Better/Worse

Single vs. Married

A battle worthy of a Jet Li movie.

From a single man's perspective, this was going to be a downer. Marriage isn't high on my normal list of conversation. Oh crap, I've given away my bias. I falling along one side of the battle. I'm not against marriage. I infact want to get married someday, but not today, or this month, or likely this year.

What I feared going in was a female tribute to marriage. Surprise! I got something else, entirely. Marriage is NOT a panacea, and this play brings that home. Marriage is hard and the play illustrates this time honored fact through the struggles of three women in understanding what marriage is, what it isn't, what love is, or supposed to be.

Courtney Seiberling, Amelia Henderson, and Stacey Vespaziani team up in a three women/one video screen production. All three know their characters and cherish their connection to them.

The video screen is an up front character, both showing documentary style interviews and showing the text messages these three characters send repeatedly to each other. Add in audio cuts from a talk radio show and a voice from the sky and it makes for a very technology driven production.

All three characters come out clearly in their interactions, letting the inner mind out to demonstrate the complications friends encounter with each other as well as their significant others.

It was clearly a well timed alternative to Sex and the City, even including a funny satirical rip on the TV show's opening. Adding to that is Courtney Seiberling's character's softer version of the Kim Cattrall/Samantha Jones character. Seiberling bears a resemblance to Cattrall, which came out more when Seiberling's character was at her most morally ambiguous.

While the characters worked together well and the dialog was both funny and honest, the technology had transition problems. There were either missed cues or just the transitions to the talk radio portions didn't clearly show the relevance to rest of the play. Scaling back the use of the technology would greatly enhance this production.