My overall impression
Excerpted from the review by Lyle Zimskind of LAist:
“We’d never heard anything of the shameful history surrounding the now-closed Byberry state psychiatric hospital in Philadelphia before we saw Kealy DeWitt’s play “Bye-Bye” at the Fringe. But now we can’t get it out of our heads.
Nine actors introduce us to over 35 characters in a stream of short vignettes that hearken back to the period between 1900 and 1990, when scores of patients in Byberry’s charge were neglected, abused and even killed. A program note asserts that the play is “based on historical fact,” with some dialogue and characters drawn from formal records and others “created through dramatic imagination.”
Corrupt politicians, sadistic orderlies, and an uncaring public are all shown contributing in turn to the perpetuation of this institutional torture chamber, where some patients are said to have remained in straitjackets for 23 years and an indifferent evacuation left “aged and blind people” to “roast” when a fire broke out at the facility."
Link to entire review: http://laist.com/2015/06/18/four_more_fringe_shows.php
