Word: durangã
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Anyone familiar with Durang??s work will know that he does not write for children. His best plays are good-naturedly wicked send-ups of life’s pain and absurdity. They mine comic gold from such unfunny topics as depression, divorce, alcoholism, and infant mortality (as in his “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” which the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club produced this fall...
...should have known what I was getting into when I opened the press packet to find handouts on Durang??s religious inspirations and the first U.S. space station, Skylab. But in I went, naïve as a child—which turned out to be appropriate, since the play itself felt like a world religions unit in a third grade social studies class...
...Miss Witherspoon” is not one of Durang??s best plays. Its whisper-thin plot barely covers what is essentially an exposition of the playwright’s personal theology. Miss Witherspoon (Paula Plum) commits suicide, and on her way through the “bardo” (a holding room for unfulfilled spirits that contains a curious mix of Eastern, Christian, and New Age religious ideas), learns to appreciate life on earth, finally making peace with the universe...
...with it all, Witherspoon kills herself by standing right in their path. When the lights come up again, we find her perched on an armrest, explaining why Skylab is crashing to earth in a way that seems more like a fourth-grade teacher than one of Durang??s trademark paranoid neurotics...
...game portraying reincarnated roles such as a couple of babies (with the help of beautiful head-puppets from set designer Janie E. Howland), as well as a loyal house dog. Unfortunately, her warm and approachable acting style doesn’t do well on Durang??s twisted humor, and her performance comes out shallow, gimmicky, and shrill...