SUMMER SHORTS 2018 SERIES A at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Kate Buddeke and Adam Landon in THE LIVING ROOM, part of SUMMER SHORTS 2018.  Photo be Carol Rosegg.

For the past twelve years, Thoroughline Artists has staged an annual program of Summer Shorts: A Festival of New American Short Plays at 59E59 Theatres.  Each year’s program generally consisted of six short plays by both established and emerging playwrights, divided into two series of three one-act plays each.  And each year’s program generally proved to be extremely entertaining.

This year’s program again consists of six one-act plays, three in Series A and three in Series B. The plays in Series A are The Living Room by Robert O’Hara; Kenny’s Tavern by Abby Rosebrock; and Grounded by Chris Bohjalian.  The three in Series B are Sparring Partner by Neil LaBute; Ibis by Eric Lane; and The Plot by Claire Zajdel.

I have not yet seen Series B which won’t open officially until August 5 but I have just seen Series A and I must say I was rather disappointed.

For starters, I thought that The Living Room jumped the shark and was largely incomprehensible.  It has been presented as a satire about Frank (Adam Landon) and Judy (Kate Buddeke), white people in a living room who simply do what white people do but who come to question the very nature of their reality – in the course of which they break down the fourth wall, engage in Brechtian absurdities, endow the playwright (or director) of the play in which they just happen to find themselves with God-like attributes, and blur the distinction between actors and audience - and all with gratuitous racial overtones.  I found the entire play to be a mash-up of Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage…,” Becket’s Waiting for Godot, The Truman Show, and Westworld.  I’m really not certain what the playwright’s intentions were but I didn’t find the work interesting enough to try even harder to find out.

L-R: Francesca Fernandez MaKenzie and Stephen Guarino in KENNY'S TAVERN, part of SUMMER SHORTS 2018.  Photo be Carol Rosegg.

Unlike The Living Room, both Kenny’s Tavern and Grounded were comprehensible but had the depth of #MeToo hashtag messages.  Both plays again explored the sad truth that women have frequently been sexually exploited by mentors, married men, and men old enough to be their fathers, but neither play brought any new insights to the issue.  In Kenny’s Tavern, the exploited woman is a school teacher, Laura (Francesca Fernandez McKenzie), who would readily have slept with her married man exploiter, Ryan (Stephen Guarino) if he’d only been willing and who analogizes her relationship with Ryan to that of Monica Lewinsky with Bill Clinton.  And in Grounded the exploited woman, an airline stewardess, is Emily (Grace Experience) who was the victim of years of statutory rape, the traumatic aftereffects of which don’t seem to have left her with anything worse than a surmountable fear of flying over the ocean.

L-R: K.K. Glick and Grace Experience in GROUNDED, part of SUMMER SHORTS 2018.  Photo by Carol Rosegg.

The actors in all three plays do as effective a job as might be expected in their respective roles, given the material they have to work with.  I only wish that material were better.

THE POSSIBILITIES by Howard Barker and THE AFTER-DINNER JOKE by Caryl Churchill

L-R: Kathleen Wise and Madeleine Russell in THE POSSIBILITIES.  Photo by Stan Barouh.

Now in its thirty-second repertory season, PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project) is staging an engaging double bill at Atlantic Stage 2 in Manhattan, featuring a portion of Howard Barker’s The Possibilities together with Caryl Churchill’s The After-Dinner Joke.

The Possibilities was written in 1986 and consists of ten short plays that explore the illogical, irrational, counter-factual, and counter-intuitive aspects of the human condition within a variety of different contexts and at various times in history.  It does so in a manner that Barker referred to as “Theatre of Catastrophe” but which I see as a more traditional example of “Theatre of the Absurd” or “Theatre of the Ridiculous.” In this production, only four of Barker’s ten vignettes are staged but they are more than enough to keep your head spinning.

In the first, The Unforeseen Consequences of a Patriotic Act, Judith (Kathleen Wise) seduces her enemy - and decapitates him.  In the second, Reasons for the Fall of Emperors, Alexander of Russia (Jonathan Tindle) relates to an Officer (Adam Milano) and to a Peasant bootblack (Christopher Marshall) in unexpected ways.  In the third, Only Some Can Take the Strain, an itinerant bag-lady Bookseller exhibits a surprising attitude toward her wares - and a bit of paranoia which might well be justified. And in the fourth, She Sees the Argument But, which was far and away my favorite of the four pieces, a Woman (Madeleine Russell) is reprimanded by an Official (Kathleen Wise) for the promiscuous act of exposing her ankles – and rather than expressing remorse, suggests that her promiscuity might extend well beyond that.

L-R: Jonathan Tindle, Tara Giordano and Kathleen Wise in THE AFTER-DINNER JOKE.  Photo by Stan Barouh.

Caryl Churchill’s The After-Dinner Joke was written originally in 1978 as a television play before its subsequent adaptation for the stage.  It is the story of a young girl, Selby (Tara Giordano), eager to do good as a charity worker and scrupulously avoiding entangling her charitable work with politics.  As she puts it: “By definition charity is non-political. By definition, politics is uncharitable”. 

  

The play introduces a multitude of characters - including Selby’s philanthropic boss, Price (Jonathan Tindle)  as well as assorted rock stars, food columnists, and politicians - and features impressive multi-media effects,  unfolding in 66 short, episodic scenes, in the course of which Selby learns that separating charitable and political issues really is an impossibility.  Or as the Mayor (Chris Marshall) proclaims: “There’s something political in everything.”

The play is a scathing indictment of charitable institutions, much of it justifiable. But it then often devolves into a gratuitous attack on the free market capitalist system as a whole, which I found to be far less justifiable.  In any event, the play is sharply written, well-directed, and beautifully performed.

And so, in sum, this is a double bill well worth seeing.   

Edward Gero Stars as Antonin Scalia in THE ORIGINALIST

L-R: Edward Gero Stars as Antonin Scalia in THE ORIGINALIST.  Photo by Joan Marcus.

Antonin Scalia was the son of an Italian immigrant father and first generation Italian-American mother; a devout Roman Catholic; the father of nine children; an opera-lover; and a law professor who taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Chicago, and Stamford University.  But he is best remembered as one of the most brilliant, influential, principled, conservative and controversial Supreme Court justices in recent history.

Scalia was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan and unanimously confirmed by the Senate (98-0) in 1986, serving on the Court with great distinction until his untimely death 28 years later.  One of the most conservative members of the Court, he vigorously opposed treating the Constitution as a “living document” whose provisions could be re-interpreted by the judiciary over time to reflect changing times.  Rather, he saw the Constitution as a document fixed in its meaning whose words were no more subject to re-interpretation than were the notes of a musical score (which remained for all time as they were first written).  Thus, he described himself as an “originalist,” by which he meant that he sought to interpret the Constitution as he believed it had been understood when it was first adopted.  As he expressed it: “it’s what did the words mean to the people who ratified the Bill of Rights or who ratified the Constitution.”

It was this approach that led Scalia inexorably to his conclusions that the death penalty (clearly recognized in the original Constitution) was constitutionally permissible but that the Constitution did not recognize any inherent rights to abortion or same-sex marriage (which were not even referenced in the Constitution).  It was not that he necessarily believed that the death penalty was a desirable punishment nor that he thought that abortion or same-sex marriage were undesirable (although he very well might have), but rather that he felt that it was not up to the judiciary but to the legislature to make such decisions.  In his opinion, if the people wanted to ban capital punishment or legalize abortion or same-sex marriage, that was their right – but they had to do it through legislation, not through judicial activism.

It was also this approach that led Scalia to uphold an individual’s Second Amendment right to own a firearm, determining that the term “militia” as used in that amendment would have been understood, at the time of the amendment’s ratification to have meant “the body of all citizens.”  It was this approach, too, that led Scalia to oppose “reverse racist” affirmative action programs or policies that accorded special status to favored classes on the grounds that such programs or policies were clearly unconstitutional (being inconsistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the law).  And it was this principled approach that sometimes led Scalia to decisions that he, himself, said he “deplored,” such as his upholding the constitutionality of flag-burning as an exercise of free speech protected by the First Amendment.

The Originalist, written by John Strand and directed by Molly Smith, is a truly mesmerizing and thought-provoking play.  Set during the 2012-13 term of the US Supreme Court and focusing on the complex persona of Antonin Scalia (with all his strengths and weaknesses), the play premiered in Washington, DC in 2015, less than a year before Scalia’s untimely death.  It is currently being staged at 59E59 Theaters in midtown Manhattan at a most appropriate moment, with our nation as politically polarized as I can ever remember it being and with the Senate on the verge of debating the controversial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.

 

Edward Gero is truly remarkable in his channeling of Antonin Scalia – body and soul.  He does a fine job expounding Scalia’s judicial philosophy but, even more importantly, he communicates the man’s underlying sense of fairness and deeply-rooted humanity, as evidenced by the close relationship he shared with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the Court’s most liberal members and in many ways his polar opposite – and by his decision to select a liberal to challenge him as one of his four law clerks.

Cat (Tracy Ifeachor) is the liberal law clerk Scalia chose for this term – and she may be more than even he bargained for.  She is a self-described socialist, a top-of-her-class Harvard Law School graduate, a black woman, and a lesbian to boot - and her values and beliefs, on everything from gay marriage to gun control to abortion - are diametrically opposed to Scalia’s.  And she is determined to influence Scalia as much as he might influence her, thereby helping to restore the political middle to our polarized society.

The Originalist is basically a two-hander, with Scalia and Cat sharing the stage as sparring partners.  Cat gives as good as she gets, a tribute to Tracy Ifeachor’s own considerable talents.

 

The only other character in the play is Brad (Brett Mack), a Republican, white male who had been Cat’s contemporary at Harvard.  His more limited role in the play seems to be to act as something of a foil to Cat and to re-raise the issue of affirmative action from another perspective   It is a role which he handles very effectively.

PTP/NYC Stages BRECHT ON BRECHT at Atlantic Stage 2

L-R: Harrison Bryan, Christine Hamel, Jake Murphy, and Carla Martinez in BRECHT ON BRECHT.  Photo by Stan Barouh.

An exile from Nazi Germany, an avowed Marxist, and an unabashed apologist for Soviet Communism, Bertolt Brecht was unquestionably one of the most influential playwrights of the last century.  The author of more than fifty plays and screenplays – including The Threepenny Opera, The Life of Galileo, The Good Women of Setzuan, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and Mother Courage and Her Children – as well as hundreds of poems, he upended the classic theatrical world with his innovative “epic theater,” a non-linear self-referential socio-political exercise in which audiences were continually reminded that what they were watching was not real but only a representation of reality.  To that end, he sought to “alienate” his audiences through the use of a variety of spectacular dramatic incongruities including the elimination of conventional props, circus-like atmospherics, breaking down the “fourth wall,” and having characters step out of their assigned roles to engage their audiences directly.

Brecht’s work was greatly informed by the fact that he was forced to flee Nazi Germany, initially settling in Scandinavia before emigrating to the United States, only returning to East Berlin in 1947 after having been investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee for his Communist views. – and by the fact that he was a staunch Marxist and apologist for Soviet Communism.  Brecht’s socio-political and dramatic inclinations led inexorably to his ridiculing and parodying capitalism and free market systems for their presumed devolution into authoritarianism and his perception of their other shortcomings (including the exploitation of the individual).

Now in its thirty-second season, PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project)) is persisting in its mission to present theatrically complex and thought-provoking work of contemporary social and cultural relevance and, to that end, it is currently staging a superb revival of Brecht on Brecht at Atlantic Stage 2 in Manhattan.  As adapted by George Tabori from a potpourri of songs and excerpts from Brecht’s plays and private texts, Brecht on Brecht was originally produced in 1961, but it remains a remarkable revue of the playwright’s life and is as timely today as it was more than a half-century ago.

The play remains true to the principles of Brecht’s “epic theater,” with its Company of ten highly accomplished performers all donning red noses and cavorting about onstage in a rollicking circus-like atmosphere and directly addressing the audience while delivering powerful monologues and soliloquies and fine renditions of eleven of Brecht’s best-known songs (set to the music of two of Brecht’s principal collaborators, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler).  All of the performances were good but my very favorites were Army Song and Barbara Song (both sung by the entire Company), Pirate Jenny (sung by Christine Hamel) and Surabaya Johnny (sung by Carla Martinez) - and what was for me, the high point of the play, not a musical rendition at all but rather an exceptional monologue by Christine Hamel in the role of Judith Keith, “The Jewish Wife” forced to flee Nazi Germany. 

THE PROPERTY by Ben Josephson Premieres at the Clurman Theatre on Theatre Row

L-R: Warren Kelley, John Long, Phil Gillen, and Rachel Botchan in THE PROPERTY.  Photo by Hunter Canning/@huntercanning

The first of Ben Josephson’s seven plays to be produced in New York, The Property is currently premiering at the Clurman Theatre on Theatre Row on West 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan.  Not totally realistic but not entirely impressionistic either, the play seeks to provide insights into the lives of five intimately-related but singularly dysfunctional individuals.

Irene (Rachel Botchan) is the play’s central character.  Previously married to Vernon (Sam Tsoutsouvas), an economically successful but flagrantly immoral man, she is currently married to Eddie (Warren Kelley), Vernon’s polar opposite.  While Vernon is an unapologetic wealthy beneficiary of our capitalist system, Eddie is a low-paid bookstore employee and would-be Marxist revolutionary. And where Vernon is a highly-sexed, fun-loving, womanizer whose philandering led to his divorce from Irene and his virtual abandonment of their son, Todd (Phil Gillen), Eddie is a faithful husband to Irene and a concerned and well-meaning step-father to Todd – albeit a rather boring and uninspiring man in his own right and one who much prefers to spend his time reading books in the family cottage rather than engaging in more personal contact with other human beings.

But Irene’s divorce and remarriage didn’t just affect Vernon, Eddie and Todd, it changed Irene too: once free-spirited and artistically creative (when married to Vernon), she has since settled for the more stultifying life of a mid-level bank employee.  When Greg (John Long), a compassionate school teacher but relatively ineffectual and unsuccessful individual shows up to rent the cottage, the lives of all concerned are up-ended.  Vernon, who has been estranged from both Irene and Todd for years, returns to attempt to advise Irene regarding the economic and financial ramifications of her rental of the cottage to Greg and, at Irene’s urging, to try (reluctantly) to assist Todd in establishing his own career path.  Greg becomes enamored of Irene and she of him, but not to much avail given their moral scruples.   Eddie loses his job – for which he blames what he perceives as a corrupt capitalist system - but he resents the loss of his cottage retreat to Greg even more than he resents the loss of his job and he turns increasingly to drink.  Meanwhile Todd’s teenage rebellion, aggravated by Vernon’s initial abandonment and subsequent interference in his life, his lack of respect for Eddie, and his dismay at his mother’s infatuation with Greg, result in his descent into full-fledged heroin addiction. 

In a program note, the play’s director, Robert Kalfin wrote:

“The play is not judgmental.  Rather it is humanely compassionate and understanding; offering no solutions, just a portrait for reflection.”

Well, you sure could have fooled me.  I found the play to be quite judgmental – and justifiably so.  The portraits it paints of the five principals virtually cry out for judgment.  Should one not be judgmental regarding Vernon’s infidelities and his abandonment of his children?  Or of Eddie’s refusal to accept responsibility for his own life?  Or of Greg’s reluctance to come to grips with the real world? 

In any event, notwithstanding Josephson’s or Kalfin’s intents, the play certainly elicited judgments from me.  And I think that’s a good thing.

Jessica Walker Channels Suzy Solidor in ALL I WANT IS ONE NIGHT at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Joseph Atkins, Jessica Walker, and Alexandra Mathie in ALL I WANT IS ONE NIGHT.  Photo by Carol Rosegg.

It is no accident that Suzy Solidor lacks the name recognition of Edith Piaf or Marlene Dietrich; admittedly she was not in their class as a French chanteuse of the 1930’s and 1940s. And yet Solidor surely deserves greater recognition, not only as the openly bi-sexual, cross-dressing, flamboyant owner-entertainer of La Vie Parisienne, located in the first gay quarter of Paris and one of the hottest Parisian nightclubs of the time, but also as the “most painted woman in the world,” having had her portrait painted more than 200 times by such celebrated artists as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braques, Raoul Dufy, Francis Bacon, Man Ray, Erte, Jean Cocteau, and Tamara de Lempicka.

The illegitimate daughter of a charwoman, Solidor came to believe that her father, an attorney who had abandoned her, was really the descendent of an infamous French pirate, prompting her to sing of  “the sea, sex and sailors” – that is, when she was not belting out even more erotic, Sapphic tunes.  Consistent with her personality, Solidor catered to all comers, both heterosexuals and homosexuals, at La Vin Parisienne, and not only to French intellectuals and French entertainers but also to Nazi officers - which ultimately led to her conviction as a Nazi collaborator after the war.

Jessica Walker is an exceptional, multi-talented woman in her own right, as a playwright, translator, actress and singer.  Not only has she brought Solidor to our overdue attention by penning All I Want Is One Night, currently being staged as part of the Brits Off Broadway program at 59E59Theaters, but in doing so, she personally translated Solidor’s songs from French to English and now is starring, as actress and singer, in this production.

Walker is superb in channeling Solidor’s persona and is very ably supported by the other two members of the production’s small cast.  Rachel Austin portrays both Daisy and Giselle, the former being one of Solidor’s long-time lesbian lovers and the latter being her much put upon handmaid of her later years when Solidor was descending into an alcoholic abyss of her own making.  Alexandra Mathie is even more versatile, playing five different roles including those of Bengt Lindstrom (the latest in the long line of artists commissioned to paint Solidor’s portrait); Tamara de Lempicka (who painted the most famous of Solidor’s portraits and who was another of her many gay lovers); Bambi (a flamboyant drag queen); and her long lost father. 

And special mention must be made of Joseph Atkins, the play’s musical director without whose terrific accompaniment on the piano and accordion, the play may well have languished.  I only wish there had been more musical numbers than the eight with which we were provided, for him to have accompanied.

SECRET LIFE OF HUMANS by David Byrne Premieres at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Andrew Strafford-Baker, Andy McLeod, Olivia Hirst, Stella Taylor, Richard Delaney in SECRET LIFE OF HUMANS. Photo by Richard Davenport  

Yuval Haran’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is an extraordinary book.  An International best-seller, it took a fresh look at what it means to be human and raised such questions as: If there were half a dozen different species of humans inhabiting the Earth 100,000 years ago, why is there only one – homo sapiens – still around today?  What happened to the Neanderthals and all the others?  Was our tribe, homo sapiens, guilty of some form of genocide against those rival species?  And if so, does that suggest that such vestigial tribal genocidal traits may have remained within us - with who knows what implications for our own future survival?  A rather pessimistic outlook on life.

Jacob “Bruno” Bronowski was truly a “renaissance man” of the last century.  A brilliant mathematician and outstanding chess player, he also co-edited the literary magazine Experiment while at Cambridge and, during the Second World War, worked in operations research for the United Kingdom to enhance its bombing strategies.  After the war, he turned to biology in an attempt to better comprehend the nature of violence in man.  In the 1950s, he appeared on the BBC’s television version of The BrainTrust but he remains best known for The Ascent of Man – the documentary about the history of humanity that he produced in 1973 which, in his words, showed “our progression from our primitive ancestors to the masters of science and technology and art that we are today” – a work as optimistic in its interpretation of man’s evolution as Sapiens is pessimistic. 

David Byrne’s Secret Life of Humans, currently being staged at 59E59 Theaters as part of this year’s Brits Off Broadway program, represents something of an amalgam between The Ascent of Man and Sapiens and is a remarkably original work.  To be sure, man’s evolution can be interpreted (as The Ascent of Man does) as having consisted of continuing and sustained advancement – just think, for example, of indoor plumbing, the steam engine, the automobile, air travel, antibiotics, the internet, the smart-phone…. Yes, there have been setbacks from time to time but isn’t it unquestionably true that, overall, man’s health, wealth, longevity, and quality of life have all improved dramatically over time?

On the other hand, there appears to be no denying that man’s inhumanity to man has, in many ways persisted undiminished.  Thousands of years after primitive tribes engaged in human sacrifice, the supposedly civilized citizens of Nazi Germany allowed the Holocaust to occur, culminating in the genocidal extermination of six million Jews.  And even now, three-quarters of a century later, we are witnessing Islamist terrorism, genocidal inter-tribal wars in Africa, inexplicable school shootings, biological warfare, nuclear saber-rattling, and the persistence of brutal dictatorships around the world.  The League of Nations failed and the United Nations is not doing much better, the Arab Spring petered out, and it is not difficult to argue, as Sapiens might, that in many ways man is devolving and regressing, rather that evolving and progressing.

Secret Life of Humans addresses this disconnect through the life of Jacob “Bruno” Bronowski (Richard Delaney) who bears full responsibility for the sentiments expressed inThe Ascent of Man but whose own actions during the Second World War may have fallen short of that.  (Bronowski may or may not have participated in the Manhattan Project but he assuredly did contribute to the deaths of innocent German civilians by calculating how to cause the most damage through fire-raising, i.e. dropping small incendiary bombs on German cities.)  How might we reconcile such an apparent inconsistency (which is played out on a larger scale when one considers the disconnect between mankind’s economic progress and its socio-political shortcomings)?

Well, for starters, The Ascent of Man does provide a good description of mankind’s continued progress over time.  But that progress is not in a “straight, unbroken line” as Bronowski contends.  Rather, it occurs despite occasional temporary backsliding.  Similarly, Bronowski himself may simply have evidenced his own temporary fallibility in his actions during the Second World War but that does not change the fact that, overall, he was a decent and moral man.

Additionally, It is possible that what is true in the spheres of economics and technology does not necessarily carry over into the spheres of social and political activity.  The Ascent of Man is certainly correct in describing man’s economic and technological history as an upward-sloping straight line but that does not necessarily entail similar uninterrupted advances in politics and social relations.  In Bronowski’s personal case, that would suggest his continued progress in mathematics, technology and science despite any shortcomings he might have exhibited in other areas.  As Bronowski himself expresses it when grappling with the problem of whether or not to assist his Government in improving its bombing strategies during the Second World War:

“There are three questions to my mind.  Should we do this?  Well, maths, itself, cannot be good or evil.  It is either correct or incorrect, regardless of any later applications.  Must we do this?  The alternative is unimaginable.  And can we do this?"

Finally, there is the possibility that it all depends on our differing value systems.  Ava (Stella Taylor) is a soon-to-be-unemployed teacher who has a one-night stand with Bronowski’s grandson, Jamie (Andrew Strafford-Baker), in the course of which she prevails on him to provide her with the previously undisclosed material she needs in order to publish something “meaty.”  But Ava’s role in the play is more than that: she is also something of a narrator or one-woman Greek chorus and it is she who frequently raises the issues we’ve been discussing.  Thus it is she who claims that we all retain our “vestigial” traits, that “we’ve progressed, but we’ve not changed,” that The Ascent of Man was “pretty lightweight,” that Bronowski’s “view of the world is a little simplistic,” and that, in short:

“None of this is real….But it’s no less real than the value of the money in your pocket. Or the laws we decide to follow.  Or the borders of countries we’ve drawn on maps.  Or even human rights.  All only real because we’ve decided to believe in them."

But if human rights or any of our other values are only real because we’ve decided to believe in them, and not for any objective reason, then Bronowski’s wartime activities were only right (or wrong) if one believes them to have been so.  And capitalism or communism, democracy or dictatorship, terrorism or tolerance, globalization or xenophobia, genocide or foreign aid, are all only right or wrong because you think they are.  Quite a stretch and not one I’m able to make.

Richard Delaney is superb as Jacob “Bruno” Bronowski, initially supremely confident in his world view and the rightness of his actions but apparently ultimately coming to question his wartime activities.  Stella Taylor, as Ava, proves to be a formidable adversary and Andrew Strafford-Baker as Jamie provides the necessary linkage between the two and their conflicting philosophies.  Olivia Hirst is effective as Bronowski’s devoted wife, Rita, and Andy McLeod, as Bronowski’s wartime gay co-worker succeeds in deftly personalizing the emotionally devastating unintended consequences of wartime bombing when he loses his longtime partner, Martyn.

Secret Life of Humans is very creatively structured both in time and space with the characters, both alive and dead, in reality and in their own minds, communicating with one another over a period of decades, and with the simple re-arrangement of bookcases conjuring up images of offices, homes and libraries.  The play raises deep and thought-provoking questions and while no real answers are provided (how could there be?), it all makes for a more than satisfactory theatrical experience.