother Courage from which it was adapted. There are lines from it that I will think about forever. There are characters who are made up and who never appear on stage who I will mourn. This is a great play – go see it.
What I didn't like
n/a
My overall impression
Rosie and Hailey are absolute theatre powerhouses and they have come together to create a masterfully thoughtful and well-executed piece of theatre. You don’t have to know anything about Dana Loesch or Mother Courage to enjoy this play – though being familiar with the source material will help you steel yourself for what’s coming and see just how brilliantly these two writers have adapted the structure of the original Brecht piece to speak with such clarity, resonance, and urgency to the epidemic of gun violence and these dissonant political times.
