What I liked
Christion Ty Edwards has a great voice variety when depicting the 4 masks that helped made those characters stand out.
The subject matter of the story, while not entirely uncommon, was told in a piercingly honest way that didn’t feel limited by storytelling constraints.
What I didn't like
The message of the ending feels hollow and sadly inconclusive. I didn’t feel the sense that the character’s mental state had really improved beyond simply choosing to live longer, rather it was just an ending to prevent leaving the audience on a nihilistic note. Of course, I don’t expect the play to have “solved” artistic depression and self-doubt, but without more context or new conditions as to what Christion’s character discovers about himself in the end, the optimistic message doesn’t come across as convincing as it should’ve.
My overall impression
A dour, yet compelling hour of diverse interpretations of self-doubt and artistic pain. Christion Ty Edwards’s performance justifies the potentially dragging script into a series of set pieces that kept showing a new side to his talents and the character’s personal issues.
My only wish is that I really wanted the show to work on the specifics of the characters from their artistic passions, inspirations, experiences, and subsequent disappointments that led to this horribly self-destructive mindset. Being a character study of the several minds of one individual, I felt that there was a missed opportunity for a more complex personal retrospection that I could’ve related to more.
