My overall impression
I heard about this show purely through buzz and am very happy to have caught an early performance today. Kaliski weaves a story together that is both terrifying, vague enough to keep me guessing but close enough to ‘normal’ life that it hit home for me. As opposed to many flashback structures, I never quite knew where we were going next nor did I feel that the playwright or director felt the need to connect every single emotional dot for its audience. That was greatly appreciated.
The ensemble was strong and Lloyd Mulvey played Rip Lamplight’s struggle with an irony worthy of early Ayn Rand: torn between friend and love and country but never doubting that country was first. Starting the play on such a highly charged scene worked to place us within the friends’ highest of stakes, but I felt the first scene lacked some of the subtler moments they found later. The scenes when the couples were happier could have used a slightly lighter touch, but overall I was riveted. The complexities of how the two mothers-to-be and fathers-to-be were handling their approaching parenthood was a wonderful way to keep us rooted in real issues within a country run by “The Party.”
